Gross

October 11th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

They come, with startling regularity, on Monday and Tuesday each week. “The Grosses.” The Broadway League aggregates and releases the gross sales and attendance for every Broadway show on Monday afternoons (Tuesdays when there’s been a holiday), and a wide range of outlets dutifully report on the biggest hits, the biggest losers, and prognosticate on a show’s future based on their own analyses, some informed, some less so. For a few thousand people who work in professional theatre, this is valuable information  (I touched upon this earlier this year in another post, “Scoring“). For most people, however, The Grosses have become the new arbiter of quality, since a review runs but once, while The Grosses appear week in and week out.

The Grosses are followed, and sometimes preceded, by a bevy of press releases from individual shows announcing their most recent box office achievements: “Highest grossing week ever in x theatre,” “Highest grossing week for x show,” “Biggest one day box office gross at x theatre,” and so on. Because there is now an industry of websites and bloggers who regurgitate this information largely unremarked-upon, this has become the new currency of achievement on Broadway. “SRO” just doesn’t mean the same thing as “$$$.”

What no one stops to point out is that these ever-higher box office achievements are taking place with the same number of seats in each theatre, meaning only one thing: people are paying more and more for tickets, or records wouldn’t be set. Since the introduction of premium seats 10 years ago, the pace has accelerated; the ability of shows to put tickets at the TKTS booth at varying discount rates has also allowed seats to be filled more strategically, so shows with excess inventory at the last minute need not be bound to a 50% discount, but can use a sliding scale. Box office prices are not even fixed any longer; displayed on video screens in lobbies, I am told they can be adjusted a couple of times each week based on demand.

So the fact is, yes, Broadway is setting records, but it’s doing so by generating more money per seat, or in layman’s terms, raising prices. If you thought it odd when Broadway shows said they were playing to 101.6% of capacity (meaning they’re selling standing room), now we can marvel at how shows can gross hundreds of thousands of dollars more than their declared weekly potential.

Before you start shouting “Occupy Broadway” and running with your hastily but tastefully made signage to camp out in Shubert Alley, let’s take a breath.

The majority of productions on Broadway are commercial enterprises. Each show is its own corporation and it has a responsibility, like any business, to maximize its revenue. Famously, only one in five shows supposedly turns a profit; many of the limited runs on Broadway are fortunate to simply return their capitalization.  Finding investors is difficult, costs are escalating from a variety of sources (labor, advertising rates, etc.) and the entire business model is called into question by many. Can we blame producers for seeking to keep Broadway alive, and shouldn’t we accept that the hits need to be ever more remunerative in order to keep more investors interested in participating in Broadway shows and mitigating their losses elsewhere? I think these are all valid considerations and should not be ignored in favor of simple populist rhetoric.

But at what point do we reach, or have we passed, the tipping point where, to echo some of the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric, the top 1% of the country’s theatregoers can afford and secure 99% of the tickets, and every effort to popularize theatre and insure future audiences is negated by economic reality? Just as people have begun to ask about banks and brokerages, is it possibly unethical to make “too much money” with the arts, whether commercial or non-profit?

Yes, I know that many people don’t pay the “rack rate” for Broadway. There’s the aforementioned TKTS booth, the wide range of discounting practiced by all but the most successful shows, the $20 lotteries for front row seats held at 6 pm nightly in front of many theatres. Frankly, Broadway has developed a balkanized pricing system, with the hit shows charging ever higher amounts while shows with less broad-based appeal forced into a cycle of discounting from which they can rarely escape. But the rack rate keeps increasing, so even the discount seats increase in price.

I shouldn’t pick on Broadway alone, as recent news reports have indicated that premium pricing has infiltrated Off-Broadway, both commercial and non-profit. One New York non-profit that famously gives away tickets to several productions for free each year will also let you acquire reserved seats for a pre-set donation amount, perhaps the most pronounced example of price disparity that allows the “haves” to simply pay in advance for what others must seek out for free at the expense of considerable waiting time. Also, while Off-Broadway’s rack rate may be half of that on Broadway, the Broadway discounts equalize the prices – forcing Off-Broadway to then discount its own seats to a point where the production can’t meet its weekly costs, giving rise, in part, to the reduction in commercial activity Off-Broadway in recent years.

“Load management,” pioneered by the airlines, is the original term for what the arts now politely call “dynamic pricing” and it’s not just a New York phenomenon, as both presenting houses around the country and resident theatres attempt to maximize revenue, although perhaps in a less pronounced manner than what we’ve seen thus far in New York. In the case of airlines, they actually can control seating capacity by running greater or fewer flights on various routes, sometimes limiting seating to maximize the price per seat. Theatre doesn’t have this option, but even as one who years ago pondered how to adopt load management at a not-for-profit, I now look to the public’s low opinion of airlines and air travel and worry that the arts could drive themselves into a similarly unpopular consensus. To top things off, this comes at a time when a recent report has informed us that charitable giving to the arts disproportionately benefits the upper echelons of arts audiences.

There is a theatrical ecosystem and it includes professional theatres from small communities to Broadway; I am sure the same is true for symphonies, museums and all of the arts as well. There is absolutely a case of trickle-down economics, but not in any positive way: it is the negative of the upward price and expense cycle that rolls downhill to everyone’s detriment, but most especially to undermine everyone’s supposed shared goal of attracting new audiences and introducing future generations to the arts, if not out of altruism, then out of self-preservation.

Do we need a movement? Perhaps not yet. But do we need pronounced change we can believe in when it comes to access and pricing for the arts? Absolutely. Otherwise, things will just get grosser.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

J’recuse

October 7th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Tweets, blogs and other manners of Internet posting have been aflame since this morning, when Charles Isherwood of The New York Times declared online that he wished to forego having to review any further plays by Adam Rapp.  In the ensuing hours, Isherwood has been chastised for the tone of his piece and for seemingly abandoning his post as a major theatre critic with regard to this particular playwright.  I have a number of reactions and would like to tease out the separate strands of this decidedly inside-theatre story.

First, I would like to praise Charles for his honesty. He is willing to admit that he  simply does not connect with Adam’s work after seeing a great deal of it. He wishes to recuse himself from offering his opinion publicly any longer, believing that it would be better for him and, he suspects, for Adam. I praise Charles in this because he could continue to bash the prolific Rapp endlessly, which does them both a disservice. Christopher Durang has spoken of how he could never get a good review from Frank Rich during the latter’s tenure. While I take Chris at his word and have not done my own assessment of those reviews, it’s pretty clear that Durang would have welcomed such a recusal all those years ago.

I might feel differently about this if New York was a one-newspaper town, or if Charles were the Times’ only theatre critic. Especially if the latter case prevailed, such a recusal could be tantamount to ignoring the work of a playwright and the theatres that produce him, but The Times does have the resources, either staff or freelance, to insure that Adam’s work will still be covered.

That said, I don’t believe that Charles should be relieved of the responsibility of seeing Adam’s plays. If he is to remain an authoritative voice on theatre in this city, or nationally, he cannot be excused from remaining knowledgeable about any playwright who so many feel is talented and worthy. When working critics get to selectively cease learning about and understanding new work, they are not recusing themselves, but abdicating. Whether they write about it is another story, no pun intended.

I have no idea what Adam may feel about today’s piece by Charles, although others have been quick to cite his own  past comments and writing about critics, both pro and con. I doubt that any of those statements precipitated this action, and frankly value the idea that artists can speak freely about the impact of critics upon their work. Too many shy away, ceding the conversation wholly to the media, and theatre is, after all, about dialogue. Unfortunately, personal reactions to being reviewed  negatively often makes it impossible for any such dialogue to be productive.

What does trouble me greatly about today’s “Theater Talkback” is the way in which The Times has milked this issue for attention. What should have been an internal discussion between journalist and editor(s) has been instead brought out in public precisely to generate the kind of brouhaha that quickly ensued in admittedly narrow circles (and to which I now add my own voice sustaining it, dammit). Having just panned Adam’s newest play, the most recent in a long line of negative reviews, why did Charles feel the need – and why was he afforded the opportunity – to air his negative opinions yet again, especially when he suggests his editor will not necessarily allow him to do as he wishes? Why, if permitted, couldn’t he have simply stopped reviewing Adam’s shows and, if some overzealous press agent questioned it in the future, been told that theTimes’ assignment policies are its own business (as I so often was told in my press agent days).

In the wake of the Porgy and Bess imbroglio, which the paper exploited by releasing Stephen Sondheim’s letter to them days before it saw print, has the Times decided that this level of debate should be promoted, in order to drive readership, whether online or off? Must they be sending tweets repeatedly urging people to read not only Charles’ piece, as well as the many responses to it? I cannot help but feel that this is a form of intellectual hucksterism that ill suits the Times and does the theatre no good.  At the core of the issue is a worthwhile discussion, but so long as it comes at the potential expense of a specific artist’s reputation, it is a case of power being wielded unfairly. Names did not need to be named, and people could have inferred what they wished, guessing at the artist or artists in question.

In smaller towns, or one newspaper cities, theatres can be subject to the singular opinion of a particular critics writing for the only major media outlet that covers theatre. That influence can be wielded for decades at a time, outlasting playwrights and artistic leadership. Energies should be expended addressing how to remedy that monopolization, not debating the pros and cons of one critic at an outlet with multiple voices, in a city with many critics, who admits he just doesn’t share one playwright’s aesthetic.

P.S. Since it’s on my mind, for further debate about criticism unrelated to the specifics of the above, let’s also focus our energies on the ongoing issue of why theatre criticism remains dominated by white males, when gender and racial diversity would give rise, presumably, to more diverse theatre. To be continued.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Blurb

October 3rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

“Everyone,” I wrote in a tweet to promote my previous blog post, “enjoys a good blurbing now and again.” Although I didn’t mind if someone read some perverse double entendre into “blurbing,” it was neither euphemism nor metaphor. I was referring to the time-honored and oft-criticized practice of skillfully extracting positive phrases from arts reportage or critique in order to employ them in service of marketing a show. As a former “flack” (if we’re going with slang, I’m going all the way), I gave good blurb; it was part of my job. When I left Hartford Stage, the graphic designer who did our print ads presented me with a framed “Ellipsis Award,” for the most skillful use of those three dots, which could cover a multitude of sins and through which one could, if they chose, drive a figurative truck.

I have not personally practiced the dark arts of blurbing, nor craftily employed the ellipsis, professionally for almost 20 years. Yet just as many came before me, others have followed, and publicists and marketers still employ “pull quotes” for press releases, ads, brochures, and the like with skill and abandon, all to pull in the rubes (that’s carny slang for marketing).

I have watched the quotes themselves grow larger as attributions grow smaller; in some cases ads are designed to appear as if the uniformly glowing words at the top are quotes, when in fact they carry neither the necessary punctuation or any source. The pinnacle (or nadir) of this practice came when a Hollywood studio was revealed to have invented both a critic and a press outlet solely for the purpose of manufacturing positive blurbs.

Several decades ago, those of us inside Hartford Stage would have philosophical discussions about the use of blurbs, as well as my artful insertion of ellipses that turned positive words into enthusiastic ones. Wouldn’t the people who saw the ads realize the quote had been subtly manipulated? No, we decided, since no one was likely to have saved the original copy  (remember, pre-internet). Wasn’t the ellipsis itself tipping people off? No, because frankly most people didn’t study them them as we did (and besides, to use an excuse popular in so many situations, everyone else was doing it). Wasn’t using quotes reinforcing the importance of critics, when we wanted audiences to decide for themselves?

To that last question, the answer, to our own chagrin, was yes. We were emphasizing critical opinion for our marketing needs. We had to. Why? Well here it is again: because everyone else was. Blurbs, pull quotes, what have you – they were a necessity. We believed that if a show had opened and we couldn’t feature at last one positive quote from a prominent media outlet in our advertising, the audience would be convinced the show was a dog. Even after the show had closed, we used those blurbs again: in subscription brochures, in grant applications, in annual reports. Blurbs were crack and we were hooked.

25 years later, little has changed, even if the media has. Despite the ability of anyone with a computer to locate a complete review, blurbs, be they accurate or artful, proliferate. The brevity of Twitter facilitates such practice. Even though the original context can be quickly recalled on Google, we still cling to quotes in our marketing, embracing reviews even as (and thus was also always the case) we often vilify the source, namely the critic.

This paradox is at the center of arts marketing. We do everything we can to make our productions critic-proof, yet we throw our arms wide open the moment a critic, any critic, praises the work.  If we bitch about critical power, why do we reinforce it? In brainstorming sessions, over drinks, we dream of cutting the cord, going cold turkey and abandoning quotes in our ads, but we can’t do it. We need our fix and seem convinced that our audiences do as well. As subscription rates have, overall, declined, blurb-laden ads are perhaps more needed (we think) than ever, since single ticket sales have reasserted themselves in our economic models (as they have always done in the case of commercial work).

I will paraphrase the producer Kevin McCollum here, only because I’m not positive I recall this comment precisely: “We are the only business that decides what to do tomorrow based on how we did it yesterday.” And indeed, we in the age of the internet deploy blurbs just as they were used by hucksters a century ago, locked in a perpetual cycle of believing that outside affirmation is the best, and perhaps only, means of assigning value to our work in order to lure audiences.

I’m not raising the paradox to pan critics; in fact I think we must do all we can to insure that full-length reviews written with intelligence and care remain part of the arts landscape. However, the attention span of both editors and consumers seem to favor ever briefer consideration of the arts – which are then further reduced to a ranking of so many stars on a scale, or a subjective, simplistic thumbs up/thumbs down summary by third party aggregators. Arts writing is coming to us pre-blurbed.

In a world of new and ever-evolving media, we are mired in an archaic marketing technique which has, to my knowledge, no empirical proof that it even works. Blurb if you must, but can’t we do better? Or are we just a …. bunch of … addicts?

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

It’s You

September 21st, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Dear @Resident Theatre Company or @Individual Show:

You know I love you and so I’m sorry to do this impersonally. But we have to talk. I know it’s hard to hear those words, because they always lead to the same thing. And to be perfectly honest, this time, it’s not me, it is you.

When we started this relationship on Twitter, it was filled with the blush of first love. For the first time, you could talk to me and I could talk to you. You would know my innermost theatergoing thoughts and I would always know what you were up to, where I might see you, how I could learn more about all of the great things you’re doing. Those were heady days back in 2009, made all the more exciting by the fact that we didn’t have to be exclusive to each other; we were part of something bigger than ourselves, freed from the usual strictures that society and technology had placed upon us.

But instead of growing together, I’m feeling let down by you.

There’s a group of you that’s very shy. While that’s enticing at first, I don’t know why you’re in this game if I never hear from you. Sure, you may read about me, but I don’t know what’s going on in your world. At some point, you just have to get past your uncertainty and meet me halfway. I can’t take the silence, the lurking.

On the other hand, more of you are unbelievably self-obsessed. I understood there would be inevitable narcissism, so I don’t resent that. In fact, I want to read articles about you; I want to know when you’re on TV, on radio, on blogs – that’s why I got into this. That allowed me to break up with Google and its random, sometimes meaningless flings in search of a single shred of information. With you and Twitter (and Facebook and perhaps even Google+), I could keep abreast of what’s going on at each stage of your life, while remaining open to others.

But now you just keep flaunting others at me. You retweet this stray person who liked your show and that nameless egg-head who liked your performance; every night between 10 and 11 pm, or first thing in the morning when you rise, it’s the same thing. You’re cool, you’re mind-blowing, I’ve got to run and see what you’re doing. It’s boring. And let me let you in on a little secret: I know you’re being selective and if I feel like it, I can find all of those negative tweets you never seem to mention. How do you feel about that, huh? The same goes for reviews, and while I appreciate the opportunity to read thoughtful, in-depth appraisals of your work, I can go back to my ex, Google News, and find all of the reviews as well, not just the cosmetically chosen ones that play up your best features. You’re not fooling anyone.

Plus, let’s face it, I know you’re a person behind a façade. You shield yourself with a company name or show name. But I sussed out a long time ago there’s not a whole company pushing the buttons, just one person. Just like me. You need to remember that too, because I find it hard to believe that your façade is out drinking with friends – it’s just not that mobile. And surely you’re not so gauche as to root for particular sports teams under a broad pseudonym, at the risk of sharing stuff that some of us really don’t want to know.

So I have to ask myself, should I keep following you if our relationship is so unrewarding? Not to throw others in your face, but Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company tantalized me with messages about its audiences’ deepest fantasies during their run of In The Next Room. Next to Normal snuggled up to me (and a million others) by letting me contribute to a new song related to the show. The New Victory is letting me assemble a video of things we have to look forward to together, with our kids (how can you forget the kids) and displaying them for all the world to see on YouTube. 2amtheatre constantly offers me something both attractive and profound to chew on. A few of you have even dropped the curtain that often separates us and I can hear directly what your leader is thinking, like the newbie Robert Falls of the Goodman or Kwami Kwei Armah of Centerstage. For my part, when you let slip an interesting bit of insight into what makes you tick, or even what simply interests you, I retweet you with abandon, sometimes four, five, six times in an hour. It’s tiring, but worth it.

This thing we’re in – it’s called social media. It can’t be one sided and you can’t constantly remind me that all you really care about is filling your seats. That’s awfully crude and while it may be good for you, it’s unsatisfying to me.  I want more of you, but all facets of you. Don’t reduce what we have to a transaction-based thing, like I was someone to whom you merely want to advertise your wares. It makes me feel cheap.

Oh, wait. No, stop. Don’t cry. I hate that.

You say you can change? I’m willing to give you another chance. Calm down – I won’t drop you, even though I can do it anytime with the merest press of my finger. I’m sorry, that was cruel.

So I’ll hear more from you? You’ll give me real insight, not just blurbs (not that I don’t enjoy a good blurbing every so often)? I won’t have to endure the clutter of your various partners telling me how wonderful you are every night? O.K. then, so we’ll stay mutual followers. I really want this to work, for you, me and our thousands of partners.

You’re blushing. Now that’s endearing. Come here and let me give you a digital hug.

Love,

@hesherman

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

The Think Method

September 16th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Alright, I’ve had it and I’m not keeping it to myself anymore.

It seems that not a day goes by that a news item appears one place or another announcing that someone famous is considering/acquiring rights/contemplating/dreaming about creating a Broadway show or being on Broadway. Yesterday it was Kara DioGuardi saying she was thinking about writing a musical. Today it’s the manager of The Eagles saying that they’re exploring creating a musical out of the band’s catalogue. I have little doubt that you can supply your own example of this type of evanescent project with about five seconds of not-so-deep thought.

Perhaps I should be happy about this development. After all, it suggests that well known figures in the entertainment industry see a connection to Broadway as something valuable, a charm they can embrace to legitimize their efforts in other fields. I mention Broadway specifically in this case because I do not hear people saying that they dream of writing a show for their local regional theatre.

Ironically, there are famous people who have done or are doing just that, modestly and earnestly. Jeff Daniels founded his own theatre, The Purple Rose in Michigan, and regularly writes plays for production there, despite his Hollywood fame. Bruce Hornsby wrote a musical called SCKBSTD that premiered at Virginia Stage. The estimable team of Stephen King and John Mellencamp will see their musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County materialize at The Alliance Theatre this spring. I’m excited about these.

But it’s the unfounded announcements that worry me. Someone goes on a TV show to promote some project or product and suddenly they’re accumulating theatre cred merely for thinking about joining our community. As if that’s not bad enough, their utterance is amplified by the media, who already think putting on a show is about as tough as mounting the high school musical (abetted by Glee, where every rehearsal is pretty  much a polished performance).

There used to be a corollary to this, which a former boss of mine referred to as “producing in the column.” This referred to the practice of less-than-top-line producers announcing projects in hope of making it into the once essential, now long-gone, Friday New York Times theatre column. But many of these productions didn’t yet exist; the producer planted the item to see if people would call expressing interest, and only go forward if their call sheet was sufficiently filled. Back then, the item appeared for a day, and sank out of sight. Today, these items are endlessly repeated, and archived, via the Internet. They spread like a hardy weed, even after they’re abandoned.

I’d like to issue a simple challenge to the media, both theatre-oriented and mass appeal: every time you feel compelled to elevate a musing into a production, you must take the responsibility of checking up on that show at six month intervals. If it comes to pass, terrific, keep on covering it. But when it fades into the woodwork, write something equally as prominent as that very first mention making clear that the project is off, and in many cases, never really was. I’d also add a penance for falling for these largely transparent p.r. stunts: each time you’re gulled, write about a show by a playwright or composer you’ve never written about before, or a theatre company that has never been able to get space from you. And I’m including every outlet that simply regurgitates wire service copy.

You see, there are countless theatres and writers who are actually working at the task of making theatre every day, and they can’t get any attention for their efforts – which exist in the corporeal world. A friend just told me the tale of working at a theatre where the artistic director was nearly in tears of joy over the appearance of a local news crew, for the very first time in memory. But why were they there? Because in the recent storm Irene, a large tree had fallen and blocked entrance to the venue.

I don’t wish to seem harsh to my journalist friends, who likely resent those occasions when they are thusly ill-used. I understand that celebrity sells and that you’re often being pushed, against your own wishes, to report on those who have achieved fame, be it through talent or outrageousness. All I’m asking is that you don’t play into their p.r. machines just because they utter the words “Broadway,” “theatre,” “musical” or “play.” Wait until they write one or are cast in one. Then I don’t really begrudge them the attention. I know what sells. But don’t let these Harold Hills sell you instruments and lessons until they know how to play theselves. Write about the people who are serious about making theatre.

Trust me, there are so many stories to tell.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Theatrical Mindset

September 6th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

A couple of weeks back I stumbled upon Beloit College’s annual “Mindset List.” Every year since 1998, a faculty member and a (now former) administrator at Beloit have collaborated to assemble a list of cultural and historical touchstones that the incoming freshman class would take for granted, having never known life without them, or be entirely unaware of, having never encountered them, depending upon the example. It is at once a fascinating, informative, amusing and sobering look at what the average 18-year-old might know (unless they are avid historians), in contrast to the received knowledge of those of us who are, well, let’s just say more senior by a few years.

As always, my mind turned to theatre. What has the average undergraduate embarking on a theatre course of study absorbed (or not) during their lifetime through first-hand knowledge? So I have drafted my own “Theatrical Mindset List.”

It is less rigorously researched and time-specific than the lists of Beloit, since I have no intention of producing it annually. I have taken the liberty of assuming that while the list pertains to people born in approximately 1993, no matter how much they might love theatre, their awareness of what was happening in the field couldn’t have possibly come before they were five years old. Consequently, I’ve allowed myself considerable leeway. If some prodigies were precociously cognizant, then they should have gone to college sooner.

So here is my brief, unscientific traipse through the mindset of the theatrical class that will graduate in 2015, but who only started their journey of higher education in the theatre in the last week or so.

1. Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel and August Wilson have always been major, award-winning playwrights.

2. Every theatre ticket they have ever bought or used at a professional venue has been in some way computer generated.

3. Disney has always been a theatrical producer.

4. They’ve never seen the world premiere production of a Stephen Sondheim musical on Broadway.

5. The Phantom of the Opera has always been a long-running Broadway hit.

6. They’ve never seen the world premiere production of a Jerry Herman musical on Broadway (and they’ve never been able to see Carol Channing on Broadway as Dolly Levi).

7. A woman winning a Tony Award for directing is not a breakthrough achievement, although it remains a rare one.

8. Rent has always been in production somewhere in the world.

9. The block of 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York has always been a tourist attraction for families.

10. Les Miserables and Miss Saigon have always been popular musicals.

11. Edward Albee has never been out of critical favor and only infrequently produced.

12. Audra MacDonald, Matthew Broderick, Donna Murphy and Nathan Lane have always been Tony Award-winning actors.

13. At no time could they see the original production of a smash hit Neil Simon play.

14. They’ve never been inside the theatre where My Fair Lady premiered unless they attended church there.

15. They never had the opportunity to see the original production of A Chorus Line on Broadway.

16. Of all of the Tony Awards broadcasts they’ve watched, only one emanated from a Broadway theatre.

17. They’ve never seen a production under the leadership of David Merrick.

18. They’ve never seen a show at an Off-Broadway theatre called the Circle Repertory Company.

19. Elton John has always written for the musical theatre.

20. Ben Brantley has always been the chief theatre critic of The New York Times.

21. Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Ralph Richardson have always been deceased.

22. Theatrical productions have always begun with announcements to silence cell phones, pagers, beeping watches and unwrap candies. (Yes, this is unverifiable, but doesn’t it just seem this way?)

Startling to realize some of this, no? The older you are, the more startling it gets. Perhaps you can think of a few other examples of major changes, achievements, or losses in theatre before or during the mid 90s that the freshman class of 2011-12 might take for granted, or never had the opportunity to experience. I hope you’ll add them in the comments section.

In any event, it’s important to remember that before college, our knowledge of theatre, for the most part, begins when we began going to the theatre, or performing in it (and we didn’t all necessarily do both). For our college students, and for our interns and young staff, there is a divide, and it’s our job to bridge it.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Let’s Talk About Meme

August 29th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

All of meme. Meme, myself and I. Auntie Meme. Do, re, meme, fa, so, la, ti do. I meme of Jeannie.

I could go on. And on. For hours.

I won’t.

One of the more interesting entertainments to arise from the spread of social media is the propagation of memes, perhaps more commonly known as hashtag games, in which someone suggests a theme or topic on Twitter upon which people spin sometimes endless variations, spreading far beyond the circle of the person who began it.  ‘Meme” itself is not a new-fangled internet word, although it has entered the popular lexicon only recently; the Merriam-Webster Dictionary dates its coinage to only 1976. I rather like the definition given by Dictionary.com, which mixes both culture and science: “a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.”

Last week I wrote about the collaborative nature of Twitter, suggesting that we were collectively writing a script of modern life. It is surely an absurdist script, with characters who come and go without warning, constant footnotes to the text (links), and we choose what portion of the dialogue we wish to see or engage with (by following or blocking). Well if the totality of Twitter is the ultimate “devised work,” then memes are its laugh lines.

Memes allow everyone to be their own Groucho, their own Stephen Wright, or even their own Oscar Wilde, if they aspire to be truly great. They can even be their own Milton Berle (for you young ‘uns, an early TV comic often accused of pilfering jokes), since in the elaborate Venn diagram of Twitter, your followers may not have a significant intersection with meme aficionados, and you can claim ownership of good lines with relative impunity.

Just as I enjoy my role in the multi-faceted online play that is Twitter, I adore the idea that Twitter gives voice to closet Neil Simons everywhere. No sooner do we see an appealing hashtag than we throw ourselves into the writer’s room of almost any sitcom you can name, even the fictional writers room of 30 Rock, itself dreamed up and punched up in a real-world writers room, like some Russian nesting doll. We work to one-up each other. We can all be the class clown, except there is no one to silence us except our own self-imposed censor or waning creativity. Quite remarkably, those that play seem to offer only positive reinforcement, namely the prized “re-tweet”, the greatest honor is when that retweet comes from a great comic mind like meme master Michael McKean (of Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind fame). Our bad jokes are buried and forgotten, but our good ones live on in the timelines of others.

I like the idea of memes as passing on our genes, since our desire when we engage in this word play is to insure the propagation of the idea, so that its comic DNA is passed from reader to reader. The bravest among us even try to be patient zero, proffering the idea, the appropriate hashtag and a few choice examples to get things rolling. In the past few weeks, I undertook to start two memes, the mildly successful #theatreinhell, which sought ideas for the worst possible theatrical offerings with which one might be punished for eternity, and #broadwayhurricane, puns on plays and musicals to accompany the arrival of storm Irene, which took off like a shot and was zinging around the internet more than 24 hours after I started it.

Yes, I take some small pride in “going viral,” even if most of the participants had no idea who established the game. I was the progenitor of laughter for some people, even long after the idea had gone beyond my active participation. In each case, the jokes were read alone, but everyone who saw them or contributed to them were united as an audience, making rapid connections in ways that only the internet can.

I’m not suggesting that memes have anywhere near the importance of, say, the manner in which news travels instantly and internationally via social media these days. As I said earlier, these are merely our one-liners, our word-play, our absurdist thoughts expressed and disseminated digitally, scattered across a much larger script of our interests and obsessions. There is something Darwinian in the way the best succeed as others fall on deaf ears (or perhaps blind eye is the more apt metaphor), but in the gentlest sense.

Is it utter frivolity? Perhaps. But the creative minds of the Reduced Shakespeare Company (@reduced) turned to Twitter last week to “crowdsource” a joke for their newest opus (I endeavored to help, rather obsessively). Perhaps since the internet makes it impossible for shows to go out of town in order to be out of critical scrutiny, the new alternative might instead be to test ideas via social media, in plain sight. Yes, it may spoil the joke for a handful, and risk having some stolen by the Uncle Milties who troll our timelines, but how wonderful to invite collaborators we don’t even know into the creation of work we hope they might ultimately attend and enjoy.

As the arts look for ways to engage their audiences, they rarely use humor. Even when we promote comic work, we tend to take ourselves too seriously, yet memes prove how humor can spread. It’s something we would all do well to take notice of, and perhaps begin to employ. Tweet humor, and the world laughs with you, and becomes your friend or follower. Tweet dully, and you tweet alone.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website

Merely Players

August 23rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

You don’t know me.

You may think you do. After all, if you read my blog, follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, ask me a question on Quora, join my circles on Google+, you know a number of things about me. You certainly know of my devotion to theatre, my love of film, my enthusiasm for social media and my predilection for jokes and puns. You may have watched or listened to me on the podcasts I did while with the American Theatre Wing. We may have exchanged messages of varying lengths on these topics, you may have been kind enough to thank me for some of what I have done. But for the majority of you reading this, you haven’t met me and don’t truly know me.

I have a wife, but do you know her name? How many siblings do I have? Who are my closest friends? What are my political views? What are the jobs I wanted but didn’t get? Which are the employers who wanted me, but to whom I said no? Who did I date before marrying? Was my heart ever broken? What experiences have resulted in my most profound sense of loss?

Mind you, I’m not taunting anyone, nor am I trying to discount what we have together. If you if are research inclined (or stalkerish), you can find the answers to many of these questions online (in some cases, with photos, for your amusement). My point is about – like most of what I share – social media and theatre.

I have about 3100 Twitter followers and about 550 Facebook friends (hello, everyone). I have no idea how many people have watched me on “Working in the Theatre,” listened to me on “Downstage Center,” or god help me, watched me in a judicial role on Cupcake Wars.  But as a result, most of you know the me I want you to see, the me I want to be. I am in control in a way I am not in face-to-face human interaction; there are many deleted tweets and blog passages that were in danger of going too far.

Social media offers us a particular opportunity to be the best version of ourselves, if we choose to use it for such a purpose. As someone who has always retained a sense of awkwardness in certain social situations (even though it may not be apparent), social media affords me the chance to say only what I want to say when I want to say it. I can edit it as necessary and, if I’m quick enough, even delete it before it really gets out. It gives me the means to gather an ever-widening circle of people with common interests, with whom I can talk, joke, or debate, if I choose to do so. And I can withdraw whenever I wish, to the insecurity of real life, ironically enough.

I have said more than once that I was drawn to theatre in high school because, while I wasn’t shy, I thrived on the experience of being in plays since I always knew what to say next. Someone else had worked out the conversation and all I needed to do was deliver the lines and if I did so with what passed for 17-year-old skill, I could achieve the desired result, particularly laughter, which is my drug of choice. As I grew older, and genuine talent was required, I stepped aside, seeking a life in which I could be of service to those who wrote the words and music, spoke and sang the lines, who could produce the desired effect.

Social media has given us all the opportunity to be on stage. What is Twitter but an ongoing play where brief thoughts must be translated to words? Isn’t it an extended improv exercise, or a perpetual, immersiveSleep No More (with much more talk but without all the running and sweating)? Aren’t blogs our monologues, rarely spoken aloud in our own voice? Perhaps they are our inner monologues, depending upon our topic, and how much we choose to share.

I often read comments from people pondering, discussing, hoping that social media and theatre will converge in a manner which produces a whole new experience, for artists and audience alike. But I think that social media is theatre already, a set of artificial worlds which we choose to enter or not. It is not cute like SimCity, it is not as visceral as L.A. Noire, it doesn’t burn calories like Wii Sports. We can choose anonymity, pseudonyms and avatars behind which to hide, but that defeats the purpose. It is a world much like our own, although we can banish those we find objectionable, by blocking or unfriending them.

To join, enjoy and benefit from the never-ending story playing out in social media, we must be some simulacrum of ourselves, always in the moment, always open to whoever may join the scene. By joining, we brand ourselves as exhibitionists, putting ourselves into the spotlight for others to enjoy or judge. But we are part of a team writing a script, billions of words every second, and though we know there are countless scenes playing out elsewhere, we are always in our own, or choosing which to observe. And it’s all being saved on hard drives around the world, perhaps to be played out again someday.

The quote under my high school yearbook photo was apt then, as the star of high school plays, and remains apt today, as a figure of minor recognition in a certain field. It is drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s novelMother Night, the story of an American spy whose true identity is never revealed, and so he lives in hiding, reviled as a Nazi sympathizer. “We are what we pretend to be,” wrote Vonnegut’s protagonist. “So we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

My name is @hesherman. What’s yours? Let’s play.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website

Have I Said Too Much

August 16th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

“You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends.”

Though I rarely seek it out, I frequently find myself watching the television sports report during the 11 pm news, typically after Jon Stewart completes his guest interview and before Letterman begins. Not being a sports enthusiast, I marvel at, and on behalf of the arts, envy, the nightly recounting of all of the day’s games, interspersed with chats with the players. The interviews amuse me, because they say – and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here – absolutely nothing. Either someone is saying that they’re going up against or have just gone up against a tough team and either the speaker’s team did the best they could or pulled together and showed the other guys what for. Screenwriter Ron Shelton suggested that this speaking without saying a thing is something players are taught, resulting in the quote above from the film Bull Durham.

Arts organizations don’t have it so lucky. There’s no arts slot on the nightly news that has to be filled, regardless of how little news there may be. While most newspapers retain arts coverage, the “news hole” continues to shrink and pop culture is now lumped with the unfortunately named high culture, so the competition for space only increases. Even when we’re the home team, we’re competing for space with every other home team in our community, as well as with national stories about everything from a new avant-garde musical composition to Japanese manga compilations.

As a result, the arts always have to have “a hook” to get journalists interested, and simply doing a good play or ballet, having a good conductor or director, isn’t enough. Often, the media looks to arts publicists to find the hook in order to pique their interest, and that’s certainly the job of any good press rep. But we don’t have it handed to us like sports, or like funny/cute animal videos from anywhere in the world.

Assuming the baited hook has been taken, our artists then have to participate in an interview and often have to be observed (and recorded or photographed) at work. But unlike sports, where the photos are taken from many yards away, or the interviews conducted in locker room haste, arts subjects often sit cheek by jowl with their chroniclers, and may talk for 20, 30, 60 minutes or more, depending upon the reporter’s needs. There is a forced intimacy that immediately influences the experience.

Now I don’t want to suggest that this is bad for the arts, since we need all the attention we can get. But it does force our artists into a situation where they have to make statements and claims about their work, typically in advance of the work’s completion. Let’s not forget: an actor or director might do six shows in a year, an author a new play every year or every other year, while in baseball there are 162 games a season. So for the interview subject in the arts, each interview carries much higher stakes, and the desire to please the reporter and to prove interesting and worthy of their attention is a razor-sharp, double-edged sword.

On the plus side is the attention and space given to an articulate subject, which grows even greater if a dash of controversy is tossed in, intentionally or not. The downside is that in the case of major coverage, everyone who subsequently chooses to see that work has the artists’ words echoing in their heads, and the audience then gets to judge whether the artists succeeded or failed at their own goals, rather than viewing and processing the work discretely, with only one’s own reactions at play.

For those who follow theatre, there is no greater example of this than the recent New York Times story on the new production of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater, which featured several members of the creative team candidly spelling out what they hope to achieve and why in a reworked version of the classic piece. Given splashy play by the paper in the Sunday Arts section, still the holy grail of arts publicists in a diminished print universe, the story surely set the phones ringing up in Boston where the show debuts. But as we know, it also set keys a-tapping here in New York, where four days later, the Times released a letter from Stephen Sondheim which took the interviewed artists to task for their perspective and their approach. The phones may well have rung even more thereafter, but there is now no question that a significant portion of the audience for the show will view it through the prism of both the creative team and Mr. Sondheim’s criticisms.

I don’t want to enter into that fray, especially because the team at A.R.T., Mr. Sondheim and the Times reporter are all people I know, respect and like. I use this only as an example of the actual dangers of arts coverage, the risk when claims are made and innovations detailed, but also of the perceived necessity to sell art by revealing its secrets, even when that may work to a piece’s ultimate detriment.

Since the arts cannot get coverage without a strong hook, we must be careful how we bait it and what happens once we catch something. We don’t have the luxury of speaking in cliché, but at times it pays to tantalize rather than reveal, and let the work speak for itself, so our own words don’t become tools by which we are filleted.

P.S. Thanks to Eric Grode for surfacing the Bull Durham quote.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

Famous Last Words

August 9th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Among the entertainments and distractions wrought by Twitter are the propagation of memes or hashtag games, in which a topic is tossed out for the masses, from which to wring endless variations, almost always humorous. For example, yesterday, in honor of the weekend’s number one film, folks were spinning comedy on #FailedApePitches, to which I contributed such classics as “Macaque of the Red Death” and “She Wore a Yellow Gibbon.” You need a taste for low wordplay and bad puns to enjoy the majority of these efforts, which spread virally; I am often motivated to churn out a half-dozen in a few minutes when the mood strikes me, to my own endless amusement.

But amidst the puns, I employed Twitter’s hashtagging for a higher-aimed colloquy yesterday as well. Having spotted a feature about the 100 Best Closing Lines of Books, which I thought was very clever, since we mostly hear about book openings (“Call me Ishmael,” anyone?), I decided to toss the subject out to the Twitterverse, but for plays and musicals, of course, not books.

This did not become a viral sensation, nor did I expect that it would. But what struck me from the responses was how many of the closing lines moved me, immediately prompting my recall of one or more productions of the quoted play, taking me back to the feeling I had as the lights dimmed or suddenly went out on those lines. It only took a handful of words to reanimate the theatergoing experiences for me, and for a couple of hours, it proved a most intriguing avalanche of reveries, prompted by the memories of others.  The playwrights’ final words held enormous power.

What also struck me was how open ended the lines were in so many cases. I was not being sent words of finality, but words that seemed to lead on to yet another story, or perhaps more accurately yet another chapter in the story. Even with plays that I knew to leave audiences sad and even despairing, the final words usually offered some hope to the characters, and to us in the seats as well. This seems to have been what people took away with them.

And so I would like to offer you a limited selection of the final lines shared with me by others, and a few I chose myself, to see whether they have the same effect on others that they had on me, both at the theatre and in the scroll of tweets.  I find them hypnotic, optimistic and comforting.

“Greetings, Prophet. The Great Work begins: the messenger has arrived.”

“I think maybe heaven is a sea of untranslatable jokes. Only everyone is laughing.”

“When we’re 45, we can be pretty fucking amazing.”

“What will we do ‘til spring?”

“Blow out your candles, Laura.”

“Oh, how I do love birthday cake.”

“Years from now…when you talk about this…and you will…be kind.”

“Come you giants.”

“Ready, old friend? Courage.”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“You that way: we this way.”

“Everything in life is only for now.”

“We shall rest.”

“You get a good rest, too. Goodnight.”

“We’re free and clear. We’re free.”

“So many possibilities.”

“Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you. I absolve you all.”

“Not annoying! Not annoying at all!”

The quotes are from, in order: Angels In America: Millennium Approaches, The Clean House, Uncommon Women and Others, Take Me Out, The Glass Menagerie, Crimes of the Heart, Tea and Sympathy, Jerusalem, Man of La Mancha, Waiting for Godot, Love’s Labour’s Lost,  Avenue Q, Uncle Vanya, Our Town, Death of a Salesman, Sunday in the Park With George, Amadeus, and On The Verge. If the quotes are imprecise, it is because I didn’t have the resources to check each and every one.

My thanks to everyone who contributed; you can see the complete Twitter chain by searching on #beststageclosinglines. For those who would enjoy this as a quiz focused on musicals, my query yesterday prompted one from Chris Caggiano, and it can be found on his blog here.

 

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website

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