Curtain Up! Buffalo NY
Dunkirk NY – This weekend is Curtain Up! weekend in Buffalo NY, which for the 30th year kicks of Buffalo’s theatre season. If you follow the link in the last sentence you’ll be able to see all that Buffalo Theatre is offering over the next few weeks, as well as some video featuring interviews and clips of the shows themselves.
But perhaps the finest video out there is this recent one by PagetFilms. It’s a short promotion film detailing why Buffalo NY is such a great theatre town. Take a look for yourself and see why I think so highly of the city and its theatre scene.
poorplayer & son #3
Dunkirk NY – Here is the latest edition of poorplayer and son:
Eric: i may be ready for rant #3
me: You can fire away. I have to multitask it.
Eric: ok well I am stuck between two options: either I worked with a GENIUS yesterday (a man named Rick Synder who is a Steppenwolf ensemble member), or acting schools are making something that’s very tough even tougher for the sake of trying to prove actors work really really hard. Now there are a lot of variables to this situation, but when I boil everything down, the fact is that he was saying things I’d heard before from people, but not ever in an acting class. So basically we have been doing scenes for 4 weeks and we’ve spent a good amount of time talking about these scenes
how does the character feel
what do they want?
why do they stay?
scene study stuff
me: specifics at some point please. Continue Reading »
The Five-Year Mark
Dunkirk, NY – Over the Labor Day weekend I took a two-day 20-mile hike with a theatre colleague from Buffalo. We hiked across Allegany State Park in the southern tier area of New York State, between Jamestown and Salamanca. The trail we took is 
known as the Finger Lakes Trail, and in that part of the park the trail coincides with the North Country Trail. I had a great time. It was my first overnight backpacking experience. I hauled a 30# pack on my back across three 900′ ascents. I managed to come out of the experience injury-free and not too exhausted.
I start the post here because on the trail you have much time to think. I spent time thinking about this blog, realizing I had reached the five-year mark in terms of writing it (six years, if you count the year I spent documenting my American Shakespeare Center tour). I also realized I hadn’t really written in the blog in some time. And that gave me a reason to take a moment to review what this blog is about, for me and for my meagre readership. Continue Reading »
poorplayer & son #2
Dunkirk NY – Entry #2 in the ad hoc “poorplayer & son” series.
Eric: you again
so here’s my next problem with the stage – why is it that every play I read people just come on and seem to have a scene for almost no reason
me: because the whole thing is artificial to begin with
Eric: wait waaaaaaaaaait you can’t say that
me: I just did
Eric: theatre’s whole big schtick is that its LIVE AND REAAAL
me: hey i just walked into this conversation for no reason. So?
Eric: yeah but I wouldn’t charge people $25 for us to do it again in front of them. I’ve just read 4 plays that were all written within the last 5 years at least and they are all so PAINFULLY similar – characters come in, they make awkward small talk because SOMETHING LARGER IS AFOOT, they talk about stuff and talk, and the drama builds and builds, and then there’s a climax and you’re like OMGGGGGG, and then they end, leaving you wondering SOMETHING DEEP. And granted many films also work in such a broad context
me: Precisely. It’s an artificial construct. it’s realISM not realISTIC. There’s a difference.
poorplayer & son
Dunkirk NY – My son Eric is an actor living and working in Chicago. Every once in awhile we get online and chat with each other. We did so this morning, and the resulting conversation I thought would make a good blog post. Perhaps we shall change this blog to be a father/son blog, which would make us pretty unique. I don’t know of any other father/son theatre blogging team out there. At any rate I am going to get him from time to time to guest post and see if he likes it or has the time.
Meanwhile, here is the transcript of most of the chat. It is virtually unedited except for some spelling, typos, and some minor punctuation added. Hope you enjoy the conversation. -twl
Eric: so are you guys coming to my show tomorrow
me: oh no I have a show opening here on Friday
Eric: wtf oh yeah I see YOUR career is more important I get it MR. AEA
me: You’re finally realizing that?
Eric: MR. DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR EMERTIUS
me: Haven’t retired yet
Eric: well i don’t really know what emeritus means
me: Emeritus gets added when I retire
Eric: I just thought it added a nice touch
Eric: i just took a class with a guy your age who this lady loved who you could act circles around. she loved him. I wish that I could show like my notes side by side from the On Camera classes I’ve taken here to my college notes. I just took another On Camera class and like they’re all the same they all say the same thing because really there’s only one thing to say “be you.” I’ve taken three on camera classes and the predominant notes are ”be you” “do something real” “make choices” “be completely in the moment” which is all stuff I learned in school but for like the first month and then TWO AND HALF MORE YEARS were spent learning how to properly refuse a cucumber sandwich at a 1900s Victorian party and bawling my eyes out to never really need to cry again and DROPPING IN fucking Linklater. ok now i’m done
me: nice rant you should guest blog for me
Continue Reading »
The BFA Musical Theatre Degree Should Die
Dunkirk NY – I have come to believe that data should play an important part in any discussion of the state of theatre and theatre education today. So it comes as a welcome treat that Broadway producer Ken Davenport has posted some really interesting statistics on the state of musical theatre on Broadway, as well on plays. His blog posts detail the decline in how much theatre Broadway actually produces, and by inference how many fewer jobs there actually are. The numbers are here, here, and here. The statistical reality (no surprise here) is that there is far less of anything being produced today. Size of musical casts went from 69% of musicals with casts over 30 in the 1950s to 27% today. In the 1940s, the number of new plays on Broadway averaged 49.4. In the 2000s, it’s now 11.7 (10.9 in the 1990s). New musicals? In the 1940s the number of new musicals each season was 14.9. In the 2000s, 9.3, an uptick from the 1990s (7.5). Broadly speaking (pun intended), Broadway is about half the size it was in the 1940s.
I came upon these statistics almost at the same time I had a typical visit from a young high school senior-to-be who was out shopping for colleges and musical theatre programs. I took her and her parents on my usual tour and then we spent time chatting in my office and they asked the usual questions. Of course, the topic of future employment came up, as it always does, and I always try to be honest with parents and students on this issue – future employment in the theatre is a slim proposition if you think of trying to make your living full-time in musical theatre. But I went a little beyond that this day, in that I began to mention that, when you really stop to think about it, there is not much work in musical theatre beyond NYC or tours. Regional theatres do not regularly do musicals because of the costs involved, and outside of Florida and a few other isolated regions like Boston or perhaps Chicago there is not much musical theatre being done in this country, especially at levels where one can reasonably make a living doing it. So why spend four years of your young life, as well as the dollars involved, to study musical theatre exclusively as a specialty, when the market is so bad and has been in decline for years?
Romancing the Theatre
Dunkirk NY – Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit today, going 5-for-5 and getting the game-winning RBI in the eight inning. He was a triple shy of the cycle. It was fun to watch. Many commentators metioned that you couldn’t have scripted this one any better. It was baseball at its best: immediate, engaging, dramatic, suspenseful, and cathartic.
I think baseball and theatre have many things in common, and often in class I employ baseball analogies to teach acting, especially improvisation. But one thing they don’t have in common anymore is a sense of the romantic. I think there was a time in American theatre history where theatre on Broadway had the aura of romance. Perhaps the best representation of that was portrayed in the movie All About Eve, where being a star in the theatre is depicted as being the most glamorous thing a young woman – or anyone – could wish for.
Survey Says
Dunkirk NY – Two interesting surveys have come out recently which bear some reflection. The first survey is from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), which is based at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research housed in IU’s School of Education. It’s entitled Fork in the Road: The Many Paths of Arts Alumni. The second is from that wealth of statistical information, the NEA, and is entitled Research Note #103: Artistic Employment Projections Through 2018. Both are rather rosy in their conclusions, but as always with these sorts of things, there is room for some skepticism.
The SNAAP survey consists of data collected from a survey instrument sent to 116,493 arts alumni in all fields of fine and performing arts from high schools, undergraduate and graduate programs (full disclosure – SUNY Fredonia was a participating institution in 2010). Graduates surveyed were from 2005-09 inclusive, with graduates from 1990, 95, and 00 also invited to participate. 11,554 surveys were completed, an average of 19.5%. 81% of the respondents were from undergraduate alums, 16% from graduate alums, and 3% from arts high schools. Here are the major selected findings (stats I thought worthy of note are in bold):
A $47 Million Rant
Dunkirk NY – I simply can’t let this one pass. By no means am I either one of America’s formost classical actors nor one of its premiere Shakespeare authorities, but I have been acting in Shakespeare’s plays since my undergraduate days, and have worked for three Shakespeare companies in my time. I know something about Shakespeare, and perhaps the single most important thing I know is this: his works do not need to be presented in a $47.5 million building. But that’s apparently what’s about to happen in Brooklyn. The NYC company Theatre for a New Audience has broken ground on a site in Brooklyn that will open in the spring of 2013. It will have 27,500 square feet of space to maintain, a completely trapped stage floor, 299 seats, and a 35-foot stage house. The City of New York is investing $34.4 million of the cost, will own the land and the building, and lease the space for 30 years to TFANA. I don’t even know where to begin to express how outrageous this entire idea is to those of us outside the insular cultural sphere of New York City.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is “What could $47.5 million do if it were invested in people rather than a building?” For one thing, it could provide 95 theatre companies in this country a working budget of $500,000. Assuming that there would be a return on investment for the regions in which those companies operated, an investment of that proportion would provide artistic and economic assistance for a wider cross-section of the nation, rather than for one small region alone (NYC) that is already oversaturated with theatre, Shakespeare included. This would help strengthen theatre nationally, particularly at the grassroots community level. Heck, let’s not even talk $500K; let’s talk $100K. Then we’re talking, what, 475 theatre companies each getting a $100K infusion of cash? How much Shakespeare could we have nationally for this amount of money? The mind boggles. Continue Reading »
The Sea of Theatre
Dunkirk NY – It is said that a person who drowns to death goes through a process of gradually succumbing to the inability of the body to keep afloat. At first, you fight against the pull, struggling to keep your head above water, trying to take in as much of that precious air as you need. When you begin to fatigue, you develop methods of staying afloat that are less taxing physically, fighting less against gravity and looking for ways to work with the elements around you. Inevitably, though, there is that moment where you surrender to the water and sink slowly into its depths because you realize there are no options left.
No posts have appeared here since late March because I have been theatrically depressed. I find myself trying to stay afloat in a theatrical sea, trying to keep from drowning. Because I happen to have a life which consists of pretty much nothing but thinking about theatre every single day, you might also make the conclusion that I, as a person, am depressed. I suppose it’s a fine line, but in thinking about myself I don’t feel personally depressed. I am depressed about the state of the art, and I am depressed because I find myself incapable of fighting against the massive forces affecting theatre today. That does take its toll personally. I am drowning in theatre and its issues, and I can viscerally feel the weight of the issues pulling me to the bottom of the theatrical sea. Continue Reading »
