a poor player

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

Dunkirk NY – Barry Hessenius writes what I think is one of the best and most forward-looking blogs around. A former director of the California Arts Council, Barry is a tireless critic of the current models of arts promotion, fundraising and development, and his blog is a continual call to arms to artists across the country to begin doing the hard work of re-thinking and re-positioning the arts in America. He’s also critical of the lack of arts education in the K-12 area, but I think what he has to say about arts education is just as valid at the higher education level (college kids who are not artists receive no better an education in the arts at college as they do K-12).

Here’s a post which I think is terrific. It gets right at the heart of the matter and identifies the problems quickly, succinctly and efficiently. Some money paragraphs:

The models the sector has developed over the past four decades for its business and operational structure, its’ funding, governance, advocacy efforts, leadership development, and audience growth and marketing are all increasingly vulnerable, outmoded, and ineffective in dealing with the challenges of a changing environment and ecosystem. In many cases the default model is no model at all.

We are tooling around in the equivalent of a broken down old Edsel that wasn’t all that well designed in the first place. And yet we haven’t come up with alternatives.

If we don’t make the time to confront our weaknesses now, things may only get worse – perhaps much worse. The time is long overdue to engage in focused and serious conversations about fixing the old models or envisioning new ones.

The consequences of our failure to seriously consider how to revamp, re-invent, rethink, reform or replace the models on which we have for so long relied, but which are now failing us, will unquestionably impact how well we fare in the next decade. To think we can continue on as we have done for so long seems to now be a fool’s paradise.

I am sure you can take in the rest for yourselves. We need to find ways in our own spheres of influence to make these sorts of changes happen, or at the very least get the conversation rolling.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – Wonder of wonders! Travis Bedard over at Cambiare Productions had my blog in his Google Reader, and he was able to email many of my lost posts! I have not had time yet to re-construct everything, but hopefully over the weekend I can shake some time free to do so. I can’t thank or re-pay Travis enough for his effort. It’s situations and solutions like this that make me realize how powerful and interesting the internet can truly be. Travis, my savior – thanks millions!  -twl

Dunkirk NY – Well, with eight months of writing lost, I figured it might be a good idea to get back on track just a little bit. Adding a post tonight, which is my night off, seemed to be a good project. And to be honest, I did the post-a-day thing back in November, and the loss of most of those posts are nothing to get upset about. The world will not be a worse place for the lack of a post or two of mine.

I came to the realization the other day that I let a lot of theatrical events go by without comment, most noticeably the Tonys (if there is one post I regret losing it was the recent one I wrote on the Arties in Buffalo). I am also not finding much of interest to write about. I attribute this to the fact that most of what I had been reading about isn’t particularly pertinent to me personally. It may be pertinent to my students, and I do feel a need to stay relatively on top of things so that I can address issues with some modicum of intelligence. But I am coming to realize that my interest in things theatrical, at the most deeply personal level, is beginning to fade. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – Somehow, in updating my site to WordPress 3.0, I lost a good deal of my recent posts, from about mid-October 2009 to today. That’s why the post below this one dates on October 16th. I have no idea if this was the fault of my server or mine, but it seems that in the sites I have updated to 3.0, I have gotten different error messages, mostly related to file location in the php file structure. That’s a little over my head.

I was able to go back to my original WordPress.com site and capture posts from October 2009 back, but it seems that anything from that date to this has become lost in the ether somewhere. I am trying to inspect the SQL databases on my server to see if anything is recoverable, but it’s not likely. My apologies, and thanks for your patience as I attempt to re-construct the site as best as possible.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – This past Monday night I attended for the first time ever the annual Artie Awards in Buffalo. The Artie Awards are Buffalo’s equivalent of the Tony Awards, celebrating and recognizing outstanding achievements in theatre within the city of Buffalo. They have been going on now for twenty years, which coincidentally is about as long as I have been active in the Buffalo theatre scene. They are the brainchild of Tony Chase, who has been the theatre editor of Buffalo’s alternative newspaper ArtVoice (the alternative to the Buffalo News, at any rate) for 20 years, as well as a local radio personality for WBFO’s Theatre Talk. They also coincide with the explosive growth of Buffalo Theatre that most people believe began in the late 1980s.

I’ve never attended the Arties before for several reasons. The first reason is that I am ambivalent about award ceremonies in general, whether they be in academia or in the arts. Part of me understands the importance of recognizing legitimate achievement; when people or a particular company do well, it is the recognition of that fact that continues to motivate and hopefully inspire others. The human psyche needs affirmation and recognition, and awards serve that function. But part of me also understands that these things can become political, and that they are often used for self-promotion purposes. There is a famous line in Buffalo theatre circles – “The Arties are all political, until you win one.” There was also a bit of an Artie backlash this year from one of the theatre groups in the city that felt they were left out of the proceedings. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – It’s come down to something as simple as this: I think I am losing interest in American society. I think it’s that simple, and I think in some measure it is affecting every other aspect of what I am doing with myself.

Signpost: I don’t really much like today’s movies. If I hadn’t already seen The Best Years of Our Lives 50 times already I probably would have picked it over all the movies I looked for in Movies On Demand last night. But my wife (who loves the movies) and I settled on Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock instead. It was a pleasant enough movie, with echoes of the Woodstock festival all through the movie (for which I had tickets but could not get the car from my parents, so I ended up not going), and it had some decent performances (particularly from Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton as the parents), but in the end the story was fairly uneven and unsatisfying. Too many disjointed events in the story not really coalescing into anything other than a young man’s drive to leave home. Not stunning. And not to go unnoticed, of course, is the particularly unflattering portrayal of theatre people as represented by the Earthlight Players.

Signpost: It seems now that the morning skim of the newspapers tends to reveal nothing new. All the news seems old. Problem-solving is not the central focus of politics. Self-interest and a whole raft of inane ideology is. Politics have become a crushing, mind-numbing bore. The incivility and inarticulateness of political figures today is utterly bizarre and totally depressing.

Signpost: Education seems not to be helping the situation much. From revisionist social studies in Texas to the reported lack of empathy on the part of today’s college students, the state of education overall seems as much in deterioration as anything else I can think of.

Signpost: The Gulf oil spill is a natural disaster of immense proportions that does not have an immediate technological solution. People seem stunned by this. Why can’t anybody fix this? Everyone had the same reaction to situations like Katrina and the European ash cloud that halted air traffic for two weeks. When did we ever get the idea that all the technology we’ve created is somehow foolproof? Why do we keep fooling ourselves into believing that if we build all these technological marvels that we will be better off?

Signpost: This political ad. And the comments.

Signpost: My next-door neighbors acquired a dog in January. All they do with it is chain it to a short leash and bring it in and out of doors all day. It roams the small length of its leash. It shits on their small cement walkway and they leave it there for a couple of days before cleaning it up. It now barks at every little sound it hears, beginning at 6:30 in the morning when they first let it out. Now that I am home most of the day I hear it almost constantly. They talk to it as if it will understand what they say, telling it over and over again to be quiet. They barely walk it. Why would anyone get themselves a dog only to turn it into a neurotic mess?

Can one really think about creating theatre at a broad national community level when one takes a hard look at the national conversations and behavior going on? At this point, it becomes harder and harder to try to imagine what kind of theatre would possibly attract a nation that actually allows a movement with as little intellectual acumen as the Tea Party to grow and become a political force. The signposts seem clear enough. -twl

Dunkirk NY – It seems as if the NY Times is catching up to what myself and others such as Mike Daisy have been saying for some time now. The student debt crisis at both the graduate and undergraduate level is rapidly becoming one wherein students get so far in debt without the possibility of making enough income to pay back the debt that going to school for any reason, let alone theatre,  becomes a questionable investment.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – What can I say? It was an intense three weeks to the end of the semester; more intense, it seemed, than I can ever remember. Perhaps too many projects all at once took their toll. Between all the one-act rehearsals I had to see, and then seeing all the shows in performance, and then seeing a great number of juries, and grading final papers, there was a lot to do. It took its toll. Graduation was May 15, and I took about a week to do some things around the house as well as begin rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing with Shakespeare in Delaware Park. I am beginning to think I am one of those people who does not know how to relax and have fun.

Anyway, the blog has clearly suffered. Not that it matters. Things have been relatively quiet, and my small voice no doubt has not been missed all that much. The other thing that has suffered is the reading of blogs. Actually, I begin to sense within me something of a waning interest in technology. Facebook, Twitter, and all the various social networking developments created over the past five years hold less and less interest for me. And perhaps that is why I have not done so much writing as well.

I do not think this is because the technologies themselves are necessarily uninteresting. I think it’s because I am beginning to sense that, for me at least, I have no need of them because am “done.” What I mean by that is I have a feeling that whatever contributions I have left to make are probably few.

I believe I am entering that phase of life where it’s time to look back, reflect, try to pull some thoughts together, and become an “elder statesman” of sorts. Two events seem to point strongly in that direction. The first is the fact that as of the beginning of the upcoming fall semester, I will become chair of my department. With the retirement of our technical director, whose has been on the faculty for 28 years, I am now the longest-serving member of the department with 22 years. The next longest-serving  faculty member has 12 years, and one of our staff members (who is also an alum) has 21 years. So when I look around around the table, I realize I am now the institutional face of the department, carrying a lot of institutional history with me. It’s an odd feeling to realize that you’re now the most senior member of the department when you still th9ink of yourself as just having got there.

The second event is that I was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor. This is a SUNY-wide honor bestowed on those who have excelled in either research/creativity’ teaching’ or service.  You are nominated to this rank by someone on your campus (you can’t nominate yourself), and  then you have to document your excellence with a pretty comprehensive dossier. There are only eight other people on my campus who hold a distinguished rank. It is a rank above full professor, and gets conferred by the SUNY Board of Trustees. I guess you could say it’s a career achievement award. It’s another signpost in terms of how long I’ve been at the teaching game, and the fact that I am becoming an elder statesman. But I sort of feel uncomfortable with that title “distinguished.” I don’t exactly look “distinguished,” and most of the time I don’t exactly present myself in a “distinguished” fashion.  So it’s sort of weird to have the title.

So it appears I am now in the position of having to think about what types of things I can do to pave the way for those coming up to do the innovating and creating. That’s not such a bad thing. But it does sort of give you the feeling that you’re moving in a direction where others will do the heavy lifting. It’s sort of like an Act IV in a Shakespeare play, where the characters all re-group for that final push to the conclusion. Where to put the attention first is the issue. In the meantime, trying to sort out the clutter in the other corners of my life (clearing the attic and basement, cleaning out my office of years of collected papers), becomes this summer’s priorities. One day, one month at a time. Tra La it’s May, the lusty month of May!  -twl

Dunkirk NY -

In 1952, we didn’t want to do (our sitcom) live – we just didn’t know how to tape things. I don’t know what this show’s excuse is.

When I first heard about the campaign to get me to host Saturday Night Live, I didn’t know what Facebook was. And now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. -Betty White

This one makes my head hurt. Nothing has ever made me feel more like a cultural anachronism than Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live because of a Facebook campaign. It just makes theatre seem so – well, so pointless.

Deconstructing the technology alone is mind-boggling. Betty White essentially began her television sitcom career in 1952, the year I was born. 2″ quadruplex broadcast video tape did not come on the scene for another two years. If you wanted to tape a television show in 1952, you used motion picture film. In 58 years, the industry has moved from live broadcasting to HD digital recording and broadcasting, with full episodes available worldwide on demand via the internet in digital quality. There is nothing – nothing – in terms of entertainment or art (or in fact almost any other industry you’d care to name) that has developed with that kind of speed. I won’t even mention the saturation factor, only to say that television probably has as near to a worldwide saturation point of 100% as one can reasonably imagine.

And what, you may ask, has this remarkable technology presented to us, its viewing audience? 58 years of Betty White and similar personalities. Betty White has made a career (not to mention a good living) out of playing stereotyped, two-dimensional characters and being on game shows. And simply because she is 88.5 years old and willing to go on live TV and say and do naughty things, she is hailed as a legend. So clearly, her career and her type of work is now the standard to become a legend in the entertainment field. Her SNL appearance was the highest in 18 months (8.8 household rating, 21 share), and even Justin Bieber was moved to tweet, “Betty White Rules!”

Then there is the powerful mobilization capability of Facebook. Given the numerous issues we have on this planet that need serious attention, it’s nice to know that when we need to see a living television legend on SNL, all we need do it use the social networking capability of Facebook, and voila! There she is! World hunger, Haiti, the oil slick in the Gulf and other passing issues will have to wait. Now I am sure that if I created a Facebook group called I Bet I Can Get 10,000 People To Join This Group Against The Oil Slick, the problem will be solved soon after that. If Facebook can get the lengendary Betty White on SNL, it can do anything.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around a culture that can create such amazing technology in so short a time for such trivial things. Betty White is a woman whose life and career spans all this development and represents all that is trivial about it. It’s triviality squared. Matching all this triviality with the triviality of Facebook, and you have triviality cubed. Yet the acceptance of all this triviality in today’s culture makes me wonder what the bigger waste of time truly is: Facebook? Television? or theatre?  -twl