An Impromptu Jam Session Is Worth A Thousand Tweets.

(Or: Lessons That Should Have Been Fairly Obvious, But Somehow Weren't.)

The lesson? Get off your ass and go out and talk to people.

I've been spending a lot of quality time with a cup of coffee since I got back to here. That is, I spend most of my days plunked in front of my computer screen with my beloved caffeinated beverage, searching for jobs, writing query letters, and cruising the internet for people, places, and things to do in Albuquerque that might appeal to me - might get me closer to my goal of following my passion.

But Googling "Cool stuff in Albuquerque," and all the permutations thereof is not going to get me the answer I'm looking for.

Getting out is gonna do that. Talking to people. Getting to know this city.

This seems to be a fairly obvious truth, and yet I cling to my keyboard with bony little white knuckles. Why? I think a part of it is due to the success I had extending my community through Twitter and blogging last year in New York. But the key word there is extending. Not building from scratch, which is what I'm doing here. I already knew the New York theatre community when I jumped in online; I already had a good idea of the people I wanted to talk to, the things I wanted to do and see.

But you can't become a part of a place by reading about it. You can't understand a community by asking Google. Obviously.

This facepalm-truth hit me with its full force this past Tuesday night, when I crawled away from the bright, calming light of my computer screen long enough to attend the kick-off party for Tricklock Company's Revolutions Theater Festival - an international theater festival that, while I WAS excited about it before Tuesday, I don't know why I wasn't jumping up and down and gnawing at my knuckles to stifle high-pitched squeals about it. Well anyway, I am now. It looks awesome.

The very moment I got to the party, I opened the festival's event calendar and learned something all of my furious searches across the internet had kept from me. A new restaurant is opening next month - a kind of business that looks right up my alley. I made a point to call the owner the next day and learned more about it: it really is exactly everything that I'm passionate about. Organic food sourced completely locally, much of it from the very farm it sits on. A focus on community and culture, complete with events and workshops on site. Collaboration and support of local artists and musicians. Oh lord. It's actually overwhelming how awesome this place seems. But more on that later.

I also ran into my very first mentor, the person who first got me hopelessly, irrevocably addicted to theater when he cast my 12-year-old self as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a thrill to see him again, an even bigger one to see the look on his face at seeing me and an incredible ego-boost to hear him immediately say, "I want you to audition for me!" Why, little old me? Act? Oh, you flatter me, sir.

Even better: I told him I'd love to audition for him, but I'd love even more to assistant director. How delightful would it be to AD for my first and most beloved mentor?

But this isn't about networking, or making connections, or even about theater at all. It's about actually taking action to be a part of something. Being at the party, hearing about the shows in the festivals from so many of the people involved, got me excited about theater in a way I haven't felt since moving here. It made me excited in a way I haven't felt since moving here, period, really.

The night was tough. I won't lie. I felt stiff and awkward for most of the evening, knowing very little of the people in the room, and even less what to say. But there were some introductions, and a few fleeting moments of real, genuine, lovely conversation, and I feel happy knowing that now, next time I see those people, maybe I WILL know what to say.

The night ended with a house party and a little impromptu jam session. Me, despite 8 years of piano lessons, I don't have a musical bone in my body. But I sat and watched, and don't think I enjoyed the evening less for it. And even if only for a fleeting second, even if only on the periphery, it made me feel like a part of a community.

What Next?

Something I read while meandering the interwebs struck me recently. I thought it was from this poster, but I guess I'm reading/latching on to way more inspirational garble than I realized. Anyway, the sentiment that struck me was something along the lines of, "Do what you love and the money will follow."

I suppose it makes since that a thought like that would stand out to me, as I've been back in New Mexico for about a month and a half, and did not expect to be jobless and adrift for so long. (Being jobless and adrift is why I left New York, people!) So you could say I am currently deeply ingrained in the process of figuring out how to make the money follow and, if we're being totally honest, what exactly I love in the first place.

Upon reflection, here's what I think: if I had read this in New York, I would have been angry, because doing what I want to do without working about the money was a luxury I simply didn't have. I wished I had it a million times over, every time I saw an internship I couldn't apply for, a volunteer opportunity I couldn't make time for, a class I couldn't take. And now I do have that luxury. Having that luxury is a big part of why, at almost 30, I moved back in with my parents.

So why am I worrying so much about getting a job?

With that in mind, I've been thinking about things that I could do, would do, if I weren't worried about making money. It's time to change my attitude. Full speed ahead.

Rose in Harlem

Look up and just a little to the left. Unless you’re reading this from an RSS feed (in which case, hey, thanks for adding me) you’re going to see a little picture of a yellow rose winding out of a city window. This icon is my avatar for both my blog and my Twitter feed. I love this icon. Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think I would ever want to change it.

The picture itself was snapped by me back in 2006. My roommate (one of four of us, squeezed into a little apartment up on 145th) had brought the plant back from work one day, a heavy, green, sickly thing. She told us it was a rose “bush,” although from the wilted sight of it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. She was determined to nurse the tiny plant back to health; I predicted it would finish dying by the end of the week. But my roommate was gentle and attentive: she pruned back its dying leaves, repotted it, gave it food and water and what little light our alley-facing kitchen could afford. Within a few months it became a sturdy stalk, waxy, thorny and altogether definitely resembling the plant from which roses grow. Still, despite its metamorphosis, I could not have been more surprised the day I saw a little yellow bud appear on the stalk, a bud which proceeded to bloom, expand, and wind itself across our window.

The image of a little yellow rose bud blooming against all odds has been a powerful symbol for the life I persevered toward in New York. It is to me, a sign of hope – the possibility of life, of beauty, even through the smog and sulfur of that impossible city. The visible proof of what enough care and dedication can do.

When I started thinking about my move back to Albuquerque, I thought briefly about retiring the icon, wondering if the “rose in Harlem,” image really made sense anymore. But its depiction of hope and my wish to find and nurture beauty even in unlikely places still held true. So, so far, it’s stayed.

There’s another reason, though, that I chose to let a picture of a rose represent me online. I’ve always liked the idea that my face is more or less invisible to the general virtual public. When I first started working as a director in New York City, I found that my biggest handicap when it came to finding work was my youth. Not my inexperience, my youth. People didn’t even want to talk to me. They didn’t want to get to know me long enough to find out how inexperienced I was. My face told them all they needed to know. I went through a phase where I made a deliberate effort to “dress like a 30-year-old,” (whatever that meant) under the wisdom that one should dress for the job she wants, not the job she has. People ten years older than me were getting the jobs I wanted, I thought logically, so I should dress ten years older than I am.

That was a long time ago; I was barely past 20 then, now I’m nearing 30 for real. But I still have a very young face, and a very soft, girlish look. When I started talking to other artists online, I sort of relished the idea that I would be judged solely for my ideas and not for the way I look. Nobody would be able to say to me, “You’re too young, too cutesy, too blonde to contribute to this conversation.”

But I’m not in New York anymore, nor desperately seeking theater work. I’m looking for new kinds of work now. I want to find the community; I want to find and nurture the beautiful local arts, business, and culture we have here. And I’d like to write, really. I’d like to turn this blogging, which I’ve enjoyed so much, into something more.

And I’m new here. Maybe it’s a good idea to put a face to a name. That way, I might see somebody on the street or at a party and they’ll say, “Hey, I know you. You’ve got that amazing blog I’ve been reading. Here, have a job.”

…

It will happen exactly like that.

In any case, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a help or a hindrance to have my face a tiny bit obscured. And I’m wondering if it’s worth it to part with my beloved rose.

What do you think? Are you ever judged, correctly or incorrectly, on the way that you look? Have you ever hidden your face (or put it everywhere) as a strategic move?

The Lab is Over, Alas for Mankind.

The Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab has come and gone, and after doing nothing but wrangling with Strindberg's A Dream Play for three weeks straight, now that it's over, it already feels, ironically enough, like some kind of strange dream. People keep asking me, "did you learn a lot?" and I honestly don't know the answer. I certainly took in a lot of information - now time will tell whether or not I'll synthesize it into anything useful. Anne Catteneo, the Lab's relentlessly hard-working director, says that it could perhaps take four years to really process everything that you learn in these three weeks. It was director boot-camp, there's really no other way to put it. Exhausting, challenging, frustrating, eye-opening, and leaving it behind is bittersweet. As we came toward the end, I was running on fumes. The countdown became my mantra: "Three more days. Two more days. One more day." I don't think I moved on Sunday after it ended. But now, I keep thinking of my little yellow ID pass, how I wish it didn't say, "Expires July 17th" so that I could walk through the Lincoln Center stage door again, head to the rehearsal rooms in the basement, and go again.

But Strindberg himself, I think, said it best:

In the moment of goodbye,
When one must be parted from a friend, a place,
How suddenly great the loss of what one loved,
Regret for what one shattered.
Oh, now I feel the agony of existence!
So this is to be mortal...

One wants to go, one wants to stay.
The twin halves of the heart are wrenched asunder.

And I've found that, whatever my difficulties with A Dream Play - and I have many - Strindberg often says it best.

I'm sifting through all my notes, re-typing and summarizing the experience, in an attempt to get a handle on it all before it slips away. I'm hoping to have some more detailed blog posts about it in the near future too - but more on that later. But while I'm processing all that, if I learned anything from the experience it would be:

1. Trust your actors.
2. Trust your collaborators.
3. Always say yes before you say no.

More later. For now, back to attempting to pick up my life where I left it a month ago.

Director Development

I've been thinking a little more about the concerns Trisha Mead raised in her conversation with Rocco Landesman via the 2amt blog:

...There is no clear path for a director to develop his or her career without founding their own theater company. Young directors found institutions in order to build reputations... Perhaps by inadvertently requiring them to prove themselves as producers before allowing them to work within our institutions as directors and artistic directors we are creating a system which rewards theater companies that are made in haste, repented at leisure?

And the resulting brief twitter conversation I had with her (found here).

I had another thought, a thought just a trifle too long to post on Twitter, so I'll put it up here instead.

I originally put forth the idea of creating director development programs, much like some of the new play development programs in existence across the country. But now I'm suddenly wondering: why not pair the director development with the play development?

Every time I see or hear about a new new play development program, I think Oh. I would love to be a part of that. What I wouldn't give to be learning from and collaborating with all of these exciting up-and-coming playwrights. But, try as I might to deduce from its website and/or any other available information, I cannot seem to figure out how to get involved as a director. I know play-readings and workshops attached to the programs - at the Lark, for example, or New Dramatists - often have directors, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out where they are coming from. Do the playwrights bring them in? Are they resident directors with the company or the program?

The Lark does the best I've seen at setting out some general guidelines for how to become involved as a director, but even those are somewhat vague and indefinite, nothing compared to the concrete, accessible submission proccess accessible to playwrights.

Or, take the workshop-in-rehearsal process currently developing Amy Freed's Right to the Top, one of the many #newplay development initiatives provided by Arena Stage. (Strangely, the Arena Stage has producing fellows who are paired with the playwrights in residence, but no comparable program for directors - why is that?) This looks like an amazing experience, and I would kill to be a part of it. And why not? Not only would it be a learning experience just as helpful to a director as a playwright, but it would lay the groudwork for a deeper collaborative relationship between playwright and director, one rooted in creation and development rather than simply beginning in rehearsal.

That would be real benefit in this kind of approach: the collaborative energy and possible partnerships it would facilitate. Playwrights need directors and directors - oh, let me tell ya - NEED playwrights. The difference between having a collaborator with whom you work well and whose work inspires you can be the difference between creative life and death.

Just a thought.

Connectivity and Possibilities

I saw Better Left Unsaid this past weekend, right from the comfort of my own couch, and it got me thinking about a lot of things.

The live-streamed play was, to put it simply, just really cool. It was a totally unique way of seeing a performance, and it was executed extremely well. The streaming was smooth and high quality, and the use of the three cameras that shot the production was engaging and dynamic, but unobtrusive enough that I never lost the feeling that that I was watching a play as opposed to another filmed medium.

The interactive features were great touches; the Twitter comments worked well, and I loved getting a tour of backstage, and watching the chats with the actors and tech people.

And, I have to admit, it was really, really nice to be able to support my colleagues from the comfort of my own home.

Watching the production ignited some flames of ideas that had been kindling since taking part in the #newplay discussions: one of the things that excited me most about the discussions about collaboration and connectivity that came out of the convening was the possibility of using new connective technology to collaborate across geographical boundaries. I touched on this briefly in another #newplay post, but Better Left Unsaid has got me considering the actual, specific ways to use this technology to our advantage as artists.

Because as exciting as internet connectivity is to me, it leaves me with a sort of conundrum. What I love about theater, what sets it apart from every other art form, is the liveness of it. There is nothing quite like actually being in a room with the art as it's being created. There's an immediacy to it, and a sense of community that is inherently lost when you put someone miles away and behind a computer screen.

It's definitely an amazing thing to join in a nationwide, or even worldwide conversation about art. But what about actual making and experiencing of the art? The question of how to reconcile the possibility of connective technology with theater's need for immediacy intrigues me, so I started jotting down some ideas.

This is all really rough - nothing cohesive or fully formed about any of it yet. But I thought I'd start thinking and sharing nonetheless.

A couple of shows I remember hearing about that have connective possibilities:

The Lysistrata Project. Does anyone remember when the Iraq war first started and, in protest, schools all over the country participated in performing Lysistrata at the same time? I remember because both my old high school and my college participated.

• What if you live-streamed all of the productions at the same time? Or had a website where you could access all of the productions at any time?
• You could coordinate with other productions in other areas to realize same artistic vision in multiple places.
• Or the opposite: connect w/ other creative teams in other places to make each production distinctly different. Or some combination of the two, e.g., certain ideas or design elements are agreed upon by all creative teams, but within the structure, a certain degree of creative autonomy? Or - each team charged assigned a different approach to design or given a different theme to explore within the same work.
• Really like the idea in general of presenting the same show in tandem across the country for the purpose of making a particular point or reaching a goal.
• Like! What if - if we were talking about Lysystrata, say - you could tweet to the White House or your representatives while you were watching it, or there were links shown (on the website, or even live too) about how to get involved. Or a hashtag, to create a dialogue, with a running account of the conversation?

The recent performance of Antigone that I read about, but didn't see where they used Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube as the chorus.

• Imagine it was all scripted and taped, but is there anyway to use that as a connecting point? A greek chorus, say, streamed in from 12 different parts of the world?
• Relatedly, what about the possibility of exploring characters or story elements that that can be told/seen/experienced remotely?
• Or! The same story, told from two different points of view, in two different places - in both places you see one angle live, and other live-streamed, and vice versa... does that make sense?

Some other ideas.

• Two shows in repertory in two different places: the first one is live, the second, live-streamed.
• The same show, but some scenes or acts shown live, some streamed from different places.
• You could do it exquisite corpse style, where each creative team gets the script (or maybe just a portion of the script) w/ no communication and see what happens.
• Or the opposite: extreme collaboration - skyping in to one another's rehearsals - online production meetings - maybe even live actors communicating with streamed actors on stage.
• That last one - live actors communicating with streamed actors on stage - could also be applied to the idea of telling the same story from two points of view in two different places.
• Live-streamed play readings or workshop forums via Twitter.

Oh man. I didn't expect it, but I'm actually really excited about a lot of these ideas. There is definitely a project in here somewhere.

If anybody has any stories of a collaboration over distance that worked out well, or other ideas to keep building on, I would absolutely love to hear them. Or, if anybody is interested in thinking more about/putting into motion any of the above ideas, I definitely want to talk to you.

#Newplay Thoughts Continued

Fair warning: I'm probably going to be marinating on the #newplay convening all week.

I've been doing some more thinking about Landesman's indictment of non-profit theaters that are, for all intents and purposes, competing in the commercial market and his assertion that we need to re-define how the government allocates funding for non-profit theaters.

I agree. I think it's valid that if a a play is competing in the "commericial market" then it's not really playing fair to also access funds that should be available to projects that are taking more risks, and stand on less stable financial footing. But then, how do we define things like "risk taking" and "stable financial footing"? Most commercial projects do not recoup their investment and, on the flip-side, are we saying that all non-profit projects - all projects that deserve funding - should explicitly not hold mass appeal? That doesn't seem right.

That leads to the following question: "Is it possible for a regional theater to be true to its mission and non-profit status and ALSO create work that resonates with the cultural majority?"

Well, yes. And this is not just true of regional theater, but of all theater. Resonant art is not necessarily in opposition with the cultural mainstream. I'm fond of saying the only difference between what we call "art" and what we call "entertainment" is that entertainment is art that has successfully resonated with people on a mass scale.

Which is not to say that art that resonates, but not on such a broad spectrum, isn't equally important. And because it is, by nature, not financially viable, this is where non-profit funding, grants, and government subsidies come in. This is the "R&D" aspect of creation that we've all been talking about. It doesn't make money, but still performs a vital service to society and it's our responsibility as citizens of a civilized nation to nurture that.

The tricky part is, questions like, "Does this take risks?" "Is this art vital to society?" and "Is this financially viable?" are somewhat subjective and, from a beaurocratic perspective, not great for determining who gets government subsidies and who does not. Landesman says there should be a bigger difference between "commercial" and "non-profit" than what tax returns we file, and I agree. But if non-profit is not defined by a 501(c)3, then what *does* define it? Especially when it's possible and sometimes favorable for non-profit work to appeal on a mass level, and traditional commercial endeavors carry just as much risk for financial failure?

The question gets even trickier still when you take it out New York and apply it to smaller regional theaters. At least in New York you can say, "Look. Here are the Broadway theaters, which are clearly Commercial Projects. And here are smaller theaters and companies which are clearly not competing in a commercial market. And here are some NFPs with Broadway houses who are taking enhancement money from commercial producers, and that's not fair. You can't dip in to both pots."

But in other areas of the country, you don't have a whole bunch of big theaters trying to serve one specific need, and then a whole bunch of other theaters trying to serve another. You have one to maybe a handful of theaters that are trying to serve a whole spectrum of needs of their entire community, ranging from experiences that resonate on a community-wide level to projects with relevance and artistic merit, but a more limited appeal. So... what do you do with that?

Rocco Landesman at the #Newplay Convening (A Response to the Responses)

Okay, confession time: I didn't know the #newplay convening was happening until it was actually happening. I like to think I follow the theater scene pretty closely - I read papers and the blogs, I visit the websites, I do the Twitter - but somehow this completely escaped me. These were my thoughts last Thursday, as I idly kept my Twitter page open while answering phones at my job: Hey, that's an interesting idea from Rocco Landesman that TCG just tweeted. Hey, that's another! Oh my god, so many exciting points, where are they coming from!? OH MY GOD, now EVERYBODY'S making exciting points! What's going on?!? Why is everybody having this amazing conversation all at once!? What is this #newplay hashtag!? My brain is exploding.

I pretty much peed my pants.

I was also really, really excited because Rocco Landesman, the head of the freaking NEA was all the sudden saying what I've been saying for a really long time.

Truth be told, don't know if I articulated what I was thinking as well as I could have in that post - in fact, I felt really bad after I posted it because I never meant to imply that the only places with flourishing art scenes were NYC and other similar big cities. I tried to clarify my ideas in a comment, by saying, "I think the thing is, there's a tipping point - a point where the sheer volume of work being created stops being a boon and starts being a liability - everything, even really good things, just get lost in the din. I'm putting forth the hypothesis that New York has reached that tipping point." Which says it as well as anything else I've written. Yes, it's great that there exists such an expansive and diverse theater community - up to a point. And we've reached that point: the supply has exceeded the demand.

But I add the following caveat: the supply has exceeded the demand in New York City. And possibly other large urban cities. And I know I'm not the only person who has said that the solution is not to decrease the supply, but to spread it around. Scott Walters, on TheaterIdeas, says, "There are many medium-sized cities, suburbs, and other such places that are also being ignored by the lemming-like flow of artists to NYC in search of fame. There is a large swath of entire states in the midwest that have no TCG theatres at all." Trisha Mead, in a comment on her own report for the New Play Blog, says, "Less than 10% of urban communities (and an even smaller percentage of rural communities) regularly experience live performance," and to believe that that number is in response to a fixed demand that can't be changed is "crazytalk."

But I am so, so psyched to hear other people saying it too.

This is not really a response to Landesman's speech; I wasn't there, I didn't hear it first-hand. But I have read an awful lot of reports on it and responses to it. And people are saying some awesome, awesome stuff. So, consider this a response to the responses.

It seems like reactions largely fall into three categories:

1) WTF does he mean "demand can't be changed"?
2) Why are we talking about supply and demand anyway? Isn't that commercial theater's domain?
3) Does Rocco Landesman have it out for the little guys?

First and foremost, did he really say that demand can't be changed? I have the following quote atrributed to him from two sources: "Look. You can either increase demand or decrease supply. Demand is not going to increase, so it is time to think about decreasing supply." Did he really say that? If so I a) disagree and b) he took that back right-quick. Because his post on the NEA blog in response to all this discussion essentially outlines ways in which we can increase the demand for the arts.

But in any case, he definitely does want to talk about decreasing the supply, and I can see how those remarks would sound like a big stomping-on to the smaller fish of the theater world. But it's interesting that this was the response at large when I, the smallest of the small fish, heard this proposal and rejoiced.

Because here's the thing. The extreme imbalance between supply and demand is a problem. It's a problem that, living in the really, really big pond that I do, I personally encounter a lot. And, while I don't think "thinking about decreasing supply," is a useful or practical option, I applaud Landesman for making the audacious statement that there's simply too much theater. Because as someone who loves theater more than pretty much anything else, I think he's right. And if we want to find a solution to the problem, we have to address it rather than pretend it doesn't exist.

But the solution is not to decrease the demand, and it's not a question of whether I'm insulted, or whether I consider this a threat to myself or my fellow artists. It's the fact that, as Adam Thurman put it so nicely in his blog, Mission Paradox, "The arts are a passion business and all the economic arguments in the world aren't going to stop people who feel like they must (for reasons both noble and foolish) create art through an organization." Supply and demand aren't linked in the arts the way that they are in a traditional business model. The supply just isn't going to go away.

So what is the solution? There have been a lot of good ones, but you know my favorite. So many parts of the country are completely underserved by the theater, and if you say that's because there's no demand for it, that brings us back to points 1) and 2) above.

Who says we can't create a demand? Again, to quote Adam Thurman, "10 years ago I wasn't looking at my old standard definition TV and looking for a better picture image. I didn't even know that was a possibility until it happened." Marketing whizzes create demand for products where there was none all the time. And here are markets where there is the opportunity to do so, markets that are not completely saturated, where there is space for a demand to grow.

And, furthermore, what does demand have to do with it anyway? Isn't that the point of non-profits, or at least the grants that fund them - to provide the means to do something for which there isn't enough public demand for it to survive on it's own, but is really, really important anyway? Trisha Mead makes this point well in her open letter to Rocco. She extends the metaphor put forth during the convening that non-profits function as the "the 'R&D arm' of our society, testing what it means to be human and reflecting back the concerns of the moment." And, as with scientific research, it's not just the big experiments with the guaranteed success that need to be funded. It's the little ones too, the crazy ideas and the colossal failures that lead to important discoveries.

I believe that, I honestly do, but I will say this as well: supply and demand are linked in the arts world, although in a less direct way than in the commercial world. Yes, we have to nurture the little experiments and the failures in order to find the theatrical equivalent of the "big discovery." But we should never forget that we are in pursuit of that big discovery, that eye-opening breakthrough that feeds the masses. It's not enough to be holed up in our labs clapping our hands at our own little explosions.

I think, as artists, our greatest collective aspiration is to answer a need, to a universal human yearning for something beyond our daily bread. In this sense, art does answer to a demand. I'm not sure if this is the same demand that Landesman was talking about, but all the same, it should not be disregarded. If we're not creating something that at least touches the possibility of satisfying that need, or leading to something that will then we should not be doing it at all. Hey - maybe I do believe in decreasing the supply.

The lovely and exciting part of it all for me is that that need is there in every part of the country, even if the commercial demand is not. In his response post, Landesman says that "Americans are hungry for and will seek out an expressive life." Yes. All people everywhere are hungry for an expressive life and art, in all its forms answers that hunger.

One thing in particular spoke to me about Landesman's address (from Mead's report for the New Play Blog):

And finally, he is very interested in seeing regional theaters invest in more work that is designed specifically for their own community, rather than passing around the latest Broadway hit. He wants to see regional companies generating work that speaks directly to their own communities... work that shares and reflects the unique values of its particular audience. He is concerned that it has become too tempting for regional artistic directors to program work with a potential Broadway transfer in mind.

Yes. Yes yes yes. This is hits the nerve of supply/demand imbalance at two points. Imports from Broadway are not as relevant to a community as work being generated for and by it. So audiences lose interest, they seek to meet their need for an "expressive life" elsewhere. And then on the other side of it, the artists lose interest because we want to be a part of a community that's creating new and vibrant work, not reproductions of work that was relevant 5 years and 1500 miles ago. We want to be answering to the need. The one feeds the other, artists cluster closer and closer around more active creative hubs that become quickly oversaturated and the rest of the country is left with a dearth of art where it is truly needed.

We can fix this. We can create a demand. And, even more excitingly, were coming up on a point in history where the advent of technology and social networking devices make it possible for artists to convene and create active and vibrant communities across geographical boundaries. Look at the amazing work that 2AMt is doing, or the Arena Stage's New Play Map or - oh! And now I'm getting into the connectivity part of the convening and I promised myself I would stick to the opening remarks.

Rainy Day Funds and the Publishing Industry

Okay, so I was reading a blog that happened to outline The Way Things Work in the publishing industry. Essentially: publishing houses look for huge bestsellers in order to finance all of the other books they publish that are not bestsellers and are not actually going to make any money.

I actually knew this. I took a couple writing classes in college and in each there was inevitable Day In Which We Talk About Getting Published. (An aside:I never really got a Day In Which We Talk About Getting Produced in any of my directing/playwrighting/dramaturgy classes. Consequently, I know a lot more about the mechanics of pursuing a professional career as a novelist than I do as a director, which seems strange. Anyway).

I'm assuming - and maybe this erroneous - that not every one of these non-bestselling books published is ever meant to be a bestseller. Certainly there are a fair amount of books - most of the ones I read, aside from, yes, the occasional Dan Brown - that don't look like they've been presented or marketed to fit the bill.

So, if this is true, this seems like a fairly altruistic, yet necessary, business strategy. From a strictly business perpective, why publish anything other than the books you really think will make you money? Yet, if that WERE all the was published, we would be doomed. What kind of a literary culture would we have left?

I'm just wondering if any producer or producing group has tried this strategy with theater. Produce a Wicked in order to produce a Scottsboro Boys, which just announced it's closing after just a two month run?

Is there a reason why we can't? I ask this out of curiosity and complete ignorance. Has it something to do with investor relations? Does the commericial/not-for-profit model somehow preclude such an arrangement?

I mentioned the subversive Scottsboro Boys in particular because the blog Gratuitous Violins said the following in response to its closing:

Well gee whiz guys, if you felt you had to produce it couldn't you at least have given it a chance to build an audience? Doesn't a challenging, provocative work need time for the buzz to spread? Couldn't you plow some of the profits from Chicago into it to keep things going a little longer?

Which is essentially the same idea I just proposed. And, admittedly, a commenter on the blog countered that the current climate of high costs and low profits precludes "rainy day funds [to keep] things afloat longer. Today it's do or die from day 1 (or even earlier!)." So maybe that's my answer.

But I'm still curious to see if anybody else has something to add to the conversation. Just wondering.