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.

#OccupyTCG or How I Finally Discovered the Utility of Twitter, Part 2

[Part of a short series that will likely be expanded upon in The Clyde Fitch Report]

Read Part 1.

On Friday, June 22nd, I had dinner with John Geoffrion, president of the Small Theatre Alliance and member of the Boston Host Committee for the TCG conference before we caught a workshop presentation of a new work by Mike Daisey. He had been drafting a letter to the TCG staff to voice his displeasure at the treatment of volunteers at the conference and the embarrassing position it had placed him in as a member of the Volunteer Sub-Committee.

All throughout the conference, TCG staff had been bragging during the plenary sessions that the #tcg12 hashtag was one of the trending topics on twitter. So on the morning of June 23rd, despite my frequently stated distaste for the medium, I too, turned to twitter, first tweeting:

Last night the volunteers were allowed to approach the bar like real adults; Maybe today they will be allowed to speak. #tcg12 #nethtr

I followed with a new hashtag #OccupyTCG. Note that the following is not a complete transcript:

#tcg12 volunteers promised full participation in return for work-hours then ordered not to speak or ask questions. #OccupyTCG #NEthtr

#tcg12 Are volunteers also barred from tweeting about theatre? #OccupyTCG #NEthtr

#tcg12 Model the Movement: if you don't pony up $300 you can't possibly have anything relevant to say about theatre. #OccupyTCG #NEthtr

Model the Movement: Low income theatre artists should be seen (volunteering) and not heard at #tcg12 #OccupyTCG #NEthtr

Ironically, I began tweeting #OccupyTCG during a plenary session entitled "Ensuring the Sustainability of Our Field" that largely addressed topics of diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender in American theatre with only lip service to issues of class.

Eventually, after others began to retweeted my initial posts and started asking questions, I received a series of tweets from August Shulenburg playwright, actor, and Associate Director of Communications for TCG:

@IanThal Worried there's been a miscommunication re: volunteer participation at #TCG12. Email me at gschulenburg@tcg.org w/what happened

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion @ianthal (1/3) I've looked more into this & I'm hearing there was some confusion during volunteer meeting... #TCG12

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion @ianthal (2/3) ...but the volunteer packet should state "If you're not assigned a role, you're welcome..." _#TCG12

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion @ianthal (3/3)...to attend another session." It asks volunteers 2 prioritize care of attendees,but no barr. #TCG12

To which I responded:

@GusSchulenburg I have volunteer recruitment emails going back to April from the host committee for #tcg12 #OccupyTCG

@GusSchulenburg @madbusch @JohnGeoffrion That's not in the packet and email that #tcg12 volunteers received. #OccupyTCG

Schulenburg:

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion @IanThal Now I'm being told something different about the packets. REALLY sorry about this. Will have answers soon

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion Again, my apologies. I now have my hands on full packet & @IanThal is right Clearly, this is an issue &... _#TCG12

@madbusch @JohnGeoffrion @ianthal ...I'll look more into the cause of comm. breakdown. Very sorry not in time to make a difference #TCG12

There appeared to be multiple layers of miscommunication: not only had TCG not communicated to the Host Committee the status of volunteers until a day or two before the conference, but Schulenburg, as the tweets reveal, had somehow been issued a completely different volunteer policy than what was presented in the volunteer guide and had been defended by TCG staff at the June 20th orientation..

As of this writing August Schulenburg, to his credit, is the only TCG staff member to either respond to the concerns raised in my tweets or reply to my emails.

[To Be Continued...]

#OccupyTCG or How I Finally Discovered the Utility of Twitter, Part 1

[Part of a short series that will likely be expanded upon in The Clyde Fitch Report]

There was much excitement last year when it was announced that the annual conference of the Theatre Communications Group, New York-based publisher of American Theatre magazine, theatrical books, as well as an industry-wide association for American theatre, announced that the 2012 TCG National Conference would take place in Boston. Locally it was seen as a national acknowledgement that Boston had "arrived" as a theatrical community. Much was afoot in the Boston area: There had been recent leadership changes at both American Repertory Theater and The Huntington Theatre, ArtsEmerson had opened shop under the leadership of Bob Orchard and had quickly established itself as a major presenting institution for international work. Just as importantly, the "fringe" scene (much of which represented by the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston) has blossomed in recent years, becoming so essential that SourceStage, the older, more established Boston theatre-service organization had been coordinating activities with the Small Theatre Alliance. Both organizations have in turn been discussing a possible merger.

The host committee, made up of a wide swath of people from Boston's theatre community was charged with laying the groundwork for the conference. One initiative the host committee took was to rebrand the conference as a New England conference, sponsoring town meetings in the months prior to the conference not just in Boston and Cambridge, but in Worchester, Pittsfield, Portland, Maine, and Providence, Rhode Island and so the #BOSthtr hashtag that StageSource had previously promoted for use in twitter was joined by #NEthtr. The host committee, in short, saw its mission not just as welcoming the out-of-town guests were treated with hospitality but to ensure that New England's theatrical communities were also well represented.

The host committee was also responsible for recruiting volunteers to help run the conference. Due to the steepness of the registration fees (the "early bird rate" for independent artists nominated by member organizations was $280 but some attendees or their sponsoring institutions were paying as much as $725 to attend) volunteering several hours to help run the conference seemed like a reasonable way for a low-to-moderate income artist to get into an important industry conference.

For the record I worked six hours as a volunteer for the conference—which not including the receptions, amounts to roughly a third of my time at the conference. It was simple work: manning tables, moving chairs, being on hand to act as a gopher but absolutely necessary for a conference with roughly a thousand attendees.

There had already been some concern about how well the interests of small and fringe theatre companies would be represented at TCG. TCG groups its member theatres by budget group and theatre companies with annual budgets of under half-a-million dollars are all classified together. Consequently, one question that was part of the scuttlebutt amongst artists affiliated with the Small Theatre Alliance was "how aware or interested was TCG in the challenges faced by theatre companies who operate on shoe-string budgets?" In fact, the only presentation I caught (in part because I was assigned to work on it as part of my volunteer hours) that addressed small theatres was a "breakout session" that addressed Steppenwolf Theatre's Garage Rep in which small companies from Chicago's storefront theatre scene are sponsored by the larger company.

However, the real disconnect came when on June 19th, volunteers were sent an email with guidelines that included one directive that would prove to be controversial:

In all sessions, be they breakouts or plenary, workshops or roundtables, you are there to observe and help, not to participate. TCG staff and volunteers must refrain from participating [TCG's emphasis] in conversations or Q&A rounds in all conference sessions.

The following day, during a volunteer orientation, a volunteer asked for a clarification: was this only for sessions where the volunteer was working in a support capacity or was this an across the board rule for all sessions. Devon Berkshire (Conference Manager) and Dafina McMillan (Director of Communications), who were representing TCG at the orientation meeting clarified that it was be an across the board policy, as volunteers are present as an extension of TCG staff and thus are not to participate.

At the end of the meeting members of the Host Committee's volunteer sub-committee voiced muted displeasure at the policy as they had been of the understanding that volunteers would be full participants. One volunteer confided in me that he was going to reconsider his participation in light of this policy.

Consequently, at Wednesday night's welcome party, which had initially been promoted to local theatre people as "your party" left the volunteers in attendance uncertain as to whether they were really invited (the volunteer packet also stipulated that volunteers were not to partake in any of the catering which that evening amounted to chips and salsa.) The volunteers present were also not issued drink tickets. About halfway through the party, representatives from MailChimp an email newsletter design and consulting firm that was present for the conference decided to donate drink tickets to the volunteers.

At the following evening's reception at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, volunteers were again not allowed to partake in the catering and were denied drink tickets. If there had been some concern for volunteers over indulging in alcohol and not being capable of fulfilling volunteer duties the following day, this same concern was not held for the paying attendees who were issued bracelets with five drink tickets each. Nobody attending an industry conference whose first plenary session is at 9:00a.m. needs to imbibe five drinks over the course of three hours the night before. The bartenders had also apparently been given instructions not to allow attendees to transfer their drink tickets to volunteers. In addition the buffet was only half-eaten by the end of the party which speaks to the lack of scarcity—at least if the volunteers had been permitted to approach the food tables, less food would have gone to waste.

Friday, June 22nd was the busiest day of the conference. Because I had only a week before returned from the Republic of Kosovo where I had been a guest of the Writers Union at the Drini Poetik International Festival of Poetry, I was interested in attending the lunchtime roundtable discussion on international theatre exchanges, yet was neither permitted to share my experiences nor ask if other attendees about their experiences. I was also not permitted to ask a question or speak at the breakout session on "models for supporting and engaging playwrights," despite being a playwright and a member of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston's Events Committee.

The interns and other TCG staff, who seemed to be present at every discussion or presentation I attended created an atmosphere of panopticonism where I was conscious of the fact that my behavior and that of other volunteers might be under surveillance and understandably, the interns had motivation to strictly adhere to and enforce the rules laid down by TCG— perhaps more so than regular staff—after all, they were young, ambitious theatre students hoping to parlay their internship into a career as opposed to staff who already had a career.

Read Part 2.

The Theater Commons Comes to Emerson and What This Means for the Boston Theatre Scene

As 2011 was coming to a close, the big news on the Boston theatre scene was that David Dower and Polly Carl of the American Voices New Play Institute would be moving from their base of operations at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage to Emerson College. In the midst of this excitement, The real question was what this means beyond Rob Orchard's aim to make ArtsEmerson a major regional player in the performing arts.

As outlined by Dower on the Arena Stage blog, this is essentially means that efforts that had previously been grouped under the hashtag of "#newplay" are branching in two directions under the auspices of two separate organizations. The first, staying at Arena Stage and retaining the American Voices New Play Institute name, will, amongst other things, focus on the much lauded resident playwright program and on Arena's own developmental work.

The second branch, now using the name "Center For the Theater Commons at Emerson College" will focus

on the tools and initiatives designed to advance the national infrastructure for new work and the people who make it. So, where the AVNPI will house Arena's activities, this new entity, The Center for the Theater Commons, will develop and maintain the tools of the #newplay commons and act as staff to the nationwide effort. The map, the live stream channel, the journal, the research projects, and the activities of Howlround will be housed at the new Center, situated in the Office of the Arts at Emerson College. The web portal for this platform becomes Howlround.com.

Polly Carl and Vijay Matthew, writing at Shareable while explaining the needs that brought the New Play Institute into being, outline the projects that the Commons will continue to develop at Emerson. Most of these involve using technology both to both build and document the "new play infrastructure." The two most visible of these initiatives that the Commons will be bringing to Emerson, are the online journal Howlround and the New Play Map, of which I've written about twice before.

Given my position in the industry: entering the field of playwriting without the connections that comes with an MFA, not having a salaried position at a regional theatre, I have had little use for the Howlround. The contents had sadly struck me as being more about omphalloskepticism than about theatre featuring often cryptic essays by more connected figures than myself wondering if they were reaching an audience or not.

The New Play Map, on the other hand, was a project I have supported enthusiastically since it went online last year. It is a crowd sourced map, documenting the new play infrastructure, presenting the artists, collaboratives, conferences, venues, and companies writing, developing, and presenting new plays. I even explored the possible uses that could be explored since the source code was released (New Dance Map anyone? New Opera Map? New Performance Art Map?)

The question, for the Boston theatre scene returns to "how do we use this?" Theater Commons, despite being local, is under no obligation to show Boston playwrights or Boston theatre companies any special favor, especially when the new staff understandably come with any number of professional obligations to past collaborators, however it does become incumbent on the Boston theatre scene to become aware of what is going on in its own neighborhood.

I have already suggested to the newly elected board of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston to strongly urge that member companies, and individual artists working in new play development document their efforts on the New Play Map. Some already have started to do just that, some already had. This longer essay is for those who have not responded to the Alliance's urgings. Placing our work on the map is not just to advertise our presence to the larger national scene, but to document how we operate, so that organizations like the Theater Commons have a better grasp on what tools we (both nationally and locally) need.

What this means for the local theatre community is what we are willing to make it mean.

Open Mic Night: Act II, Scenes 2 and 4

Pictured: Ron Pullins as Capitano Spavento, John Geoffrion as Shylock, and Corianna Hunt Swartz of Flat Earth Theatre as Gessica. Not pictured: Diana Durham who read stage directions. Both Diana and Ron also presented work that night.

November 21, 2011. The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston's Open Mic Night, this time hosted by Fort Point Theatre Channel presented a scene and talk back for my work-in-progress, The Conversos of Venice.

I had presented an earlier scene at the inaugural Open Mic Night and the misgivings I had afterwards did not manifest this time around. Indeed, of the times I have heard actors read my words since I began, this was the time where what I heard was exactly what I had hoped to hear and we had some lively discussion before we moved on to the next playwright's work.

Still there's the rest of the play to write, and ever more research to be done!

"The Conversos of Venice" at Playwright's Open Mic Night

Monday, November 21st, The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston once again presents Playwright's Open Mic Night, a bimonthly presentation of works-in-progress by Boston-area playwrights. This edition, I will be presenting a scene from my play The Conversos of Venice (a response play to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (another scene had been presented at the inaugural Open Mic Night.)

Also presenting new work will be:

Monica Raymond: Four Riffs for a Sailor: Calypso

Diana Durham: Perceval and the Grail

Ron Pullins : Ice Dancing

Adam Baratz: Two songs from a musical.

This time around, Fort Point Theatre Channel plays host at 10 Channel Center Street, Boston, MA

Actors interested in reading scripts are invited to show up at 7pm. The event begins at 7:30pm.

Facebook users may RSVP here

Thoughts After The Reading

Left to right: Jesse Strachman, Chris Larson, John Greiner-Ferris, Kevin Mullins, and MJ Halberstadt, reading the parts of Il Capitano Spavento, Lorenzo, Antonio, Launcelot Gobbo, and Shylock in a scene from The Conversos of Venice as part of the Small Theatre Alliance's Open Mic Night at the Factory Theatre on the evening of February 21st. Photograph courtesy of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston.

After grabbing a slice of pizza with CoLab Theatre artistic director Kenny Steven Fuentes, we headed to the Factory Theatre for an evening of staged readings. This was the first time I've participated in a reading where I was not actually running the show. That was left to Ron Pullins and Leslie Powell.

While in the past, when I have produced staged readings, I have often auditioned actors myself to make sure they were suited to the part (there's generally a smaller pool of actors to choose from for staged readings); this evening the actors were chosen at random from whomever came through the door with little time to review the scripts they were handed before.

I noticed over the course of the evening was the over-all high quality of the scripts. This is remarkable because I attend a lot of staged readings and though this was a completely uncurated event (hence, "Open Mic Night") the quality was better than what is presented at many companies' curated staged-reading series (which tells me that some companies playing in the "new play sector" are dropping the ball.) I will not be posting comments on anyone else's works-in-progress, especially since a number of them were only excerpts from longer works, though I will mention that I loved reading a part in Ron Pullin's short play, Pico.

Of course one of the ways we measure the value of a staged reading (despite what The New York Times says) is what the playwright learns about the play when it's read by actors in front of an audience.

I learned that I write in a style that necessitates the involvement of a dramaturg to keep the actors informed of cultural and historical context (the play, after all, is set in the Venetian Republic of 1601 and the scene in question has the characters referencing everything from religion to economics to folklore of the time while making allusions to both Shakespeare and the Bible.) In staged readings of Total War, which takes place in the far less alien world of an American university in the 1990s, I had been unwittingly playing the role of the dramaturg, figuring it was just my role as writer and producer. It's simply a tough piece to "cold-read" without rehearsal, even after I simplified the script by changing some Ladino, Veneto, and Italian words to their English cognates.

I learned that my predilection towards including clown characters when other characters are engaged in dramatic dialogue is a good instinct. There was also an interesting split in the audience that caught the various historical and literary allusions (often framed in jokes) those who did not, and those who were anxious because they were afraid that they were missing an important reference.

All I can do at this point, though, is get back to work!

Talkback: 2/21 Staged Reading: A Scene From The Conversos Of Venice

If you attended the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston's February 21st Open Mic Night at The Factory Theatre and did not have a chance to share your thoughts regarding the excerpt from The Conversos of Venice during the talk back segment or you found that you had further questions or comments, I invite you to continue the discussion:

I am particularly interested in the following questions:

1.) Knowing that the characters and situation are derived from another dramatic work, did you find that knowledge necessary to follow the action? Or did the scene operate independently?

2.) Did the world of Conversos come through in the dialogue and stage directions? Did the world building distract or did it flesh out the interaction between the characters?

Of course, if you have other thoughts you wish to share, feel free to ignore these questions!

You can make comments (anonymously, if you so choose) by way of talkbackr:

[N.B.: The Talkbackr page for this event has expired 3/1/2011]

email if you so care to engage me directly.

February 21st: Small Theatre Alliance of Boston's Open Mic for Playwrights

The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston just announced the line-up of playwrights for its Open Mic Night to be held on Monday, February 21st at the The Factory Theatre:

MJ Halbertstadt: Jick and Dane and Love

Ian Thal: The Conversos of Venice (Excerpt)

Ron Pullins: Pico

Lesley Moreau: Lowered Expectations

Kevin Mullins: A Southern Victory (Excerpt)

Emily C. A. Snyder: Cupid and Psyche (Excerpt)

The presentations will be in the format of a staged reading:

Playwrights [...] have the chance to see the work "on its feet". Actors, who will be randomly cast from those present, will be given the script and asked to read it at least one. Then the actors will read the work for the audience. The audience with then provide constructive feedback about the scene in a safe, nurturing environment.

The event begins at 7:30pm. The Factory Theatre is located at 791 Tremont Street, Boston in the back of the Piano Factory.

Actors who are interested in reading should arrive at 7pm. The event is free, though there is a suggested $5 donation. Space will be limited, so reserve a seat!

Small Theatre Alliance of Boston: Open Mic Night

February 21st: The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston is hosting its first ever Open Mic Night for playwrights at The Factory Theatre. let us understand that in this case, the "Open Mic" is a metaphor, as there will not be a microphone and playwrights were asked to sign up over a week ago.

More simply: it's an evening of staged readings of six short plays or excerpts by six local playwrights. I will be presenting an excerpt from my work-in-progress, The Conversos of Venice, which is my on-going response to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (Some readers might note that I have a bit of an obsession with said play).

I will update once I know who the other playwrights might be.

The event starts at 7:30pm. The Factory Theatre is located at 791 Tremont Street, Boston in the back of the Piano Factory.

Actors: Show up by 7pm if you want a part!

Event is free, though there is a suggested $5 donation. Space will be limited, so reserve a seat!