Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Equity at 100: How Actors' Equity Pushed for Racial Equality

Playbill.com: Almost from its inception in 1913, Actors' Equity Association was ahead of the nation on the issue of race. Black actors were actors, in the union's view, and black theatregoers were theatregoers. Equity came to life in the Jim Crow era, when theatre and hotels were often segregated or barred blacks altogether, and many producers — eyes on the bottom line — couldn't bring themselves to cast black actors in roles other than butlers, maids and field hands. Equity was lonely in its principles.

Posted by David at 2/20/2013 04:04:00 PM 

A warning to college profs from a high school teacher

www.washingtonpost.com: You are a college professor. I have just retired as a high school teacher. I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.

Posted by David at 2/20/2013 01:22:00 PM 

All the People

www.artsjournal.com/newbeans: Over on Facebook, my co-worker Sam Hurwitt reports an audition listing in San Francisco that requests “No obvious ethnicity” for a role. His friends, when asked, guessed that statement meant everything from “mixed” to “white” to my favorite: “‘whitable’ or ‘passable’ or ‘non-threatening ethnic looking person’.”

Posted by David at 2/22/2013 04:06:00 PM 

Interview with Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Box of Crayons: Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, with a bachelor’s, master’s and PhD in social work. She’s spent the past decade or so studying some juicy emotional issues — vulnerability, courage, authenticity and shame. Brene recently published a book called The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. In the book, she provides 10 guideposts to live a more authentic and wholesome life.

Posted by David at 2/23/2013 01:18:00 PM 

As 3-D Printing Becomes More Accessible, Copyright Questions Arise

All Tech Considered : NPR: Many people think 3-D printing could help spark a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S. — even President Obama highlighted this technology in his State of the Union address last week. But as 3-D printers and 3-D scanners get cheaper, this nascent industry could be roiled by battles over intellectual property. Not so long ago, a good 3-D scanner that could create accurate digital models of objects in the real world cost more than $10,000. Then, Microsoft released the Kinect — the video game controller that allows you to play games by just waving your hands.

Posted by David at 2/24/2013 05:45:00 PM

Greenpage Crosspost: News From the Real World Podcast 2-20-2013

This week's articles:

1. Why You Love That Ikea Table, Even If It's Crooked
2. How do I Get Over My Bad Habit of Procrastinating?
3. Cause of Super Bowl blackout was installed to prevent Super Bowl blackout
4. Campaign Launched To Stop School From Claiming Copyright On Student Work
5. San Francisco's Bay Bridge Is About To Become The World's Largest Light Sculpture
6. Robert Wilson's Theatrical Universe
7. Marianne Elliott: 'Why do something that's run of the mill?'
8. Can a play with a mentally challenged cast be reviewed by critics in the standard way?
9. Wing News (February 2013)
10. Judge rules that it's illegal to sell custom Batmobiles because the Batmobile is itself a fictional character

Featuring:Dale, Lauren, Matt, & Margo

Your Mother Doesn't Live Here

A brief photo essay in honor of the students of the School of Drama.

Greenpage Crosspost

This week's articles:

1. Top 10 skills children learn from the arts
2. Campus weighs in on stress culture
3. Boerne teen crushed by stage prop; school says it won't pay
4. High levels of stress at Carnegie Mellon decried
5. Amit Drori's Robotic Wooden Animals Are Like A Da Vinci Drawing Brought To Life
6. Female Directors More Prominent in New York
7. The Guns in My Plays
8. Theater Education Programs Are in Demand for Workforce Creativity
9. Space Invaders: Unorthodox Arts
10. Work Ethic


plus bonus Losing My Religion in a Major Key

Featuring: Dale, Cat, Lauren, Christine, and Margo

Vote for Comment of the Week

Here are this week's contenders:

Student #1 has left a new comment on your post "Robert Wilson's Theatrical Universe":

I saw an installation piece put together by Mr. Wilson in New York when I was in high school, and it was one of the reasons I became involved with theatre. Hearing him talk about this disconnection he promotes in his work between narrative, sound and vision puts my memory of the installation in some perspective. I remember only bits and pieces, but overall my impression was of unease, a disjointed melange of sights and sounds, but not random or chaotic. It was a very carefully planned experience, even while nonsensical. For instance, I recall entering a room in the gallery, the walls of which had been covered floor to ceiling in a shaggy, almost hairy material. Towards one corner there was an elephants leg, larger than scale, like a roman column. As you approached the leg, drawn to it by a vague human moaning, you found in the opposite side an iron jail cell door, curved to fit the radius of the elephant's leg. Inside, standing with his back to you looking into a mirror, was a man dressed like Napoleon, hand in jacket. OK, so maybe it was nonsense. But the experience forced you to make a narrative out of what you were seeing and hearing. In a way I can almost see it now as an exercise in how our minds crave and devise patterns. Even when presented with logically disconnected elements, we find ways to make sense of them. It's the same capacity that led us out of the jungle, and I appreciate Wilson's work because it doesn't take it for granted. You have to work to get experience his stuff, and there is nothing passive about it. 

Student #2 has left a new comment on your post "Broadway, coming to a nonprofit theater near you":

Pardon me for being the naive flagbearer for commercial theatre, but is there anything that says New York Broadway theatre isn't "artistically interesting", according to Kelly? There's a really vile association in the public opinion that well-financed, fiscally viable plays that get mass acclaim are "crap art". Good People is not a fluff piece, it's a really strong play. Same with Mountaintop, Clybourne Park, Motherf**ker, etc. - they're amazing scripts that have the added benefit of being commercial (relatively cheap and simple to produce, as a result of cast sizes and unit sets). And if your not-for-profit mission statement calls for contemporary plays of importance to your region, I feel like these plays can be justified, PLUS will be solid sellers.

What gets lost in the middle are the voices of local playwrights, who without the slots in the regional and NFP theatres have less opportunity to have their works presented. That has to be a judgment call on the theatre with regard to the number of submissions and the strength of their works. The new play initiative listed in the article is an attempt at giving some development assistance and a guaranteed outlet for these plays, outside of the regular season. Also, after development, it's possible these plays may become the company's first picks for full season slots.

I suppose I don't want to discount the concern that X% of your season is going to shows that are being pushed out of NYC instead of keeping it in the family, but don't believe for a second that the NYC shows are selected purely on a profitability measure. Put good plays in your season, regardless of where they come from. 

Student #3 has left a new comment on your post "Shakespeare's Globe to stage history plays on orig...":

I love this idea. What struck me most in this article was the quote about the British being obsessed with their own history, and I'm equal parts excited and incredibly jealous that they taking advantage of that history to stage these plays in their actual settings. It's so easy when seeing a play to separate yourself from the action onstage, and so much of it depends on suspension of belief. Yes, this stage is only 40 feet wide but the audience has to imagine that it is a vast huge open battlefield. Actually being in that vast huge open battlefield lends a whole new and exciting aspect to watching theatre, because there is less suspension of belief required and so the audience may be able to become more invested and more involved in the story and the characters. 

Student #4 has left a new comment on your post "Tonight: Duquesne grad Eric Starkey brings the mag...":

I'm not particularly interested in talking about this show, but I do want to talk about something else. Lately, I've been noticing a pattern among theatre programs in Pittsburgh. Many of the actors who graduate from them stay in Pittsburgh. Except the ones from CMU. I was thinking about why this might be. I've never attended another theatre program in this area, but I know for myself and many others at CMU it feels as though all directions say Pittsburgh is not the place you should stay to achieve your goals. Maybe other schools don't share this philosophy. And I'm actually pretty grateful, because I don't think people should just stay in the city they went to college in. Regardless of whether of not you would be able to achieve your goals here, I think it's one of the most important things a young adult can do to let go of their college life and start their career somewhere entirely new. 

Student #5 has left a new comment on your post "Can a play with a mentally challenged cast be revi...":

This article REALLY made me think about how we as a theatre community view and critique theatre. I have worked with several special needs children in Youth Theatre back at home and we would always end up shocked by how unbelievably great they end up. I strongly believe that it is unfair to not critique a show normally because it has a mentally challenged cast, but I feel like the critic should definitely take into consideration the amount of work that they must put in to get the outcome the did. I think that if this is in the professional world, these people choose to do this because this is what they love. You should not destroy their hopes and dreams by critiquing them too harshly, but you should also not put too much of a damper on your opinion. Although this profession is much more judgmental, it is just like any other profession. You need to take things into consideration. It depends.

Worth a Look

Here are some posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time:

Robert Wilson's Theatrical Universe

Classical Music - Limelight Magazine: I began to make my first works for the theatre in the late 1960s, and they were all silent. This culminated in a major work that was seven hours long – and also silent. It was written with a 13-year-old African-American deaf-mute boy who had never been to school and knew no words. We were supposed to show it only twice in Paris in 1971 but it was a huge success and we ended up playing for five-and-a-half months to 2,200 people every night in a sold-out theatre. The last thing I had expected was to have a career in the theatre, as my background was in architecture and painting. The work was called Deafman Glance, and the French called it a “silent opera”. I started thinking about it and realised that’s exactly what it was: it was structured silences. That was my beginning.

Posted by David at 2/17/2013 03:16:00 PM  

Marianne Elliott: 'Why do something that's run of the mill?'

Stage | The Observer: Marianne Elliott loves a challenge. The director of such high-risk projects as the National Theatre's runaway hit War Horse and its more recent smash, The Curious Incident Of the Dog in the Night-Time, as well as the dark, pared-down Port, which recently opened at the Lyttelton, she has never knowingly opted for a theatrical safe bet.

Posted by David at 2/15/2013 03:23:00 PM  

Can a play with a mentally challenged cast be reviewed by critics in the standard way?

The Globe and Mail: On the stage of the Young Centre in Toronto these days, an actor with Down syndrome is confronting audience members with their own prejudice, demanding, “You think I’m retarded? Look at yourself!” Toronto playwright and director Judith Thompson is the hand behind this harrowing moment: She is the director and co-creator of Rare, a show in which nine Down syndrome adults talk about their lives, their pain and their hope. The show, which opened this week, almost defies criticism – Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck has declined to assign it a star rating while Toronto Star reviewer Robert Crew has given it four stars – but not contextualization.

Posted by David at 2/14/2013 03:22:00 PM  

Wing News (February 2013)

americantheatrewing.org: Ben Cameron talks with Alan Brown (of Wolf Brown), Cynthia Hedstrom (of the Wooster Group), and Howard Shalwitz (of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company) about regional theatre’s impact.

Posted by David at 2/14/2013 02:57:00 PM  

Judge rules that it's illegal to sell custom Batmobiles because the Batmobile is itself a fictional character

io9.com: California resident Mark Towle runs car customizing shop Gotham Garage, which makes replicas of cars from TVs and movies. Naturally, Batmobiles were on the menu, at least until Warner Bros. smacked Towle with a lawsuit for violating its intellectual property. Now a U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew judge has ruled that the Batmobile is subject to copyright because the Batmobile is itself a fictional character in the Batman franchise.

Posted by David at 2/13/2013 02:57:00 PM

Pittsburgh Techshop

Thoughts on my visit to the Pittsburgh Techshop...

1. Wow this is a lot of people. I don't know how many people they were expecting, but I bet this was more than they bargained on. I'm not good at judging crowds but I would put the group at over 500. On the way there in the car I mentioned to Mrs. TANBI that maybe we shouldn't have gone right at the beginning because we'd be the only ones there. We weren't.

1a. (I am not renumbering again) This certainly is a prominent location. The Pittsburgh Techshop is on the first floor of Bakery Square. It is prime retail space. Kind of unexpected for a place like this.

2. Damn that's expensive. It seems like membership is about $100/month normally. There were "tonight only" bundles that were almost half that (sidebar about how much I hate "tonight only" type pricing). I don't know what figure I had in my head, but this is a lot more. I guess having been around shops literally all my life I have taken them a little bit for granted.

3. Our laser is bigger. When the guide of our tour told us about the laser that they were going to have it occurred to me that the one in our shop was bigger. What I was hoping for from the thing was that their inventory would be a lot better than ours. It certainly was newer, but better turned out to not be a given.

4. Well that certainly is a big whiteboard. There's a multipurpose room, tour dude called it a conference room, when I was in it it screamed "party room." But anyway there's this multipurpose room that has dividing airwalls that are full wall dry marker boards. Pretty neat.

5. I do not like Tourdude. He seemed very taken aback with himself and the venture.

6. They aren't ready. In the back of my mind I knew this was going to happen. I had been part of an email chain with Pittsburgh folks trying to find a temporary space for Techshop classes because they weren't going to make their date. In the front of my mind I had forgotten. Many tools weren't there yet, there were bunches of things still shrink wrapped or palletized, and there were contractor tools jammed into a couple of rooms. In the end, I could have read about a bunch of things I wouldn't see online without coming out.

7. I still don't know what happens if you break something. Tourdude really didn't have this answer or didn't want to give it to me. I was curious to know what happened to a user if they cocked up one of the tools, like if you machine into the work surface of a mill or bury the head of the CNC router. Pretty much he said that's why you have to provide your own bits and that you would get scolded. But then he implied if you crashed the cutter head of the water-jet it would cost $900. They have a SawStop. I know that's $80 every time it is tripped. I am still wondering if as a user I would have to pay.

7a. People use this as their business shop. Tourdude explained that sometimes people running a business would come in and book up the laser. I get how that would happen, but it seems antithetical to the "maker" idea. Maybe if you do it to get your business going. But once you have a product I would think one would want to tool up or find a vendor. But maybe I am wrong.

8. They have a SawStop saw. They think that is really cool. Tourdude didn't say what would happen if you got your hand in the joiner. Ouch. They will have a 48x96 router table. We have a 48x96 router table.

9. Their Water-Jet is bigger than ours. Or, they have a water-jet. Very nice. They also have an Ironworker although it isn't set up.

10. They have a reasonably sized powder-coating oven - along with sandblasting and a spray booth. All very nice.

11. They have a commercially built vacu-form rig, although it is less than 30x30.

12. Those mills are really clean. I didn't see a metal lathe, I can't imagine they won't have one.

In the end, I was both impressed and not impressed. I'm not sure how that happens. It was bigger and smaller than I thought it would be and more and less than I thought. The price point is still difficult for me to grok. I am not sure what I would pay to have quasi-unlimited access to some premium tooling I don't normally have. I mean, I can already see the powder coated 1/4" steel plate dinosaur I would make. But for $1200/year I would get many more hours out of cable, right? No waterjet that way though.

Excited and disappointed. That's how it goes sometimes I guess.

Imperial Strategy

Earlier this week there was an article on Danger Room analyzing the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back and basically showing how every single Imperial decision throughout the battle was a colossal mistake. There were many decisions that were highlighted, but the single biggest failure appeared to be taking down the Rebel shield. The idea being that had they left the shield intact that Imperial ships could have been positioned to interdict rebel ships emerging from the one exit point.

I actually think that the ion cannon would have provided sufficient cover in that scenario and therefore the correct target for the ground forces wasn't the shield generator, it was the ion cannon. But whatever. The thing that actually came to mind while reading this article was that the battle of Hoth is not nearly the level of failure the Empire suffered at Yavin and Endor. In both of those cases Imperial forces made the same kind of mistakes made at Hoth and allowed the Rebels to snatch vitory from the jaws of defeat. Mostly it seems that the failures are failures of patience.

At Yavin, midway through the battle we hear that the Death Star leadership have analyzed the attack and found that there is a risk. They must have known at that point that the risk was the thermal exhaust port. Their response to this is to try to destroy the Rebel fighters ship to ship. That's certainly proactive and aggressive, but wouldn't a better course of action have been to have taken a shuttle and park it over the exhaust port? I mean, sure, that wouldn't have solved the problem of the X-Wings buzzing around the station like gnats, but it also certainly would have bought enough time for the station to clear the planet and blast the Rebel base into smithereens.

Endor is the same failure again. All they have to do is keep the shield up. They have a technically superior force, probably numerically superior too. They also are fully aware that they are going to be attacked in spite of the fact that the Rebel commandos think they have the element of surprise. All they have to do is stack scout walkers in front of every door and put stormtroopers body to body behind each door and sit tight. In that scenario there is no way Han and Leia take the ground station and bring down the shield. But instead of doing literally nothing and winning - because with the shield up the Death Star would just pick off Rebel capitol ship after capitol ship - the Imperial forces chase the rebels into the jungle, off their home field and onto unfamiliar ground where they are embarrassed by a gang of teddy bears. Again, a lack of patience costs the Empire their win.

I guess it is possible that in the case of the Battle of Endor that Luke and Anakin would still have defeated the Emperor, so the outcome of the war might have been the same, but there is no reason they couldn't have defeated the Rebel forces.

It seems consistent that since aggression and impatience are hallmarks of the Dark Side of the Force and the Empire is led by the Sith and so they fail exactly because of those traits. But with a closer look it does seem that from a military standpoint the Empire was pretty stupid.

Ellipses...

Mrs. TANBI got me a Valentine's present. She's pretty awesome...Trying hard to get the kids to keep up the Tumblr. It isn't easy... It is pretty sad how low the bar has gotten for legislation. Issues of great importance deserve more than just a vote... I miss my Vegas apartment laundry, when I used the washer as a hamper: when it fills up just add soap and turn it on... The weather this February is really just incomprehensible... It is beginning to look a lot like I didn't leave enough time in the ScenoFab syllabus for student presentations. I'll have to start looking for places to make it up... We've only been planning for about a year, but I think we might actually be ready to pull the trigger on setting up the home office... I need to establish some sort of way to capture blog ideas. For a while I thought that's what these posts were for... Well it is official, I am missing things at work. Guess I just don't have the bandwidth I used to... I think it would be extra special if they did pick Bono to be Pope, and it's not because I bet on him... Bering Sea Gold must have caused a bunch of people to turn up to dive the following year. This season they added a pretty scary disclaimer to the end... Seems like each state that legalizes same sex marriage the story gets a little less hype. Maybe that's how it should be... Wondering if we should become fans of the Pittsburgh Women's Football team. There are probably tickets available and when they play it isn't nearly as cold... I need to put together a concert rigging package: truss, motors, distro, the works. Let me know if you think you know how much money I need and what I ought to include... Almost missed the podcast this week. I think it's happening tomorrow. We'll see...

So Here's the Thing

I've been thinking about last night's State of the Union. Particularly I've been mulling over the part about high school education. The President sighted a program where along with a high school diploma students would also complete an associate's degree in a technical subject. It strikes me as a step in the correct direction, but it also has me wondering.

First I am wondering about the state of that high school diploma if on top of it people have the time to complete an associate's degree. I'd assume that associate's would have to include 2-3 classes each semester for at least two years. Aren't there already high school requirements that fill that space? I find myself thinking that this is more akin to a double major where you can count requirements against both than the double degree implied by saying its a diploma and a degree.

If it is more like the double major, then isn't this just making high school better? Why do we need for them to also get an associate's? Doesn't the existence of an associate's degree you can obtain concurrent with your normal high school education kind of inherently degrade the degree?

Why not make high school harder?

I went to a great high school. In some ways my education has sort of gone downhill since my high school graduation. I had more science in high school than since high school. I had more math in high school than since high school; more history, more language, probably even more English. I have a BFA and an MFA. In receiving both of those degrees I never needed more math, science, or language than I had mastered in high school.

I get the feeling that isn't true of the majority of high school students. Why is that?

Probably all students aren't ready for a high school program that rigorous when they are in high school. Maybe the issue there is really about social promotion. Maybe social promotion should end in high school. Maybe high school should have rigorous standards but should also take as long as it takes. Could we have a system where if you get to a point where you plateau academically due to maturity that you start to go part time and work part time, but that you are still required to continue to attend until you finish.

Not everyone is ready to go to college at 18. That would imply that many people really aren't ready to graduate high school at 18. I don't think that's a huge revelation, and yet we put tremendous pressure on people to graduate in that time frame - even at the expense of a rigorous experience.

The flip side of this is that far too many careers, not just jobs but careers, far too many careers require a college degree. That too seems like it isn't such a revelation, and yet more and more jobs seem to require college. Why is that? Why can't we provide the rigor in high school to make people able to fill more civic roles without going to college?

Why can't we let people take longer to get a much better socially mandated education and then be in a position to make a good life for themselves?

I'm not sure concurrent Associate's Degrees are the answer. We need to make high school better.