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Student #1 has left a new comment on your post "Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing":

AMEN! This might just be the best article I have ever read on the green page. Recently, I've been breaking out of working with just my age bracket. I've been in situations where I'm working with people who are much older, much younger, and everywhere in between. The funniest, most comforting, most depressing realization that I have come to is that everybody is faking it. No matter how long you have done your job, or how long you have practiced something, you don't feel like an expert. I've seen people do amazing things, but when they come back from it, they'll always say they feel like they were winging it, or that they don't think it was that good. This is in some ways distressing, but it's also the greatest human bond. Nobody knows why we're here, and we won't ever know, so we're all just trying to do our best with it.

Student #2 has left a new comment on your post "The Source of Bad Writing":

How many times in class have I raised my hand to contribute some banal tidbit to class discussion and tried to dress it up in words that only obfuscate the meaning, rendering the instructor and my classmates incapable of doing anything else other than smiling and nodding? Case in point. 

The Curse of Knowledge is a double-edged sword, to be sure. I can make what feels like a very valid and important point completely inaccessible to other purely through my word choice, thus frustrating me and alienating others. As a former biology major, reading the abstracts of various studies and experiments excited me at first. The technical language, and aloof adjective-ridden phrases reminded me of how I spoke and wrote. But then when I actually tried to read the abstracts, I found my mind sliding over the words, unable to find purchase in context I could not even begin to comprehend. I was reading brilliant papers, but they did me no good because I could not gain anything from them. 

I try to make myself aware of the words I use. Finding the balance between using the exact right word, and using a word that will be understood by many is hard. But why try and share knowledge in a way that makes it impossible to receive and interact with?

Student #3 has left a new comment on your post "Joseph Haj Makes the Case for Co-Directing":

I completely disagree with Haj I find his solution of co-direction to be an incorrect antidote for his struggle of growth. First off, Directing isn't an isolated craft. Sure you're the one driving the boat, but how many people do you have onboard to assist? It's not like the director is coming up with all the ideas, in terms of design and with the actors. And if the perception is that the director is the sole creator of these things, is an inability to engage with other artistic minds. I agree with Rachel about the use of a dramaturg. That was actually the first thing I thought of when he mentioned looking for someone who "continually interrogating the work all the way through, and it is a thrill to be able to work in the same room and share ideas, offer alternative ideas, propose alternative approaches, reflect to one another in real time what is and is not working." But there's also the assistant director? Instead of using them as a glorified notes taker and Starbucks monkey, why don't you take advantage of their young and unjaded mind? Also why don't you invite colleagues and collaborators BEFORE the show opens? What about the Artistic Director? There are so many ways you can find people to engage and further your work, looking to someone else is really just a copout.

Student #4 has left a new comment on your post "Can Theater Speak to a Modern Audience Without Sho...":

The video at the end of the article was really interesting- I never could figure out why I didn't mind the text message displays in "Sherlock" but I hated the text messages in "The Fault in Our Stars." I now realize it was the bubbles around the words in "The Fault in Our Stars"- they made the movie look dated even when it first came out. Sherlock is the only show I've seen that I didn't mind how they displayed texts with floating words- otherwise I much prefer showing the cellphone screen (or just avoiding it entirely). 

This doesn't help much for theatre, though- it's not like you can magically float words next to actors, and using some kind of media or supertitles to get a similar effect seems like generally a terrible idea, unless the show is specifically centered around that as a concept. Maybe it's because we do so many shows set in the past, but I feel like I never see phones or computers in any play or musical- the only show I can immediately think of where a cellphone is used is "Dead Man's Cellphone"- and in that show the phone is more of a plot point than a practical prop. Regardless, as more and more shows are written set in the present, this is going to catch up with us and we're going to have to find a way to depict phones, texts, and computers on-stage without being distracting.

Student #5 has left a new comment on your post "An Empire Where the Curtain Would Not Fall":

There were two quotes from Mr. Panter that really jumped out at me in this article. 

“And also, the Lyric is wonderful. It’s a world-class stage, and most stages on Broadway arguably are not world class — rather shallow, no real depth.”

This is something I'm constantly reminded of when looking at Broadway theatres. The houses and the backstage areas are extremely tiny. It makes shows very difficult to do and that I think is one of the reasons behind shows being so expensive. In order to have all the fancy stage things happen in these theatres you must find creative (and often expensive) solutions to make it fit in backstage footprints that are designed for a much smaller size show. So you should be prudent in what you are spending, but know the limitations of your space and if you have to exceed these limitations then you have to be prepared to spend the money. 

“You can’t be the biggest,” he said, “and not have people throwing things at you.” 

This was the other quote from Mr. Panter that I think people need to be reminded of. This is an industry which makes broad generalizations and opinions on people's work that vary all over the place. You can't please everyone so you have to make sure that you are happy with the product that you are putting out there. I think lots of people tend to take criticism to hard and it doesn't do them a lot of good. Take the criticism and learn from it is what is important. But realize that if you are going to move forward and up in your career it will be hard to avoid having things thrown at you. So be prepared and have a thick skin.

Worth a Look

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

Nobody Knows What The Hell They Are Doing

99U: By nature, human beings are comparers: our happiness depends, at least partly, on feeling better off than others. Studies have shown that many of us would rather earn more than our co-workers, even if that meant earning less money overall. And we judge our creative output similarly: we deem it a success if it’s as good or better than other people’s.

Posted by David at 10/02/2014 02:07:00 PM  

Artists as Change Agents

The Clyde Fitch Report: I’ve had the privilege of attending five of The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s Undoing Racism/Community Organizing workshops. I’ve attended it when it was all women of color, when it was for social workers and educators, and when it was for religious organizations. Each workshop is a unique experience, but the one that will always stick out in my mind is the one for artists and arts administrators I attended in January 2013.

Posted by David at 10/02/2014 02:10:00 PM 

 

Could Exoskeleton Suits Make an Appearance on the Jobsite?

Remodeling: In August, Lockheed Martin received a contract through the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences for the U.S. Navy to evaluate and test two of its industrial exoskeletons.

The exoskeleton, called the Fortis, is a lightweight, unpowered suit that increases the wearer’s strength and endurance by transferring the weight of heavy loads from the operator to the frame of the device.

Posted by David at 10/01/2014 04:42:00 PM  

 

Joseph Haj Makes the Case for Co-Directing

AMERICAN THEATRE: Directing is a lonely business. There was the time, long ago, when an actor-manager, also working as a member of the acting company, would take on the role of director. In recent history, and certainly in our current moment, the director is the auteur, an artist trained and expected to have a “vision,” a “concept,” an “approach” to a production. This vision, ideally, springs fully formed from the isolated brain many months before the show is cast.

Posted by David at 10/04/2014 02:59:00 PM 

Theatres are not catering for the working class majority

Culture professionals network | Guardian Professional: After many years working in theatre, including five as artistic director of the Broadway in Barking, I’ve attended my fair share of conferences about ways to encourage diversity in audiences for the arts. Race, youth and disability are always discussed but class remains the unnamed elephant in the room, often dismissed in a cursory mention of lower ticket prices. In my experience, class is the biggest barrier to accessing the arts, cutting across all the other marginalised groups.

Posted by David at 9/30/2014 02:56:00 PM

Vote for Comment of the Week

Voting ends Friday, noonish.

Student #1 has left a new comment on your post "Actors of Color Gain Ground":

As a woman and as a person of color who potentially wants to be in the entertainment industry, I understand why television wants to see more representation. I too wouldn't mind seeing more hispanics, women, or other people of color on television but I feel like a lot of times articles like "Actors of Color Gain Ground" forget that women and people of color do have ground. Modern Family and Scandal aren't the only TV shows airing strong women and people of color and the roles they portrayed have been portrayed for years. The Cosby Show was on television in the mid-eighties showing the life of a successful and loving African American Family. I Love Lucy, about a strong smart, successful, American woman, started airing in the 50s and was produced by cuban, Desi Arnaz, who also was a lead actor for it. Women and people of color have been on TV for a long time. Although all shows on television don't portray actors of color or strong women, America isn't completely made up of people of color or strong women, there are caucasian families and women who aren't part of major leading jobs, con tries, or corporations in America too. We aren't really breaking ground, nor do I think it is completely necessary at act as if we are. I appreciate the commotion about people of color and women being more present in entertainment, but I wish it wasn't at the expense of losing recognition of how much ground we have already earned.

Student #2 has left a new comment on your post "Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Play ‘Dry Land’ Confronts Abort...":

"The extreme also make an impression," is what comes to my mind in reading what this playwright is trying to do. The topic of abortion is a very touchy subject for a lot of people of both genders. Some see it as a form of taking a future great life while others see it as giving the mother/ parents the choice to take care of their own life. While one approach always seems highly selfish on the surface I get the sense that the playwright digs deeper into this issue. The other approach pushed forward the believe in destiny and fate and that our lives are predetermined and that free will is nothing more than a misconception which while is a big theme seen in a lot of plays, it looks to be not the route the playwright is taking. Theater is meant to mimic real life and get the audience thinking while sometimes also entertain but more at it's core inspire everyone to change and look at the world around them with more openness. I applaud the playwright for what they are trying to accomplish.

Student #3 has left a new comment on your post "What a piece of work is a (wo)man: the perils of g...":

This reminds me very much of how everyone that saw the senior thesis show Oleanna two years ago was still talking about it even a month after the show closed. That production promoted a huge amount of discussion about how gender roles effect questionable situations, and how people's reactions would have differed if the casting was the traditional male teacher and female student, or vice versa, or if both characters were male. 
I wouldn't go so far to say that equal opportunity "should never be applied to theatrical casting", because it can most certainly be applied, but there's only so much changing you can do to a script before it A) becomes a different show, or B) stays the same but loses the integrity of its message because it was not cast the way it was written to be cast. Shakespeare is especially difficult because not only do you have to consider how characters played by the opposite gender have to justify how their characters would think, feel, and act, but you also have to make accommodations in the writing to keep the iambic pentameter. How much rewriting can you do until you're creating a knock-off version of your original show in order to prove your point? Or, as another example, how would a director go about changing the script when he or she decides to produce an all-white production of The Color Purple? For some plays, yes, gender-crossing is extremely doable and can be done so to prove a point, like Oleanna. But for other shows, it would almost be an injustice to the playwright to simply do away with how they wrote their characters.

Student #4 has left a new comment on your post "Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Play ‘Dry Land’ Confronts Abort...":

Theater is about making a point, or conveying a message, or starting a movement. People want to see risks being taken and life being explored; thats what makes theater so interesting. Rather than finding this conversation of abortion, shocking, I find it brave and admirable. If theater is too afraid to confront controversial topics, than it's not really fulfilling its purpose. I'm strongly supporting the idea that theater is not about playing things safe, but rather exploring boundaries, and testing limits. I also find it interesting that the playwright is barely 21. But I think this gives us insight into the new up and coming generation. Our future is starting to be more involved and further engaged in social awareness. I also saw "Obvious Child", the indie film that also touched the topic of abortion, which I think further emphasizes this shift in entertainment that is accompanying the shift in generation. I'm so excited to watch this unfold as I think this strengthening connection between art and social awareness is vital.

Student #5 has left a new comment on your post "What a piece of work is a (wo)man: the perils of g...":

While I agree it's important to be wary about changing the rules of the world when cross-dressing/casting any roles, Lawson's argument gets into some problematic territory. Because we live in a world of more fluid sexualities and gender expression on a spectrum rather than a binary, we ought to reconsider how we present our largely hetero-normative theatrical cannon. Yes, a production that does not decide to change the pronouns for all women playing men's roles might be confusing at first...but then again, shouldn't individuals have the right to choose their own pronouns? (Then again, I would have to make a case for such a production being modernized. This acceptance of non-binary gender expression would not be as welcome in Shakespeare's time, or even as recently as the early 20th century, and therefore the production ought to reflect the time and place in which such gender expressions could be welcome and normalized in the world.) As for changing the psychologies of the characters by changing the casting, doesn't the gender-spectrum model also defy this view, given that a biological woman can think like a man? I didn't miss the Freudian implications in Propera's and Miranda's relationship in Taymor's Tempest (and in fact such implications make me a little uncomfortable reading the original text), but instead I see how a father's fear of letting go of their child is the same as a mother's fear. 

Lawson drives his point home later by claiming that such gender changes would be met with much more apprehension in more contemporary texts. It may be more obvious for us to see how contemporary playwrights write with gender-specific psychologies in mind, since we are more familiar with their modern expressions of gender. But isn't the fact that gender identity is constantly changing and being reconstructed by society even more a testament to the fact that we should challenge these standards in casting? 

This all comes together for me thinking about the BFA Thesis production of Oleanna two years ago, which cast two women and made the conflict between the teacher and student over race and altered the conflict based in gender. Some people took issue with the fact that the teacher had a husband offstage (originally, the male teacher has a wife), so that the teacher's sexuality did not become a threat to a female student, who files a harassment charge. Though the evidence may not have been explicit, how do we know that the female teacher was not a bisexual or lesbian woman still in the closet? And did her sexuality even matter in that situation, if rape and harassment are more about power than about sexual desire? 

I think these are the very questions theater ought to be exploring as we redefine gender and sexuality as a society.

Worth a Look

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

Theatre’s Economic Reality

Opening the Curtain — KCRW: If LA theater were a pyramid it would have a really wide base with really, really steep sides. At the bottom of that pyramid, in terms of numbers of seats not quality, would be the under 99-seat theaters - there's a ton of them. At the top of the pyramid would be our resident theaters - Center Theater Group, The Geffen - there are only a couple of them. In between those two levels there isn't a lot of middle ground or midsize theaters.

Posted by David at 9/22/2014 04:24:00 PM

Actors of Color Gain Ground

Backstage: This fall could mark a watershed moment for actors of color on American television.

ABC will debut a line up featuring an African-American family in “Black-ish,” a gay couple with an adopted Asian daughter in “Modern Family,” and Kerry Washington staring as a political fixer on “Scandal.”

On Thursday night Viola Davis will join that schedule when her series “How to Get Away with Murder” premieres. Meanwhile, the CW is launching “Jane the Virgin,” starring Gina Rodriguez, and Fox is set to debut “Empire,” which stars Terrance Howard, early next year.

Posted by David at 9/27/2014 08:37:00 PM

Cosmopolitan says it never wanted ‘Nocturne’ show

Las Vegas Review-Journal: They never wanted a separate show in the first place.

That’s perhaps the most surprising revelation in The Cosmopolitan’s response to a lawsuit filed by the producer of “Vegas Nocturne,” the now-closed show component of the interactive “supper club” Rose.Rabbit.Lie.

The hotel’s response, filed Friday in Clark County District Court, alleges “Nocturne” spun out of an integrated concept where “no one component would overshadow any other” and ended up costing $60,000 per show and losing $1 million per month for its six months of operation.

Posted by David at 9/26/2014 01:37:00 PM  

Premiere: The Making of The Boxtrolls' Awesome Steampunk Contraption

WIRED: One of the coolest things about Laika’s upcoming flick The Boxtrolls is the Mecha-Drill. It’s hard to explain why it’s so amazing without spoiling part of the movie, but the short version is it’s a huge steampunk contraption piloted by the film’s Big Bad, Archibald Snatcher (voiced by Ben Kingsley). It also was, as Laika president Travis Knight told WIRED, “the biggest puppet we’ve ever made.”

Posted by David at 9/27/2014 08:41:00 PM

Let it rip! When fart jokes were comedy’s last taboo

Salon.com: Like movies, jokes exist at different levels of naughtiness, and till recently those levels were surprisingly distinct and well defined—something I realized in researching this guide, as I noticed that certain funny things never appear at all in certain media. Farting is a good example: an innocuous phenomenon with no obvious reason for being tabooed (unlike masturbation, anal sex, or suicide, whose suppression was more comprehensible) but one that for most of the last century was conspicuously absent from mainstream American humor.

Posted by David at 9/23/2014 01:37:00 PM

Vote for Comment of the Week

Voting closes Friday noonish.

Student #1 has left a new comment on your post "Spamalot: Pennsylvania school cancels production b...": 

I sighed my way through this entire article. Heres the thing: I can totally understand a lot of the reasoning to cancel a production of Spamalot in a high school setting. The show could be considered slightly risqué in a public school setting. However, it was made painfully clear that this decision was made on the homosexual basis. 

"I am not comfortable with Spamalot and its homosexual themes.."

Not to mention that the decision seems like an afterthought, they and already written the check to license the play, which means SOMEONE had to have already read the play and several people, probably from the school district itself (that's how my school had to get productions approved) had to approve the show for production in the first place! Then, once someone realized that there were homosexual situations displayed, they had to scramble to come up with an excuse as to why the production was being cancelled.

This issue will never be corrected until further education, starting at a young age. At what age do we learn that it's "normal" for men to date women? 

Student #2 has left a new comment on your post "Controlled Chaos: House & Monitor Sound For Pharre...": 

This article is one of my favorite interviews that I have read in any sound magazine. This is because typically in interviews that I read the interviewer talks a lot about equipment and how they interact with new technologies that come out but this article talks about how it is to work with artist and what that is like. I think that working with the artist is the most important part of being a quality sound engineer. One thing about this article that also interests me is the way both engineers think that the best part of their jobs is growing with a band or artist from the bottom to the top. This is something that I would really like to do. I have a group of friends at home that started a band and are really great. While I'm at home I mix their live shows and mix them in the studio. What is nice is that now they are getting bigger and playing the NYC nightclub circuit and it has been rewarding for me to mix them ant our high school talent shows and now mixing and seeing them play for real people in NYC. We also are all in college at the same time so when we're not together there is no shows that go on without me.

Student #3 has left a new comment on your post "The World Wide Theater at Our Fingertips": 

I am a very big fan of the idea of making theatre free and accessible. It irritates me so much that if there is an incredible production of King Lear in New York, someone in Hong Kong won't be able to see it. With the advent of the world wide web, there is almost no reason that productions shouldn't at least start to be put online. The National Theatre took a step in the right direction by starting to allow some access in the form of limited screenings in select theaters, but it's not far enough. I really think that adding streaming to theatre can only be a good thing. I am not, however, a fan of the idea of allowing "tweet seats," or anything of that nature. Some would see a conflict in that distinction, but I absolutely do not. You have to consider the way in which a technology changes a theatre's space. Streaming shares an insulated space with the world, whereas "tweet seats," and the like disrupt a theatre space in a crude attempt to bring in a younger audience, which I find tactless. Anyway, I loved what the bloggers (Alex and DCW3) mentioned about the "universal theatre," a theater that exists outside of the bounds of geography. It's a beautiful way of using social media to actually connect in a real way. Theater, and really all art, is a way of sharing a truth ("mirror up to nature" and all that). Wouldn't it be incredible if we could share that truth even further than the confines of a blackbox or a proscenium? the truth is we can. The one thing that disheartened me about this article was that it left the idea as just that - an idea, an abstraction, rather than showing steps that have been taken towards some sort of universal theater. Sure, they half-heartedly attempted a project with "Leaving Dynamite," but the fact that they couldn't sustain that project speaks to the ADD nature of our generation, the generation raised on the internet. That said, there always be failure before success, unless success is accidental, and since no one has ever accidentally streamed a production before, I doubt this will be the case. THere's a lot to do, and a lot of ways to do it. I honestly think some amazing things are about to happen in the world of theatre.

Student #4 has left a new comment on your post "Stagehands the foundation of Made in America": 

It's always interesting reading about the various ways that IATSE locals are portrayed in the news. We go from the negative press that they've often gotten in NYC at various venues and then the praise that they have in this article. It's nice to see some positive praise for people that do a lot of unrecognized work in our industry. 

There are a couple things that irritated me with this article. The praise that the workers were getting for putting in 14+ hour days is highly misplaced. It's not a good thing that stagehands are having to put in 14+ hours over more than 10 days. That's not a safe instance and should be worked on so that this doesn't happen. 

Also, the stagehands being told to leave an area as a performance was starting is a good thing. Gallo's comment about it being atrocious they were told to leave and that they build the stage gives them right to be in the audience is irritating. Yes, they work very hard to set up the stage but that's their job, it does not give them the right to watch a free show. 

This is an interesting viewpoint to see how stagehands are viewed city by city and event by event.

Student #5 has left a new comment on your post "Harvard Lampoon president Alexis Wilkinson on how ...": 

I think Alexis Wilkinson makes a really good point when she talks about why most of her staff, and organizations in general, have issues with diversity. She talks about the inclination to hire and work with people you know and are friends with- a perfectly normal and reasonable way to behave, but in the end it can lead to a serious lack of diversity. It's not malicious or intentional in any way, but it does have serious effects we should be aware of. We definitely have this in theatre- it's something that we actually support. I know a major factor in my decision to come to CMU was the connections and alumni network you get out of it, and while this is really great for helping students make their way in the world and get jobs, it means we'll often be working for and with people who have similar backgrounds to us- people who were able to go to prestigious, expensive universities, and gain connections that many people with fewer opportunities don't have access to. 

On an unrelated note, I was impressed with her attitude towards the new website that they had created- she said that she felt that they might not even keep it up after October, and that she thought that every executive board should get to make its own decisions on what they wanted to do, and not be chained to tradition. This is an interesting perspective, and I have great respect that they put so much work in to one thing (the website is really impressive) when they knew it might not be permanent at all, or even last more than a couple months. It's great that they're willing to put in so much work into something just to see how it turns out, without worrying about the future or concerning themselves with worrying about their legacy.

Worth a Look

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

Are You Following The South Williamsport Spamalot Controversy?

Adaptistration: The 8/26/2014 edition of Slate published an article by columnist and Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts Interim Director, Howard Sherman that examines the decision by South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Junior/Senior High School administrators to cancel an upcoming production of Monty Python’s Spamalot by Eric Idle due to what the school’s principal, Jesse Smith, described as the musical’s “homosexual themes.” Smith’s decision was upheld by South Williamsport Area School District administrators even after Sherman’s article produced evidence that the principal and school superintendent, Dr. Mark Stamm, deliberately obfuscated and misinformed the public on their “homosexual themes” issue serving as a cornerstone for their validation.

Posted by David at 9/19/2014 07:01:00 PM

New York Street Fair Offers Rare Look Inside Film and TV Production

Variety: After a seven-year hiatus, Museum of the Moving Image, Theatrical Teamsters Local 817, and Kaufman Astoria Studios have brought back New York on Location, a free event that offers a behind-the-scenes look at film production in New York.
The day-long affair will take place Sunday, Sept. 21 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the backlot of Kaufman Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens; at the nearby Museum; and on surrounding streets.

Posted by David at 9/19/2014 06:57:00 PM

How Many Women Work Off-Broadway?

The Clyde Fitch Report: The League of Professional Theatre Women has released the results of a new gender parity study regarding women employed Off-Broadway from 2010-2014.
This study, part of their initiative called Women Count, covers 355 productions from 22 theater companies. The thirteen employment categories included in this study range from playwrights, directors and stage managers to choreographers, sound designers and set designers.

Posted by David at 9/18/2014 02:15:00 PM

Who’s Really Scalping Ticket Buyers

TicketNews: When concerts are sold out minutes after going on sale, primary ticket sellers like Ticketmaster and artists themselves have been quick to point the finger at the secondary ticket market for buying the best tickets and pricing them above face value. They have even supported legislation in attempts to limit secondary ticket websites’ influence in the market. But a recent story in the Huffington Post pulled the curtain back on a little known fact in the live entertainment business; many artists are scalping their own tickets.

Posted by David at 9/16/2014 10:47:00 AM

Harvard Lampoon president Alexis Wilkinson on how writers’ rooms should deal with gender and race

Salon.com: Last week, Harvard’s 138-year-old comedy mag, The Harvard Lampoon, launched its first Internet parody site, the Huffington Psst. It’s a mirror-image of Arianna Huffington’s traffic monster, with content taken down a notch or ten.

The project came to fruition under the leadership of Lampoon president Alexis Wilkinson, a woman who made headlines earlier this year for becoming the first black woman to lead the organization. Wilkinson, who has seemingly brought the venerated comedy institution into the 21st century with a new interest in Internet parodies and a heightened awareness of race and gender issues, recently opened up to Salon about her year as president, her observations about diversity in the comedy-writing world, and where the Lampoon may be headed next.

Posted by David at 9/15/2014 02:20:00 PM

They Always Look so Promising In the "Before" Pic

Ugh.