The PuppetSlam Mini-Tour, Part I: Providence

January 15, 2010::
Friday evening, I caught the train from Boston's South Station to Providence to perform at Blood From a Turnip, a fifteen-year-old late-night puppet Salon at the Perishable Theatre. Having forgotten my map, I had to navigate my way to Providence's Downcity Arts District from my memory of landmarks from when Cosmic Spelunker Theater performed at AS220 back in 2004 (you can read an an interview I gave to the Providence Phoenix Bill Rodriguez here.)

Once I found my way to the brick sidewalks of Empire Street, I quickly found the foyer of the Perishable Theatre (actually the landing of the building's staircase, and met Vanessa Gilbert. Who whispered greetings, because, as she explained, there was little soundproofing, and a new radio serial, Destafano on the Air! by Cyrus Leddy was playing in the theatre. So we continued to talk shop in whispered tones and she had me come up with some biographical details she could use while she introduced my act. Soon afterwards, her co-host, Nicole Leduc, showed up as well as Jonathan Little and Hakim Reid of Little's Creatures showed up, and we decided to go next door to the Restaurant at AS220 for sustenance (I had the white bean and kale soup with vegan faux-bacon and coffee) while Nicole interviewed us for her hosting duties as well, in the process, getting completely different information from me than Vanessa had!

David Higgins, their co-curator met us after a while to tell us that Destafano on the Air! was about to let out and that we would be able to load in soon. Once we settled up we went back to Perishable. Perishable is a good sized black-box theatre. The room is bare-bones, like most blackboxes but the lighting rig is nothing to sneeze at. I did my costume change in the basement and started my stretches to which Jon, who specializes in hand-puppets, commented, "those poor masked performers: always having to stretch before shows."

Soon we were joined by Jim Sedgwick with his cart of props, Z. and Chad of WonderSpark Puppets and Baby Oil (a synthpop duo with a wickedly campy sense of humor) who were to provide our musical interludes for the evening.

Everyone went over their tech requirements with David who was running lights and sound that evening. Jim, who was going on first, set up his props and and headgear and then sat in a chair facing upstage so that when the audience finally poured in, they saw his back. The show was sold out to standing room only (and Providence audiences are willing to stand!)

This would be the first performance of Arlecchino Am Ravenous in a dedicated theatre space-- and I finally figured out why each full rehearsal and performance took so much energy. My experience from having staged readings of Total War, a particularly wordy play, is that each page averages about one minute, twenty four seconds. I had assumed that with all the physical lazzi that Arlecchino would average more like two minutes per page.

I was incorrect, after the show: it clocked in at thirty-two minutes; the length of many one-act plays, or roughly four minutes a page: far too long for many of the short-play festivals to which I had been submitting it. Somehow I had managed to forget to time any of my rehearsals or ask friends in prior audiences to time it for me-- thankfully no one had ever minded the length.

Still, I seemed to have kept a room laughing, and at times, gasping in shock and horror, for a little more than half-hour. The cause of one such gasp is going to be the topic of a forthcoming blog entry, tentatively titled, "Arlecchino meets Shylock" (I think that should be sufficient to tell you that it's going to deal with something serious.)

Nontheless, this meant that the following evening, at the PuppetSLAM, where there would be eight different acts, I would have to cut Arlecchino Am Ravenous into an approximately ten minute, Arlecchino Am Abridged

Notes:

Vanessa and Nicole are terrific co-hosting team.

Jim Sedgwick does really surreal stuff with props, costumes, and tape recordings, and if he had a website I would point you to it.

Baby Oil did a great bit where they requested the audience text message the singer's cellphone (which he was using as a codpiece) regarding their own "booty calls" and later in the show, the text messages were incorporated into the lyrics of a song. This was apparently their third gig, so they might not have a website yet.

Little's Creatures do classic early Henson-style puppet comedy sketches. They also gave me a lift back to Somerville. Jon, who was hosting PuppetSlam the following night, helped me brainstorm Arlecchino Am Abridged.

WonderSpark's "Jack and the Beanstalk 2: The Director's Cut," besides being incredibly entertaining, includes some wonderfully imaginative choreography where Z. and Chad, sitting in chairs, twist their bodies, give and take each other's weight, and otherwise form the landscapes that their puppet characters to inhabit.

Sorry: I have no new photographs. My camera broke a few months back.

A Modest Proposal

More often than not, this blog has focussed on my own activities as an artist, only on occasion discussing larger issues or participating in a larger conversation. This is one of those occasions.

There has been an on-going conversation in the theatrical blogosphere about diversity in theatre. I don't intend to do a full survey, but I'll list off a few items of interest:

There was, of course, Emily Glassberg Sands' "Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender: An Integrated Economic Analysis of Discrimination in American Theater" which while identifying a real problem also had some real flaws that Thomas Garvey suggests were introduced when others tried to co-opted her work to fit their professional and ideological agenda.

Somewhat facetiously, Isaac Butler suggests suing theatres that don't diversify. Of course, Butler's suggestion is so absurdly impractical that it comes across more as an Ayn Randian nightmare caricature of political correctness than anything a serious liberal or progressive would contribute to the discussion, but I link to it because Butler is supposed to be an important theatre-blogger, and I'm apparently banned from posting to his comments section for reasons that are unclear to me (I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding.)

The pseudonymous 99seats has addressed the issue of diversity frequently, noting the class issue of access to theatre programs, notably the MFA, if one happens to be a playwright, as well as the institutionalized racism that prevents minorities from having similar opportunities. Of course, the troublesome statistic from the Theatre Development Fund's report Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of thew New American Play that "seven schools account for almost nine out of ten of the study playwrights with advanced professional training" only raises more questions about the role the academic gatekeepers are having on our culture-- especially when we ask how many of our great living American playwrights actually attended one of these programs? (This is particularly disturbing considering the charges leveled earlier this fall at The O'Neill Theatre regarding their "open" submission policies.)

Now this gets to an important point, brought up by Garvey in his "Meanwhile, over on the theatrical version of Second Life..." that:

To me, of course, art is more important than politics, so what Butler calls "the quality problem" (!) matters a lot, as I think it should to any critic worth his or her salt. And let me say up front that if Butler and Walters had any particular playwright they were promoting, of any gender of race or ethnicity, whose work they claimed had been disadvantaged by the system, I would happily see that writer's work, and be an advocate for them if the quality was there. (As for the insulting idea that people in each ethnic group cannot perceive the excellence of works from other ethnic groups - please, tell it to Alvin Ailey.)

But the diversity partisans never seem to be able to point to any actual work that they feel is being ignored. Add to that issue the troubling fact that the "quality problem" we have is often due to playwrights promoted by the academic-diversity crowd, and you have a situation that - well, does not actually inspire critical confidence.

Essentially, as I often heard growing up in a left-wing household: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" or as I wrote in the comments section:

Critics should champion the work of artists that they regard as underappreciated or even deliberately seek out new work? I'm not sure the academy would approve of such a radical notion, Thom.

Garvey flattered me as "you mischievous Ian Thal" which, of course, only incites me to greater mischief.

The successful playwright pool is artificially limited largely to those graduates of elite MFA playwriting programs, who reflect certain class interests and address "diversity issues" primarily in academically fashionable ways. Indeed, if I am granted the opportunity to propose a hypothesis (which I freely admit is but a hunch): the current manner in which "diversity" is treated by the "diversity advocates" (and please note, I am speaking only about plays and playwrights) might actually be creating obstacles that prevent playwrights of diverse backgrounds from emerging.

Despite his frequent self-deprecation, my friend, Chris Rich, who writes about jazz on his blog, Brilliant Corners, has developed something of a reputation for discovering artists and being the first to write about them. Part of that comes from his hanging about Outpost 186, where so many great and oft ignored jazz musicians play. However he has another method as well: He surfs for musicians on MySpace Music where musicians without labels and without buzz post their music. He then uses his own knowledge of the music to sort out the good from the bad. It's that simple. He doesn't wait for a major label to tell him that this musician is important.

So now for my mischief: I challenge you critics, producers, and artistic directors who should be advocating for great theatre. Find an underappreciated, underproduced, perhaps unknown playwright who should be appreciated, produced and known. Better yet: find six, eight, ten, and advocate for them. You need only go to bushgreen.org, a social media platform supported by London's Bush Theatre, where hundreds, if not thousands, of playwrights have already posted their plays, irrespective of whether or not they have the MFA. I'm already there. If you see it as your mission to serve a specific community or constellation of communities, most of the playwrights have already tagged their plays with labels to help you narrow down your search. I'm sure you will find something worthy of your advocacy.

On the other hand, maybe that amounts to usurption of the academic gatekeepers, and we can't have that, can we?

[N.B.12/26/2009: I seem to have overestimated the number of playwrights and plays currently posted to bushgreen.org-- perhaps because I had to search around for that information. There appear to be ~120 playwrights and around 400+ plays.]

Total War on bushgreen

Despite what I now consider to have been an over-reaction to the suggestion that my plays might be made available online, the much deserved ribbing for said over-reaction by fellow blogger 99seats, I still had concerns as to how playwrights could be expected to make their work available online in such a manner that benefits them as well as the potential audience.

Though it may have appeared as if I had taken an ideological hardline with regards to sharing my work; I have decided to try out bushgreen, a new social networking platform for playwrights set up by London's Bush Theatre.

It's an experiment for me, but interested parties can find me here and perhaps read the latest draft of Total War here.