September 17: The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston Meets the Theater Commons

On Monday, September 17th, the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston meets with the Center for the Theatre Commons at Emerson College to learn about the projects being developed at the Commons for use by the new play sector.

Earlier this year, after it was announced that the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage was splitting into two branches, and one of those branches, The Center for the Theater Commons, was taking root at ArtsEmerson, I speculated as to what that could mean for the Boston theatre scene. It certainly occurred to me that the local scene needed to become more familiar with the projects being developed at the Commons, even if the Commons' mission covers new play development nationwide.

The philosophy behind the Commons is a practical one: given that there is an abundance of creativity in the new play sector and the unequal distribution of opportunities preventing that abundance from reaching audiences, how does one increase those opportunities. The mission of the branch of the AVNPI that has become the Commons has been the study of this bottleneck and isolated efforts to circumvent this bottleneck so to create both  the tools and shared knowledge base that allow both problems and solutions to be studied in greater detail (see my notes on an early iteration New Play Map) as well as those that assist those working in the new play sector in the effort to widen that bottleneck and placing those tools and knowledge in "the commons" that can be accessed by anyone much like the books at the public library. Other projects have included the online journal HowlRound and #NewPlayTV as well as the popularization of the #newplay hashtag.

As Commons founder David Dower, director Polly K. Carl, and associate directors Jamie Gahlon and Vijay Matthew made their rounds in Boston discussing the philosophy of the commons, I made face-to-face contact and in my capacity as a member of the Small Theatre Alliance's events committee suggested a meetup between the commons and Alliance members involved in the new play sector. This meeting will focus on the tools being developed as part of the commons and getting them into the hands of playwrights, dramaturgs, literary managers, artistic directors and all those with a hand in developing new plays.

The event will run from 7pm to 9pm at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre in the Paramount Center at 559 Washington Street in Boston.

Facebook users may RSVP here.

Presentation at Emerson College

Art Hennessey, playwright, actor, and director who works with the Essayons Theatre Company and whose Mirror Up to Nature blog I frequently read invited me to be a guest presenter in his "Arts, Entertainment and Society" class this past Monday at Emerson College. The class is part of Emerson's certificate program in Cultural Journalism which provides journalists with the background to report on arts and culture.

I brought along some video and a couple of masks to demonstrate my work, but the presentation, led as much by the questions posed by Hennessey and his students as by what I was interested in discussing was free-wheeling and ranged from how I came to be in the arts, how I came to be a mime (which allowed me the opportunity to show video of my work with Bill Barnum and James Van Looy in Cosmic Spelunker Theater), to how do I reach my audiences, my interactions with the press, the rising importance of blogs for dialogue about the arts, as well as how outside economic pressures structures what form art work takes and how it is presented.

I even demonstrated a short excerpt from my "Arlecchino Ever Ravenous."

Hennessey and I, being both writers and performers shared the observation that sometimes maintaining our blogs seems to cut into energies we should be devoting to our "real" writing and rehearsing, while at the same time noting that it is becoming a more important outlet for writing than ever before. In my case, my blogging has had influence on controversies in Burlington, Vermont, been included on the reading list of a course at Royal Holloway, University of London, led to my being interviewed and even allowed Hennessey and I to talk about the more structural aspects of playwriting as we shared the subway ride home.

The Adventures of CMYK

Last night, I attended a screening of The Adventures of CMYK, a film by Katherine Machaiek, a student at Emerson College. It's a funny, low budget movie about a trio of kids who foil an evil genius' attempt to destroy the world (or at least a substantial part of it.) "Low budget" is hardly an insult as student films (and indeed many independent films) rely heavily on volunteers and donations-- and as often demonstrated in the 1970s by Doctor Who, clever scripts, charismatic acting, and and imaginative design easily trumps a low budget.

I have a single scene in the film which was shot last fall at a school in Concord, Massachusetts. I play the eccentric and foppish homeroom teacher of the protagonists. It's a better performance than I recall, so I'm quite proud to have been involved.

Trivia: Most of the Greek and Latin on the chalkboard is my doing. I wrote it out as the crew was preparing the set the moment I noticed that the classroom we were using belonged to a high school classics teacher. Everything on the board is connected with the theme of the film. I owe this to my interest in the philosophy of technology, an interest that began from my readings of Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology.

N.B.: Here is a link to the preview trailler: