Want to Weigh In on Equity Showcase Reform?

Courtesy of Matt Freeeman's blog, read this. And, more than that, do something! Write something! Post something! Say something! Make your voice heard! Because if Equity doesn't do something to bring the Showcase Code into the 21st century, the devolution of Off-Off-Broadway will be no one's fault but our collective own.

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Laura Axelrod Ties Money and the Arts; Scott Walters Caresses His Cerebrum

Laura Axelrod, over at her not-celebrated-nearly-enough Gasp! blog, has apparently been engaged in a minor yet friendly dustup with that avatar of all things clattering and chattering, Scott Walters, with regard to the meatiness, or lack thereof, of theatre blogs.

Mind you, Pol Pot could be back from the dead and rampaging across southeast Asia, Dr. Mengele could be managing the greatest scientific breakthroughs in the history of mankind, Osama Bin Ladin could be perpetrating the murders of God only knows how many more of my precious American kin, and the stock market could be heading through the worst kind of thrashing since my grandfather woke up in October 1929 and learned that my well-to-do great-grandparents were down to about a nickel, and this dude, who I’ve noticed often worships syntax and sophistry over solidity and substance, is whining because theatre blogs aren't spending sufficient time blogging about theatre (as opposed to theatre and politics), and thereby abandoning the call to lead a bayonet-driven charge through the economic and aesthetic barricades. Harrrumph.

Anyway, when not celebrating National Very-Long-Sentence Day or wondering how the departure of Dana Gioia as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts will affect that organization, particularly if John McCalamity and the Alaskan Mynah Bird are elected, I’ve been catching the recent posts on Laura’s blog. On September 14, she had a great preview post called Money and the Arts, concerned in a general and very understandable way with to the probably economic impact of the unfolding financial-sector disaster:

It amazes me that my theater, literature and visual arts friends just don't want to hear it. This has the potential of being a generational-altering event; something that has been gathering steam for almost a year.

And then, on September 15, in a post called Markets and Roles, Laura responded to Matt Freeman’s terrific blog post on the same subject...

The fact of the matter is, some of the most untouchable financial institutions in the country are in serious jeopardy. Lehman is filing for bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch is being sold to Bank of America. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being taken over by the government. AIG is seeking a loan from the Federal Reserve.

How is this going to affect the arts? Here's some potential problems I can see. But it's something we should all be talking about.

One quick example is your day job. If you've got one, you're probably wondering how this will affect you. I know mine has to do with planned giving and investments. Which means we're directly affected by the markets. I'm also vested in our retirement plan, and that's, of course, invested.

...by writing this in her post, which I’m excerpting below and which moved me a great deal:

But I will say that after I wrote the entry and went to bed, I thought about how it might be unfair for me to judge others by my values. For instance, we all have a different definition of what it means to be a writer or artist. Maybe for some people, it doesn't include understanding how society works...

And then, on September 16, Laura filed a brilliant post called Where We Stand, which attempts, however difficult it may seem right now to do, to put some perspective on what the national fiscal meltdown will mean for artists. Here’s an excerpt:

The American mythology is based upon the belief that if you work hard, you will succeed. If you haven't achieved material success, you are lazy, immoral and unintelligent. Rather than basing our definition of America on the Constitution, we pluck out a single phrase from the Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

This mythology has found it's way into the spiritual lives of Americans. Prosperity theology promises material abundance for the spiritually enlightened. In this case, poverty is not only a sign of bad character, it's also a sign that God isn't smiling on you.

Most writers and artists have fallen into this money hell. We've taken out enormous student loans to pay for our education, with little opportunity to pay them off by working in our chosen profession.

Some of us chose to be artists so we could rebel against this way of life. Yet, telling the truth means alienating an audience that is complicit in keeping this belief system alive.

Success as an artist in America means making your work palatable to the masses, who are sleepwalking their way through life. Waking them up is dangerous, and dangerous work is rarely produced, exhibited or published.

Success as an artist in America means making your rebellion slick and chic. Our materialism is insatiable. It looks for the newest trend. Rebellion is crucified until it can become safe to hang in the comfort of our own homes. It is disturbing until it is tamed.

Success as an artist in America is defined by the bottom line. Respect is given to those who can achieve the most sales.

In this environment, it is easy for an artist to become a reactor instead of an actor. Rather than shaping the culture - presenting a new vision - the artist comments upon her present circumstances. The commentary is cathartic for the artist, but it doesn't present any real solutions.

When this commentary is rejected by the system it is rebelling against, the artist can have a variety of reactions.

It may validate her feeling of disempowerment. But is it fair to ask a system to embrace commentary that is attempting to destroy it?

It may lead her to believe that being an artist in this system is about suffering. But is it fair to ask the artist to have a miserable life without any personal benefit?

This is where we stand right now. Our generation has created celebrities out of people who have no talent. We have funded our lifestyles with imaginary money. We watch scripted reality t.v. shows.

Our way of life is a lie.

First off, clearly there's much substantive discussion in the theatrosphere (this being one of many example), and what particularly amazes me is that while months have passed since I’ve given Walters’ blog serious study, he’s still going on and on about “new models” for making work but not actually doing something about them -- like articulating them and putting them into action. In a post, for example, called Money and Art, he praises Laura and writes:

I think Laura is right, and we do need to talk about this. On an immediate level, any slump in the economy that negatively affects the stock market will affect foundation endowments, which means grants will be smaller and harder to come by. If the economy suffers, people have less disposable income, or are less free in disposing of it, which will impact ticket sales. When people are suffering in our society for economic reasons, money gets shifted in that direction and away from the arts, which are considered "extras." If tax collections decline because there is less money in the economy, then school budgets decline as well, and arts education suffers.

The fact is that the arts live on the fat of the economy.

But Laura wants us to deal with this on the personal level, not just the macro level. "I'm not saying that we should come up with a public policy position on the matter. I'm talking about dealing with this problem both in our work and in our lives."

So much of our conversation tends to be about money and how it impacts our artistic choices and opportunities. It seems to me that there are several possibilities every time we create a production:

1. Lose money
2. Break even
3. Make a little money
4. Make a lot of money...

From there, Walters begins to explain what these four possibilities mean in action, and then he reaches what is, from what I can tell, one of the rare times he has tried to articulate what a new economic model might look like:

My question is whether there is a way to disconnect from the commodity economy. Is there a way to make the arts less a product? Is there a way to move the arts into another type of economy? For instance, while still based in a money economy, a church doesn't really sell a product, but rather something else -- an experience? A shared identity? An extended family? [Etch-a-Sketch erase*] In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken talks about a workshop that took place at a large agricultural chemical manufacturing plant, where the attendees, all employees of the company, were introduced to the "spaceship Earth" model and then put into groups and given a goodly amount of time to create a spaceship that was enclosed, needed to be self-sufficient, and had to last for 100 years. One of the interesting things is that the employees created a model that took along actual artists rather than a stock of DVDs and CDs, because for a 100-year self-contained trip they wanted people who could contribute new stuff that pertained to their journey. How might we get our artistic contributions looked as in this way?

This is fascinating stuff, but for me, what it doesn’t do is translate the abstract into the specific. For a new economic model to take hold, governmental intervention, for example, would be necessary. By this I am not implying socialism. But consider the tax code: If a new economic model required the end or radical restructuring of the nonprofit system, that’s a governmental effort.

But before I go down that road, little doggie, I take issue with Walters' glib idea that “the arts live on the fat of the economy.” What? If that were the case, would the arts not have been swimming in money for the last few, especially given the historic excesses being flushed out of the market in recent months, weeks, and days? The last time I checked, the whole demand for new models, the whole belief that there’s something not-strong in the fundamentals of our artistic-creation system (to be McCainish about it), is predicated, in part, on the lack of funding, on the lack of stability, on what ensues when Ayn Rand-style free marketeers throw artists to the wolves and encourage the laws of supply and demand to set their sociological and cultural value. No wonder Walters posted a whole slew of comments on Laura’s blog questioning, if also applauding, her posts.

I’m sure that by my posting this, I’ll ruffle all kinds of feathers -- after all, if you’re not in the clique of the theatrosphere, you’re nothing, as a certain other blogger, who shall remain nameless, made quite clear to me last year. (And, after all, Walters has adamantly refused to add me to his blog roll, as if I'm suffering from the intellectual cooties, which is like the pot calling the stoner stoned.)

Still, I thought it would be worth giving major props to Laura and stating that while some folks think Walters is a great blogger, not much has changed in the blather-for-blather's-sake department, especially when it comes getting off one’s ass, getting away from the computer, and actually doing something. Talk, in other words, is still cheaper than Lehman Brothers stock.

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Theresa Rebeck Sounds Bugle, Female Playwrights Charge?

Just caught wind of playwright Theresa Rebeck's screed in the Guardian (courtesy of a post by Jason Grote and a post by Matt Freeman) regarding the ongoing paucity of female dramatists being produced on Broadway.

Rebeck has a right to be angry, concerned, or furious, depending on what angle she's taking. She writes:

Boys, boys, boys! This year on Broadway it is a celebration of boys! Step aside, girls - it's time for the boys!

The New York Times tells us this week that this is the Year of the Man. This year is nothing like last year, when there was actually one new play, written by a woman(me), on Broadway. At the tail end of the season a revival of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill snuck into the lineup too. And then lots of awards went to Tracy Letts -who is a man, but whose name sounds like it could be a woman's name. So that's TWO women and one guy whose name sounds like a woman's. It was exhausting dealing with all that estrogen. Time to give the men a chance.

Could we get real? Every year is the Year of the Man, with a couple of women who manage to crawl their way into the lineup. In the 2008/2009 season, as it has been announced, the number of plays written by women on New York stages will amount to 12.6% of the total. Want to know the same figure for the 1908/1909 season? Let's see, it was ... 12.8%!

One might put this trend down to something like, hmm, discrimination. But actually what we're told is that the plays that are produced are just the plays that were worth doing, and that playwriting is in fact a Y-chromosome gene. So women should just back off, because putting plays written by women into production because maybe audiences might like a really well-written play that was well-written by a woman would be pandering to ideas of political correctness. And art doesn't do that.

Well, there's so much here I agree with and so much that I don't. I think the fact that Rebeck developed those statistics is fabulous -- and since I have the Best Plays book covering that year, I'll check myself. I actually thought her figure for the 1908-09 season was kind of high.

However, Rebeck does omit that Broadway, in the sense that we think of it today, didn't exist 100 year ago. Among other things, the real heart of the theatre district was south of Times Square. And touring was different, and the star system still existed, and play-development programs...well, what play development programs and graduate school programs were there? Women couldn't vote in 1908. I don't think omitting these things -- and sort of picking a statistics out of the air because it was a century ago and looks good on paper -- is the same thing as a honest century-by-century comparison.

More than that, there's something about Rebeck's tone that bothers me. Was it necessary to mention that Tracy Letts' name "sounds like it could be a woman's name"? What's next -- that Michael Learned works because she has a man's name or that Stacy Keach works because he has a woman's name?

No, what Rebeck really wants to do is beat up on Charles Isherwood for his "Year of the Men" piece. Are such articles reductive and faux-trend starting? Of course they are -- that's what they're meant to do. In practical terms, and in terms of the long-term cultural trends, it's never "Year of the Men" or "Year of the Women" any more than it's "Year of the Slob" or "Year of the Neatnik." Rebeck should know better than to engage the same kind of glib, not-thought-through reductionism that pisses her off in the first place.

But there's yet another point here. Why is she all about Broadway, Broadway, Broadway? Yes, I know she was the only woman to have a new play produced on Broadway last year. But, um, how many new plays were produced on Broadway overall, exactly? Notice how it's Theresa Rebeck writing this screed, also, and not Sarah Ruhl? Funny thing, that.

And I really, really have a problem with Rebeck when she writes:

One might put this trend down to something like, hmm, discrimination. But actually what we're told is that the plays that are produced are just the plays that were worth doing, and that playwriting is in fact a Y-chromosome gene. So women should just back off, because putting plays written by women into production because maybe audiences might like a really well-written play that was well-written by a woman would be pandering to ideas of political correctness. And art doesn't do that.

What art does is celebrate the lives and struggles of men.

It also apparently celebrates big nasty women who wreck their children's lives. Last season, Mama Rose once again held the stage; the mother in August: Osage County is a real monster too. So two terrifying women in plays written by men were up to their old tricks. This, we are told, is really what made last season a woman's year.

Notice how she codes what could be construed as homophobia in her statement: men writing about "big nasty women who wreck their children's lives," "two terrifying women in plays written by men," hint hint? Why doesn't she just come out and call Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein -- oh, and Tracy Letts, too -- misogynists? I guess Lillian Hellman never wrote any plays about nasty or terrifying women. Telling people what to write -- as opposed to telling them what to produce -- is wrong.

So, as I say, I think she Rebeck has a good overall point, but it really could be sharper -- and less, um, nasty and terrifying.

Finally, at the bottom of Jason's post, he posts a letter sent to Dramatists Guild members by playwright Julia Jordan. The first paragraph of that letter reads:

As some of you know, I've been working on the lack of gender parity in the production of plays in the new york theater scene. Already there has been a meeting of over 150 female playwrights in New York and the Dramatist Guild is announcing that it will no longer give grants to theaters who discriminate against female writers.

OK, that's fine. But here's my question: What constitutes discrimination? And who is presenting the critical proof, the irrefutable empirical evidence of it? And will the DG -- or any of its male or felame members -- actually put their money where their mouths are and actually come out and say in a very public way that, for example, Todd Haimes and Tim Sanford and Lynne Meadow and Carole Rothman actively, willfully and deliberately discriminate against female playwrights? I bet you they wouldn't dare.

So call me a misogynist if you like for not clicking my heels and saluting Rebeck in every way. I don't recall being told that there's a litmus test for proving that one is not a woman-hater.

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Random Musings and Responses

Going through a ton of old links that I wanted to highlight and comments on.

A few weeks ago at Matt Freeman's blog, he linked to the typically indescipherable scribblings of a certain blogger who thinks he has any standing in the world of criticism. (This is not a slight to Matt, who of course can link to anyone he wants for any reason.) Anyway, the question was what would happen if there was a moratorium on print criticism for a year. Well, for one thing, there would be more Web criticism, wouldn't there?

Meantime, my friend and colleague Tom Garvey in Boston writes a well-considered post about Beantime theatre critic Carolyn Clay. Would that people in Gotham wrote with such insight -- and without such invective and misguided hyperintellectualism.

Am I missing something, or should we in the theatrosphere/blogosphere be making much more out of the "censorship" incident in Denver at the National Performing Arts Convention? When I was in DC two weeks ago, the subject came up over dinner with a number of well known and all rather high powered DC theatre folk, and when they alluded to the incident, I asked for more information. You'd have thought I was asking for blueprints to a nuke. When I finally pried out of them what had happened, I asked if they weren't concerned/startled/outraged, and it was again as if I was speaking Greek. Huh? Isn't this a First Amendment matter? Why are artists afraid of ruffling each other's feathers?

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The Lynching of Charles Isherwood

Jason Grote, who I recently assigned to be profiled in the pages of Back Stage, has posted a piece called "Bring Me the Head of Charles Isherwood. Or Not."

And I must say that I really like Jason's take on the fracas because it aims to put the whole thing into some sort of respectable and intelligent macro-perspective. To wit:

"I'm a bit late on the Baitz essay, but (despite the fact that a half a dozen people emailed it to me), I didn't feel compelled to comment, because (with all due respect to Baitz), he seems to be missing the point. Maybe he's too nice. What really offended me about the Isherwood piece in question (that is, his plea for TV writers to return to the stage), is not that Isherwood's own fire-breathing criticism makes him something of a hypocrite (though it does); but that playwrights who are writing television scripts for the stage should be in Hollywood making money and not writing plays because TV on stage is fucking boring. Now, I love a lot of TV, and clearly not every writer who pays the bills with TV writing is a hack. But why on earth would I pay anywhere between $20-$200 and drag my ass into midtown to see something I could get at home for free? When theater starts competing with television, it's already lost...."

Jason goes to talk about why he trashes NYT's theatre criticism and culture coverage on his blogs, but I would argue that he, along with Isaac (in his open letter to the Times) and even Matt Freeman, both of whom I greatly like and respect, nevertheless aren't taking much in the way of action to force NYT to make whatever changes -- not fully and specifically articulated, in my view -- they desire.

Everybody seems to be interested in posting 100 sentences about theatre and 20 rules for writing about plays and 100 this and 100 that. How about somebody post 100 ways to improve theatre coverage in New York? How about somebody post 100 reasons why Isherwood and/or Brantley should be let go immediately? How about somebody post 100 other people that could replace them? How about somebody, somewhere, stop the whiny-bitchy-moaning and be fully specific about how to ameliorate the situation and end the immature lynching Charles Friggin' Isherwood? The more you mock him, the more you rake him over the coals, the more you call him names, the more you assail his character, the more you write open letters to the Times that you know full well they're not going to read because they lack any teeth, the more you ascribe power to the Times -- the more that you give the Times precisely what it wants. How about getting some journalists in on the gig? How about putting your money where your mouths are? Jason Grote had the strength of character to create and circulate a petition against New York Theatre Workshop, signed by 939 people, when the workshop did that horrid job of explaining why Rachel Corrie was being postponed-slash-cancelled. Why not make it clear that Times advertisers will be boycotted if this and this and this and this isn't changed immediately? Why not take some kind of really serious action against the Times if you don't like what Isherwood is doing? Do you really believe a blog will affect change? If so, show me how it's happening. I don't think so -- I don't think the Times considers these blogs all that important.

And why does everybody continue to act like Isherwood is some wild renegade who writes whatever he wants without his editors, Rick Lyman and Sam Sifton and who knows who else, knowing anything about it? Are you all suggesting they're not complicit in this mediocrity, if you believe he's vile and vicious and mediocre?

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