May 7, 2008
Writing’s a lot harder than it used to be
Two years ago I wrote a play. It is based on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin — you know, the one where the rats get drowned by the Piper. I wrote the entire thing in three hours and then spent the next three months tidying it up and making it better. I ran into two problems, two major plot holes that need to be resolved.
I haven’t touched the play in over a year.
Every couple of weeks I spend a good hour or two thinking about ways to resolve the plot hole without compromising the entire script.
I’ve ultimately decided that I may have to rewrite a huge portion of the script in order to make it work.
Lovely.
I’ve also started writing a story — what may eventually turn into a novel of some sort, if it’s good enough. I’m having a really hard time with it. I can see the big picture in my head, and all the points in between, but the details of getting the characters from point A to point B is overwhelming — especially when each point seems to be two dozen pages apart.
Another problem I’m running into is something that I mentioned awhile back in one of my posts. I feel like all of my good ideas are just variations on someone else’s. I feel like my story is just an amalgamation of a bunch of different stories that I’ve read or seen in the past. I keep telling myself that this is different, that I’m attacking these things from different perspectives. But don’t you think that’s what Christopher Paolini said when he wrote that horrid ripoff book, Eragon, and its sequel? I worry myself sometimes.
At any rate, I don’t really think it’ll ever be published, so I’m considering providing my story free-of-charge as an ebook of sorts. Perhaps the play as well. What do you think?
April 30, 2008
A Cry for Help
I was driving to work this morning and I passed a sign that said “Give the gift of live. Give blood.” I thought to myself “Yeahhhh, like that’s gonna happen.”
Well, technically, I can’t give blood. Or more accurately, they won’t take my blood. But most people, I think, if you asked them would state categorically that they would love to give blood. So why are there blood shortages? It takes all of 15 minutes, it’s a renewable resource, and it’s a good excuse to not be productive at work, right? So why don’t people do it?
Because we’re lazy, that’s why. We’re lazy people. We don’t even want to take 15 minutes to stop and do something good, because we could spend that 15 minutes making money, performing in theatre, being otherwise productive.
So what does this have to do with theatre? Think about what you ask of your coworkers and audience members and volunteers. How much time do they have? How likely are they to participate?
The answer is almost impossible to answer. You never really know. The trick is to make participation so painless and so quick that people barely have time to register that they participated.
Going back to the blood drive example, when offices have blood drives, people will participate. When the blood drive comes to YOU, you participate. But if you have to go five minutes out of your way… no deal. In high school, the only people who ever gave blood were the ones who wanted to skip class. Some people probably hate pure motives, but most didn’t.
Some people have a strong desire and passion to give blood even if they have to drive an hour out of their way. An old friend of mine used to give blood every 30 days, when the Red Cross would allow him. He did out of a sense of duty — not to mention his mother was sick and was going to someday need surgery and require someone’s donated blood.
Likewise, some people in theatre have a passion and desire and drive to participate in theatrical endeavors, from building sets to hanging lights, from directing to acting, from teaching to watching. Those people have the drive to do it regardless of obstacles.
But most people don’t.
How do we reach them? Simple. Go to them.
April 22, 2008
Bag? What bag?
I don’t normally do these things, but I don’t have much to say today. Before I launch into the survey thing, check out the Twitter info on the right. If you’ve never heard of Twitter, head to Twitter.com to check it out. If you already use Twitter, click on my name and Follow me! 
Now, without further ado… THE MEME SURVEY!
Five things in your bag.
… camera bag!
1. Canon Rebel XT D-SLR Camera: sweeeeeeeet.
2. Camera charger So that’s where it went!.
3. A stuffed camel Don’t ask.
4. 2G memory card with various photos on them
5. Fresh Georgia air Yeah.
Five favorite things in your room (bedroom).
… my whole living space is JUST my bedroom, hah.
1. Computer. I use this thing all the time. I wake up, roll out of bed and sit at the computer and start working. Since I’m unemployed at the moment, it’s a good plan.
2. TV. I don’t actually get cable or anything, but I watch DVDs all the time. I’ll refrain from actually mentioning some of the TV series I have on DVD, as I’d be rather embarrassed.
3. Bed. I could sleep for days.
4. Stuffed Camels.IOnce again. Don’t ask.
5. Bookshelf. I love to read, so the more books I can get, the better!
Five things you’ve always wanted to do.
… ah, to dream the impossible dream!
1. Act/Direct a show on Broadway. Just once.
2. Be able to hear perfectly.
3. Be able to sing perfectly.
4. Be able to afford anything I wanted.
5. To travel to Europe
Five things you’re currently into.
… nerdy stuff!
1. Web design
2. Stargate SG-1
3. Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy
4. Learning the words to Broadway musicals (currently working on Tick Tick Boom!)
5. My girlfriend
March 26, 2008
The Recipe Challenge
I really like to cook, even though I’m not great at it. So when Devilvet posed a challenge to write a 500 word recipe on a theatrical endeavor, I figured I’d give it a shot.
This is a recipe that I’ve come up with in response to problems that I faced a lot in my undergraduate program. The drama club always had these grand ideas for fundraisers, talent shows, and full-on theatrical productions. All too often, the plans would be met with great enthusiasm but by the time the next meeting rolled around, the project would have been dropped. The result was that the drama club rarely did anything productive. I once proposed a solution, but due to general apathy, it never really caught on. I am posting this recipe in hopes that another group out there could use some help.
Recipe for Getting Things Done in an Organization
Ingredients:
- Team Leader
- Team Members
- Paper
- Pen/Pencil
- Patience
Instructions:
- Team leader should decide upon a project to pursue.
- Document basic ideas and sparse outline of project. Focus on the needs of the project, specifically as they relate to finances and to team resources.
- At a project or group meeting, team leader should present basic project idea and outline to the group. The idea here is to explain to the group what exactly the team leader is asking from them. In addition, the team should try and anticipate problems based on previous experiences (see step 7).
- Team members should agree to participate. Ideally, the project should be a coalition of the willing. In addition, there should be a clear chain of command. For example, the team leader might have the final say over the project decisions or the team might decide on a committee to make the final decisions.
- Once approved, set multiple deadlines for various aspects of the project. For example, if the team were organizing a show, then the designs should be in by the 10th of the month, the set and lights in place by the 20th of the month, etc. The final deadline, of course, should determine the rest of the deadlines. Plan them realistically.
- Communicate with team members regarding progress, problems, and solutions. More communication means fewer complications and mistakes. Don’t spend too much time communicating though, or the team will never get anything done.
- Once the project is complete, hold a post-mortem meeting to ask and document the answers to the following questions:
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
- If the team were to do it all over again, how would they do things differently?
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
Notes: The two biggest points here are communication and accountability. By communicating effectively with one another, the team can avoid most of the problems they might otherwise run into. My documenting everything — from proposal to outlines to deadlines to post-mortem — the team is establishing accountability and records. Without accountability, it’s far too easy to drop the project or lose interest.
(354 words)
March 23, 2008
The Next Step
I’ve taken the next step. I’ve moved away from the town in which I’ve spent the past 8 years of my life. Somehow, I don’t feel much different. I feel a little more empowered, a little more free to do what I want. I feel a little less encumbered and a little less trapped. But overall, I don’t feel like anything major has happened.
Make no mistake, this is a huge move. I’ve spent the past six years waiting to leave, but every time I tried, something pulled me back in. I’d expound upon this some more, but I wrote an entire play dedicated to this situation, and I don’t feel like rehashing it much more.
Right now, I’m kind of in limbo. I’m trying to further my theatrical career, but it’s difficult. I have no idea where any of the local theatres are, but believe me, that’s one of the first things I’ll do. I need a job, cause I have a lot of bills to pay and very little money. And finally, I’m waiting to hear back regarding some graduate schools that I have applied to.
I had a very successful interview at a school last week. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, I loved the faculty, I asked a ton of questions (thanks for the tips, Scott!), and I was very impressed by the facilities. The town itself is once again in the middle of nowhere. The big differences is that this time, the town is ten times the size of my last hometown.
So, here’s to the future, to the next step.
Break a leg.
March 19, 2008
If you immediately know candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked long ago.
One thing that people do very often is stare right into the face of truth and ignore it. They let their preconceived notions and assumptions inhibit their ability to think for themselves, to learn. My roommate, for example, believes very strongly that evolution (just a “theory”) is a hoax, that God put the dinosaurs in the earth for us to find. Obviously, he doesn’t understand what a scientific theory entails. But his religious beliefs and other preconceived ideas keep him from accepting the fact that science has proven thousands of times that evolution works.
My parents believe that I’m wasting my time with theatre. Every time I call my grandmother, she says something along the lines of “Maybe you should try getting a real job.” My family has made this assumption that theatre is all fun and games, that it involves no actual work and focus and meaningful activity. A lawyer friend of mine derided the American public for grieving for Heath Ledger’s untimely death by saying “You guys are a bunch of idiots. You never knew the guy. Even the guy you think you knew, you didn’t know. He made a living pretending to be something else.” Yes, that’s what actors do, but there is more to it than simply pretending.
Theatre is a very hard industry to make a living in, I’ll grant you that. But people like Scott Walters and others are trying to come up with ways to help theatre artists make living wages while still producing their art. They’re challenging the base assumptions behind the status quo.
One of my favorite shows is Stargate SG-1. In that show’s first season, Daniel Jackson encounters an Ancient, an being who as ascended to a higher plane of existence (think the Buddhists’ Nirvana). Oma Desala, as the character is called, speaks in riddles to Daniel Jackson. One thing she says is “If you immediately know candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked long ago.” Daniel has no idea what it means.
Ten seasons later, I think I’ve figured it out. If you immediately know candlelight is fire (i.e. without thinking about it), then the meal was cooked long ago (i.e. you had already decided the truth). If you immediately know evolution is false, without looking at the facts or thinking about it, then you’ve closed your mind to any alternatives. In this case, you’ve closed your mind to the truth.
If you immediately know theatre is a waste of time, then you’ve already decided theatre artists are lazy people, no better than beggars and hobos.
Don’t be my parents.
Open your eyes to the truth.
Explore the possibilities.
March 12, 2008
Taking Flak for Being Well-Rounded (not fat)
Recently, I was talking to a fellow blogger who is a grad student getting her MFA in Directing. Obviously, this is a route that I want to go. However, during our conversation, she mentioned that she took some flak from the faculty about the few times when she stepped outside of the field to participate. She won an award or some such for a research paper she wrote, and her professors nagged her how she should be in an M.A. program if she likes to write so much.
Last weekend I visited SETC for some grad school auditions and interviews. During my grad school interviews, a college rep came up to me and asked to see my resume. Excited, I handed him one. Rather than interviewing me, though, he started rattling off tips for improving my resume. I felt slightly better after he mentioned he was doing this for everyone and not specifically because my resume sucked. He had some good advice.
At one point I pointed to a line on my resume indicating that I had a masters degree in Secondary Education.
“Is this a good thing to have on here?”
“Oh yes, absolutely,” he replied.
“It won’t show that I’m, I don’t know… flip-flopping, indecisive?”
“Oh no, not at all,” he answered. “It tells me a lot of things about you. It tells me that you’re an educated person. It tells me that you’ve already completed one masters program, and if you can do that, you can complete another. By having graduated with the degree, it tells me that you’ve completed one course of study and are now moving on to another. It tells me that you’re a well-rounded individual, and I know that when I take you and the other grad students out to dinner after a rehearsal, I know we’ll have something to talk about besides the show.”
So, apparently, it’s good to be well-rounded, educated, intelligent. Why, then, was my friend getting flak from her professors? It’s not even like she left the field of theatre altogether. She wrote about a theatrical topic. Shouldn’t directors be knowledgeable in all aspects of theatre? Won’t that make them better directors? If a director doesn’t have a clue about lights and how they work, how, then, can she communicate to the lighting designers what exactly it is that she wants?
I feel that exploring all of my options is very important. Even if I commit to a specific sub-field or course of study, I still feel that I should keep my eyes open on the horizon. I should feel free to study other subjects, so long as they don’t interfere with my main priority — directing.
Doesn’t everyone feel this way? Why wouldn’t they?
February 27, 2008
The Moral of the Problem
In my previous post, Problem Solving Skills, I talked about how Scott Walters has identified several problems that plague the current LORT theatre world and how he has recently moved on to proposing possible solutions. On a challenge from Devilvet, Mr. Walters has provided a short four point proposal for getting the status quo to shift to more favorable terms.
I had a point with my last post, but I got distracted and wound up writing about something completely different. This time, I’m going to go back to my original post.
I began talking about Mr. Walter’s blog because it provides a direct parallel to something that I see in my alma mater’s theatre all the time. It’s hard to walk into the dressing room, costume shop, scene shop or green room of this theatre without running into at least one person complaining about the administration’s shortcomings. So-and-so didn’t do this, or such-and-such didn’t do this, so Joe Schmoe can’t do this. Blah blah blah.
Let me give a more specific example. At this particular theatre, we are wrapping up a production of Fiddler on the Roof. Apparently, on this past Sunday there was supposed to be a photo call immediately following the show. Unfortunately, none of us (including the director) were made aware of this until intermission on Sunday’s performance. Several actors sat in the dressing room and green room while waiting for their next entrance. All they did was bitch and moan about how they weren’t given advance notice and they had better things to do. They pointed out the facts that we didn’t receive rehearsal schedules, there were no announcements made, and somebody fucked up and by God, it’s not our fault.
That’s fine and dandy, fellas. But what are you going to do about it? Instead of going to the stage manager and/or director and relating their concerns, the cast bitched and moaned about the problem. They identified the problem. They talked about the problem. They repeated the problem again. The thing is, these guys were preaching to the choir. We should have been given advance notice, and the entire cast shouldn’t have to suffer for one person’s fuck-up. But the cast didn’t do anything to improve the situation. They simply restated the problem over and over to each other.
This kind of thing happens all the time. All — the — time. A few years ago, an entire semester worth of shows was cast in the first two weeks of the school year. The two shows were of small casts (8 people each). To make matters worse, half the cast of the first was also cast in the second. Why is this a problem? There were over thirty performance majors who wanted parts, and half the people cast weren’t even drama majors. Of the thirty-plus performance majors, only four had been cast in either show. What did the rest of the department do? They bitched and moaned about it.
Finally, I had enough. As a graduate student, I said “Guys, if you want parts so badly, propose a play for you guys to do, pick a director, and put a show on yourselves.” They looked at me like I was crazy.
“No,” they replied. “It’s the department’s duty to provide us with performance experience.”
I’ve always been of the opinion that I would only help those who helped themselves first, but for some unknown reason, I stepped up to the plate. I picked and proposed a play, got it approved, and cast 12 more performance majors for a show that semester. That’s 12 people who wouldn’t have gotten a part otherwise.
That was my first directing experience, fraught with mistakes and screw-ups. But I helped them out by providing a solution rather than expounding upon the problem.
So what’s the moral of this convoluted post? (It’s past 4am, so please forgive me if it seems like rambling.)
The moral: once you’ve identified the problem, figure out a solution. Re-identifying the problem only wastes time, resources, emotions, and energy.
Mr. Walters is well on the way to providing a series of alternatives to the Nylachi way of theatre life. Let’s support him and create a tribal force to be reckoned with.
February 25, 2008
Problem Solving Skills
In the past few months over on Scott Walter’s blog, he has begun posting about his vision of the new frontiers of theatre — re-imagining theatre, if you will. When I first began reading his blog, and Mr. Walters had just begun his war against the status quo, he explained repeatedly what the problems are with the current set-up of LORT theatres across the country. He identified and defined dozens of aspects of the current set-up that simply are not working. I’m not going to launch into a recap of them now (honestly, it would take far too long), but I will make an observation.
In the beginning, God said “Let there be—… wait, wrong beginning.
In the beginning, Mr. Walters did nothing but explain the problem. Several readers of his (including myself) felt he was preaching to the choir. We were already on his side, or we would not have been reading his blog. Perhaps we hadn’t fully identified all of the problems that he did for us, nor had we thought through the consequences until he pointed them out. But many readers asked Mr. Walters to slow down on the expounding of the problem and attempt to identify some solutions.
Over the past two months, more and more blogs have taken pages from Mr. Walters’ proverbial book and posted on the issues as well, identifying and further clarifying the problems. Once more, there is more discussion about the nature of the problems and less coming up with solutions.
In recent weeks, Mr. Walters has begun offering possible solutions to the problems he has identified. He refers to his philosophical ideal as a tribe — a group of people who work closely together to solve the problems they’re faced with. If you would like more information on his tribal structure, check out his blog here.
I had a different point when I began this blog, but I’ve run out of time for now. I’ll post further on the subject when I get some more free time to work.
I challenge you, readers, to identify any issues or problems that you recognize in your theatres and offer possible solutions, whether on your blogs, in my comments, or on Mr. Walters’ tribe website.
Cowboys and Indians, go!
February 20, 2008
How to Respond to a Cell Phone in a Theatre
As sort of a sequel to the How To Annoy Your Director post, I’ve got another little list for you to peruse. Tell me if this hasn’t happened to you!
Every show I’ve ever been to and probably every one I’ll go to in the near future, I can guarantee you someone’s cell phone is going to go off. Instead of being embarrassed and whispering “Sorry!”, they pick up the phone, and loudly exclaim “Yeah?! I’m at a play. I SAID, I’M AT A PLAY. Yeah! It’s okay, I guess. That fat girl up there sucks, and the scrawny guy — well, I can’t hear a damn word he says…” Meanwhile, the rest of the audience is glaring at her. She prattles on, oblivious.
This has happened so many times on stage that I’ve come up with quite a few scenarios as to what I would like to do.
- I’ve actually done this: I waited until they were done, and then once they realized the action stopped, they got up and left. The audience applauded when they left, too.
- Throw a prop at them, preferably a sword or knife of some kind. I haven’t done this for liability reasons, of course, but… it’d be so nice.
- Yell, “Out, damn phone! Out!” in character. Haven’t done this yet, either. Mainly because it’s not likely I’ll perform in the Scottish play anytime soon, and I haven’t figured out a way to do it in character and not screw up the moment in other plays.
- Break character and say “Excuse me, ma’am, we’re in the middle of a play.” Not gonna happen.
- Walk off-stage into the house, grab the cell phone, drop it on the floor, and squash it with my boot, then walk back on-stage and pick up where I left off. I wish.
People just don’t respect the theatre these days.