Reasons To Be Pretty.

So last weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Neil LaBute's Reasons to be Pretty at the Lyceum in NYC. What a fucking awesome play, the production was good, but the play itself is what really shined. I adore Labute's work, but I do have a love/hate thing going on as well because his male characters are generally so much more developed than the females. It makes me wish I had a cock sometimes. ;P

I wish the production has been done in a smaller theatre, though the Lyceum is beautiful, a play like this I think needed a bit more intimacy. This wasn't served by the set at all, though the set itself was simple and effective to an extent. I also hated one of the females, though came to realize I was supposed to not like her, though I did think she emoted a little too much for my taste as a director. And of course Violet from Coyote Ugly, yes that Coyote Ugly, was also in it.

I think the highlights though were the two men for sure (can't remember the actors names right now & the playbill isn't within reach). Now is this because LaBute writes better men than women, or is it because of the individual actors. Who knows.

I did also pick up a shirt (which says "I might be willing to overlook your general f*ckheadedness") and a mug (which says "Love is blind shithead."). I adore schwag with cuss words on it though was sad that they had run out of scripts.

I think that's one of those shows that I'd love to direct, but it bothers me that LaBute is a go to in this town. I know for at least the past 3 years+ there has been a LaBute play produced. Not saying that that is a bad thing b/c I love his work, but let's go beyond Baltimore and look at some other playwrights as well.

Who I'd like to see on Baltimore stages: Sarah Ruhl (Single Carrot is actually doing Eurydice this coming season), Ellen McLaughlin, Paula Vogel, Sarah Kane, Stephen Aldy Guirgis, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jose Rivera & Robert O'Hara off the top of my head. Not sure why a lot of those are females, but that's okay. ;)

Here's a little from LaBute about this show:



Also here's an article about the interesting advertising campaign they came up with for Reasons To Be Pretty.

I want the two hours back...

I hate to say that when I go see a show, but tonight there were very few moments when I didn't regret sitting in the theatre. I'm not going to say it was horrible, but it needed to go farther. I felt like the director was fighting the nature of the play itself, trying to make it this serious journey into a man's soul, and it does have that in it, BUT the show is written as a farce & that is the beauty of it. There is this juxtaposition between the overstated comedy and the torture that this man goes through and what he puts his family through. That's just my two cents though...

TCG - Day 2

I'm not really sure how I want to phrase this post, so I guess I'll just do a breakdown of my experiences for the day.

I showed up at about noon or so on the 2nd day. Missed my affinity group, but as I said in my previous post, there were just too many people there for me to create some lasting connections. Maybe I missed out though on the second day as Lydia's idea of speed dating seemed fairly inventive and new, especially with a group of artists that have so much to learn from each other. And then I skipped Nadira Hira speak as she spoke at ASAE (American Society for Association Executives) Annual last year and the Membership & Marketing Conference this year. I understand what she's trying to say, but I've heard it before (from her & others) so I don't know what sort of value it would have held for me to see it again.

Then I actually started to participate in the day... The session I went to was the "Trend vs. Trendy: Focusing Your Online Fundraising Efforts". It was actually taught by a person from Beaconfire Consulting, a company that I run into in my "other life". I never realized how much cross-section there was between the two halves as I've always seen them as two totally different things.

So about the session... I tweeted it (of course), but I found myself being more of a student teacher than an active participant. There wasn't really anything new for me to learn and I missed the focus on fundraising - though the title of the session talks about focusing your fundraising online. The fundraising seemed to be an afterthought to the whole session, though I will say that the concepts in the session were nicely laid out and I liked Ali's "hook" for it. The thing that I'm missing is telling people where to start. As I've said on my other blog, NUMEROUS times, the way you start in social media is by listening, figuring out where people are talking about you and then trying to join the conversation. (I think it's soon going to be time for another theatre/social media post, possibly posted to the BTA blog though)

Next up was lunch - kinda ick, the cookie was good though. A question did raise in my mind - Why are all conferences I attend as of late so biased to Pepsi products? This is not the forum to answer this, but I wanted to throw it out there…

The afternoon general session had a really awesome concept based on the Dr. Seuss book “If I Ran The Zoo”. Karen Kandel, Artistic Associate at Mabou Mines read aloud the book to start off the session. Our zookeepers for the afternoon were Andrea Dymond of Victory Gardens Theatre (Zoo: Arkansas Reparatory Theatre), Kate Taylor Davis at Olney Theatre Center (Zoo: Imagination Stage), Joe Salvatore (Zoo: American Conservatory Theatre) and Meiyin Wang of Under the Radar Festival (Zoo: Baltimore Theatre Project).

So the first half of this session was not as engaging as I hoped it would be. I wish the speakers had spoken a little less, though their ideas for invigorating these theatres were very thoughtful and would bring new blood rushing through those veins. I started to tap in more when Mr. Salvatore was speaking. He had this really awesome idea about creating a national theatre that was actually a network of education sites and theatre spaces instead of one single space. I would agree that this is a worthwhile approach for a country with our sprawling landscape because it would help bring a connected diversity to the American Theatre. Right now many things seem so disparate and I don’t think that it can continue if we want the theatre we love to survive.

Another highlight of the zoo session was hearing Meiyin speak. Having a bit of an experimental theatre background, it was nice to hear her opinion on how we can bring more experimental theatre and other performance-based art (as I like to call it) to Baltimore. She kept mentioning PICA and the TBA Festival though and how the Northwest supports that festival, meaning to encourage Baltimore Theatre Project to take more of a festival approach to what they are doing. I think the reason PICA succeeds with the festival is that they already have a venue in the that region (On the Boards in Seattle) who supports season long programming of a similar nature. OtB also has a Northwest New Works Festival and a track in their season that is solely dedicated to Northwest artists. The reason that festival lives is because there is a network there to support it’s existence. In Baltimore, we don’t have that yet and my thoughts are that BTP could become the beginning of that support system to make a Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC experimental theatre corridor, feeding artists from New York venues that are looking for smaller touring houses besides St. Ann’s, the Walker & OtB. This is something that can definitely be pursued farther and I can say that hearing Meiyin speak inspired me to look at how I can help foster more experimental artists in my own backyard and bring the world’s art to Baltimore.

Then after the session were dine-a-rounds which I skipped out on in favor of spending some quality time with quality people, then off to the MICA party. It was great to see Baltimore representing and picking it up for those that could not make it. Thanks to Cara at MICA who is a fabulous actress and the events coordinator there. If you had a good time last night like I did, you should thank her too. ;)

Next up: Day 3 - Seeing Anne Bogart!!!!!!

TCG - Day 1

As the title states, today was the first day of the TCG (Theatre Communications Group) Conference in Baltimore. My take:

My Highlights:

* The totally awesome jump drive they provided us with as well as their effort to go green (Though from being in the industry, kind of, this may be more to save money than to save the planet. The planet is a bonus.)

* Meeting artists from all around - I got to schmooze with artists from Seattle, met someone from the San Francisco Mime Troupe & had members from Mabou Mines in my affinity group. And then I met some of the Single Carrot people as well. All in all a good networking day.

* The TCG bookstore discount - If this is your first TCG conference, you get 50% off your most expensive item and then everyone gets 30% off all items! Amazing! I ended up spending like $50, which could have been way worse had their not been the discount. I'm a total book whore, I admit it. I walked away with:

Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? by Caryl Churchill
Bliss by Olivier Choiniere (translated by Caryl Churchill)
Schiller's Mary Stuart by Peter Oswald
Bad Boy Nietrzche! and other plays by Richard Foreman
The Viewpoints Book by Anne Bogart

* The American Visionary Art Museum - Best party place in Baltimore. If I were to ever get married (though highly unlikely), I would totally do it there with either Devine or the big fluffy poodle/flamingo thingy in the background. They had good food & Sangria too.

* John Waters speaking - I was laughing so hard my face hurt afterwards. I also plugged the Baltimore Theater Alliance "What's Playing" section when someone asked what theatre is happening in Baltimore this weekend. I will say that his keynote was a little schticky, but all in all I loved it.

The Low-Lights:

* The AEA & it's need for control - I totally support Equity, but they need to blow up their internal structure. I was in a session about new media and what that meant for AEA contracts. Everyone is so scared of just letting go, there just seemed to be excuse after excuse after excuse. What people don't realize is when they let go, they actually encourage people to engage and considering the current climate, engagement is what theaters need. You need an audience that makes a bond with the work that you produce, but if you don't let go of your semblance of control, you will fail at engaging your audience before they walk in your doors. I also totally resented the people from AEA people using their committee structure as a reason for moving so slow. I work for non-profits, and if you're having that much trouble with getting things through your governance system, then you need to implode the system and figure out a new way to do things. You aren't serving your members any better by just providing excuses for your slow moving governance.

* The rain - I forgot my umbrella, something to remember for tomorrow!

* The Affinity Groups - I kind of wish there had been another session in the afternoon instead. Though I appreciate the opportunity to network with other individual artists and I think Lydia's idea for "speed dating" with other artists tomorrow is fab, there were just too many people to really make strong connections. I feel like we needed to be broken up into smaller groups, though it was awesome hearing where everyone was from and what they do, even if some were a bit long winded. And the space was WAY too small for us, they are supposed to be moving us tomorrow, but we'll see.

So I need to get to bed since my Affinity Group meets at 9am (*groan*) and it'll be a long day since I am leading one of the bus tours through Baltimore on the way to the party tomorrow night! Hope you make it on my bus (and that I don't mess it up)!

One last thing... Make sure you visit http://search.twitter.com and search for #tcgcon and see what everyone is saying, and you can check out my person thoughts at http://twitter.com/MissLynn13.