Like A Botonist Walking Through A Forest

Lately I've been going and seeing more theatre since now I know more people in the theatre scene. A lot of friend/acquaintances have shows going on right now and there is a college putting on a Mary Zimmerman piece, so I have lot of plans to go see theatre pretty much every weekend for awhile. Sounds spectacular right? Well, the problem is...

It's really hard for me to sit and just enjoy a play. Seriously.

I've spent my life living & breathing theatre. I had a teacher in school who said he couldn't enjoy just going to the theatre anymore and I questioned him about this because I didn't understand. He told me it was like a botonist walking through a forest. A botonist can't just take a walk through a forest, they see all the different kinds of plants and any diseases. They can't just enjoy the calm.

Well I've reached that point. It's a little sad for me. I love theatre, that's why I've consumed everything I could relating to theatre for so long, but now that I've become an "expert" (for lack of a not so elevated term) it has kind of ruined the experience for me. The only time a I get heart-a-flutter excited about seeing a play anymore is if it's a Mary Zimmerman play. Even when I get a chance to see some of my favorite plays, I get analytical. It annoys the hell out of me.

There has also been another crazy side effect of this... Now most of the TV I watch is reality TV because I don't have to think about the acting or directing. It isn't high quality and honestly the lower quality the better (thank you VH1)!

Sad really in the end. I think that's also why I like to work on new work, because there isn't a pre-made opinion about it. It's fresh, it's new, it's like an infant who you have to help grow up.

I'm wondering if anyone else out there feels like this about the work they do? Is it something that is just limited to the arts or does it affect other occupations as well?

To Start Anew...

So last night was the first production meeting for Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill. I'm a big fan of Caryl (I talk like I've met her, though I have not) and think her work is amazing. She makes statements with her work.

It felt good to be back at the beginning of the process again. Though Watch only has one more weekend left in the run, jumping in on something else will help with the grieving period. What I mean is that when a show closes there is a sense of loss. Not sure what to do with your nights anymore, you are thrust back into normal life. It's been weird to come home every night after work and not have to race off to the theatre, but still good. It's nice to be able to sit at home and read a play. (or write a blog post...)

Anyways, working on this next show is really exciting. My director is an awesome guy and it's great to have a full production team. (Unlike the last two shows!) That means I can focus on stage managing and props. I think I may be a little on the over organized side, but I need to be when I start the show so that way if I slip up a little later on, I'm still ahead of the game.

I also started my position with the Baltimore Playwrights Festival as the rep for Spots. So far I've read one play and am really excited about it. It's the first one, but it engaged me. I don't think it's right for Spots' season, but definitely something I would love to work on in the future.

Anyways, not sure if there was a real point to this post except to say that I'm in a good place moving forward and excited for the next show!

Review: Watch, A Haunting

So we just finished up week two of our three week run and I think the press has been really good. Here are the reviews we've gotten so far. Please note that in Baltimore, unless you work for one of the "professional" (professional = union) stages, it's harder to be reviewed.


Read about the show from the City Paper's Goeffrey Himes.

Listen to YPR's Martha Thomas talk about Watch, A Haunting.

So let me know what you think! I think in general the reviews are positive. This is what I'm taking away from them:

Pros - genuine, simple, earnest, potential, minimalistic

Cons - sound effects, unrealized potential

So after this show closes, I'm on to the next. Not directing this time, but to Stage Manage for Cloud 9. Back @ Spots again, oh how I love that theatre! (And of course their AMAZING Artistic Director) This one is going to be a long one since we don't go up until mid-February. And then... a much needed break. I'll be back at Spots (of course) to direct another new work come next August. What new work you ask? I don't know, haven't decided yet since I'm the Baltimore Playwrights Festival rep for Spots and have a TON of plays to look through. I'm excited though.

An Update: Me & the AD are on great terms now. Back to how we were before we disagreed. :)

A Director's Place

I wasn't sure whether or not I should write about this...

Then I remembered my own words... "I intend to be bold, brash and above all, honest with myself and with my subject." Honesty.

Honestly last night ended badly. The actors were great, it was more what happened with the artistic director.

After the run the artistic director approached me and told me some moments that she felt weren't natural in the blocking and they needed to be fixed now. Okay, I can see where she gets that. With the way that I block it comes naturally out of the character; I read impulses and create the blocking out of what the character is going through. It is heavily dependent on having actors that have strong characters. This is one reason I spend so much time of establishing relationships and improving scenes before I get to the blocking stage. So usually if something isn't looking right on stage it has to do with the character not being defined enough.

I worked with two of the actors helping them to define and make their characters more specific, which then in turn fixed the blocking problems that she had mentioned. Cool, the play is better off for her pointing those things out, but I didn't appreciate her disagreeing with me in front of my actors. I let it go though.

Well, this is where things got a little uncomfortable with me. The AD decided that she was going to reset all of my sound levels for the sound cues. She said they needed to be louder and be more shocking to the audience. She just started resetting all the levels WAY higher than I would have set them. The sound cues that I've come up with are meant to be an underscore. I am no means a sound designer, but I have been around the theatre long enough to know what I want and what I don't and I was the one who came up with the sound design for the show. It's not great, but I do know what I'm trying to achieve.

In my aesthetic for this show, where things are subtle and each audience member walks out of the theatre with a different experience, having the levels set higher would jar the audience in a way that I do not want. The sound design is meant to be subtle, something you would hear in the back of your head, but not be sure that you heard it. Kind of like when you are in a real haunted house, not some spooky Halloween one.

On top of this, the SFX that I have are from the internet, on a burned CD, on an in-home mini boombox thing, not a professional sound system. When the sound is turned up too loud, the speakers buzz in that bad their gonna blow way. Not the impression I want to give my audience.

I felt very insulted by the fact that even though I said things were too loud she told the stage manager/board op to turn it up anyways. I'm frustrated because I feel like the show now has someone else's stamp on it. I believe that art is a collaborative process, but in the end it is my name and my reputation on the line because I was hired as the director. Having my AD push me is great, it's a way of collaborating, but being criticized and then pushed aside when my vision of the show I was hired to direct is not.

So with all this bitching what am I going to do? I'm going to be the bigger person (at least I hope this is what being the bigger person is in this situation) and let the show run tonight with the loud soundFX. I will give it a chance, I have a feeling I won't like it, but I'm going to be open to it. If I feel that the show becomes campy, or the soundFX are overbearing and become the focus, then they will go back down. I will fight for my vision if I have to. The show I'm trying to create is not a campy "Halloween" show, it's not a haunted house. It's a show about a girl coming to terms with the death of her father. Yes there are ghosts in the show. Yes the house they live in is haunted. But like I said before, this show isn't a haunted house, it's a play.

Thanks for reading my rant. I'd like to know what you think though, respond with your comments.


UPDATE - So after the preview last night (and audience members laughing at SFX) I talked with the AD. It wasn't pretty, but we came to a compromise... We're turning them down a little bit, not as much as I want, but that's what compromising is about. Basically the issue all arises from the fundamental difference in how we see the presence of the house. (This part will make more sense if you see the show...) I see it as there, alive and in the background. She sees it as a presence on stage. That's what is causing the conflict and since we can both be very strong willed women, it causes us to butt heads. Such is life though.

Things are a little awkward, but whatever. I felt like I had to stand up for the show I was trying to create.

Blog Action Day - Topic: Poverty

So today is Blog Action Day and the topic this year is Poverty.

As of yesterday I had no idea what I was going to write about. None. I thought maybe I would write about a play that deals with poverty, like Odets' Awake & Sing! or something like that.

Then I realized something when I stumbled upon Americans for the Arts Action Fund tally on where the candidates stand when it comes to arts funding. Suddenly the idea of poverty hit closer home.

I have friends who are working artists; my goal is eventually to be a working artist. When I took a look at the Arts positions of the 2008 candidates, I got scared for the future of arts funding in America.

Like a good democrat, Obama supports funding the arts. His campaign has put out an official policy proposal on arts funding that focuses on combining education and arts. At least from his position statement, he see the value of the arts. But will he really follow through on all this or is it an attempt to capture the already leftist artists? Why would he need to do that though, most artists I know would automatically vote left, purely because the Democratic Party has a history of supporting social programs, including the arts.

What scares me though is McCain and Palin. I was in Virginia on Monday, driving through a neighborhood and I forgot what it was like to be in a “red” state. In the course of two long blocks I saw probably 10 McCain/Palin signs, it was scary, mainly because of her, but that’s not what this blog post is about.

McCain doesn’t have published policy proposals on arts or arts education.

He hasn’t made a statement on federal support of the arts, though he has about arts education.

The Republican party platform does not include a statement on arts and/or arts education.

McCain himself has voted to cut funding or terminate the National Endowment for the Arts .

I know I’m not talking about the world’s poverty issue and I didn’t really set out to be political when I wrote this, but I’m concerned about where my country is going and whether or not I will cross that poverty line to pursue my dreams.

I’m not a huge fan of Obama, in fact I gained more respect for the ticket after I heard Biden speak. But McCain scares me and Palin scares me even more. It's the lesser of two evils situation, per usual.

I just ask that when you go to vote in less than a month, you consider what choice you make and how that will affect those you love.

Thanks to Abigail Katz's Katzeye Report for bringing to my attention the candidate's positions on arts funding.

An Essential Tool for the Actor

So this has never happened to me before... I lost my voice. Yep it went bye, bye and left me with little to work with.

This took me back to my first day of orientation at Cornish and the Freshman voice teacher Ellen Boyle (who later became a good friend and mentor) had lost her voice because she had spent the weekend protesting against the killing of Canadian Geese in one of Seattle's many parks. So she had been screaming at the top of her lungs trying to scare the geese away so they wouldn't be killed. Honestly, when she first told the story I thought it was a little weird, but she was passionate about her cause and I respected that. She told us about how profound it was to lose her voice, since as a voice teacher she relies on it so much. I really didn't understand what she meant until this week.

I mentioned how last week I was experiencing the "Death Plague" and it's reach was farther than just the fever, chills, cough and phlegm. The cough was so powerful that I seriously damaged my vocal folds and it was very hard for me to talk. I was not fully "on-voice" for a few days. All you got out of me what whispy sounds that resembled words.

What made it a profound experience for me was when I was in rehearsal with the Watch cast. Normally if I'm talking about an actor using their voice is a weird way I will demonstrate, because a visceral experience is always more informative than me just telling them about it.

Well I couldn't demonstrate at all. What a punch to my gut!

My voice and speech has always been there for me, it was something I excelled at in school (with the exception of keeping my soft palette lifted) . And, no, I can't sing; just for the record. I always took for granted that my voice would be there, even if I hadn't warmed up fully, it was there and usable. I had control over this, my vocal choices were always the first choices I made as an actor once I learned how to harness my tool. Learning about my voice and exploring and using it made me a better theatre artist.

Well I'm on the mend and my voice is slowly but surely coming back, I'm not trying to baby it, but I'm also trying not to overwork. I just hope things didn't change too much in the past week.

Your voice is how you let the world know you're there. I don't know what I'd do if I lost it.

Why Do They Leave Their Socks On?

Is porn art?

Background: Flipping through the HBO channels I come across Thinking XXX, a film by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders about shooting portraits for his book XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits.

One of the subjects, Sean Michaels, likened his work to art. My first reaction was, what the fuck? They get paid to fuck. How is that art?

Mr. Michaels said his work was an expression of the art of fucking. Made me think...

Porn Stars get paid to fuck on film. Actors get paid to act on film. (I won't make this distinction between art and entertainment in this post, though it could be valid)

Porn Stars get paid for their pornographic still shots. Models get paid for their photographs.

Porn Stars film soft-core scenes of simulated sex. Actors simulate sex scenes in movies all the time.

These are just some parallels that I've come up with off the top of my head. Though that also brings to mind the actors are like prostitutes, we are paid to perform.

Art & Sex have always crossed paths. Artists push the boundaries. Was the Marquis de Sade's work smut or literature?

What is the link between sex & art? Can sex be art? When does sex cross that line where it is no longer art?

Brief Update: Watch, A Haunting

So it's getting down to crunch time, we open 2 weeks from today. Yikes!

Also, I've been fighting what I'm referring to as the "Death Plague" the past couple of days. No fun, for sure.

Last night we took full-on production photos (minus the few props we still need to get). I'm excited to see how they will turn out. Don't get me wrong, it was a little slice of hell sitting through photos last night, but not because it was boring (it wasn't). Nope, purely because I'm fighting a bad fever and a nasty cough.

Did I mention how much more I love the way we took the production photos last night? Not yet. Well, I did. We would practically run through the scenes, and photographer would make adjustments in blocking to help suit the pictures. Much more organic, way more my style.

Well we have rehearsal tonight and I know some of the cast wants to see the VP debates tonight as well. Sure I'd love to see it too, but we gotta get down to some real work tonight. Next week is run-thrus, then tech next weekend. Keep your fingers crossed, it's going to be a wild ride!

P.S. I'll post the pictures when I get them.