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.