So Here’s What I Do in Nebraska.

Remember, I’m out there for the International Thespian Festival, which is kind of like the Super Bowl of high school theater.  Or maybe the Euro Cup.  Or maybe not like either of those things at all really, outside of the celebratory nature.  High schools from across the country (and all over the world, really–we had students from Australia and Dubai in the mix) bring the shows they’ve been working on all year, put them on for other high school kids, take various classes, and generally get to immerse themselves in the theater world for a few days.  Good times.  That’s what they do.  Here’s what I do:

1. Travel for 13 hours from Houston to Lincoln.  This includes two hours in the Houston airport, a flight to Chicago, a few hours there, some sitting on the plane, a flight to Omaha, an hour there, and an hour van ride to Lincoln.  Somehow, I had thought that going from Houston might be easier than going from NYC.  Oh well.

2. My main reason for being on this trip is to serve as dramaturg for a play writing by a high school student.  I probably mentioned this before, but my job as dramaturg is to help the student understand what her play is about, then help her work on ways to make sure that the play is doing exactly what she wants it to be doing.  This involves a lot of question-asking, a lot of suggesting-making, and usually, some tricky psychology to keep the writer from feeling attacked or insufficient.  I’m happy to say that my playwright this year needed no such coddling; she came to town ready to work, she worked, she learned, she kept a super pleasant attitude all the way through.  I’ll be writing about her play later this week.

3.  I eat some soft serve ice cream.  Actually, I eat a lot of soft serve ice cream.  Actually, we all eat a lot of soft serve ice cream.

4. The other main thing I do out there is teach a class on playwriting.  This year, my class morphed into something I started calling “10 Things Every Playwright Should Know.”  It’s a bunch of pretty basic and straightforward stuff, but I feel pretty confident in its importance to any playwright, especially any young playwright.  I get about five students a session for that class under its old name (Basic Dramatic Structure), but I anticipate a crush next year with the new name.  It’s all about your brand.

5. Seriously, I eat a ton of soft serve.

6. You always end up cultivating outside relationships with people in these things too, students especially.  One of our actors wants to talk about his own writing–you have the conversation.  Someone asks about where they should go to college–you have the conversation.  Someone asks about the Theater of Cruelty–you give him an example that is pretty unrepeatable here in print.  Basically, the job is to be excited about theater for a week.  And that’s why you go on trips like this (because it’s definitely not about the money)–to refresh and re-energize your connection to the business.

We’re Done in Nebraska.

Starting Monday, I will post about it all week.

Five days of high school theater goodness.  You’re going to want to be here for that.

I’m also going to do a New York theater roundup in the next few weeks, especially with a bunch of Broadway shows posting closing notices.

I have a feeling I might dive into some sports posts too, since I haven’t been able to do many of those so far.

And then there’s that Obama guy.

So there’s a lot to do.

July is a big month for me–home in Brooklyn, lots of writing, yoga, detoxifying my body, healthy living, all that good stuff.

We’ll see how much of that I share with you all.

But until then, there’s this:

Idina Menzel = Hits.

I’m just going to put Idina Menzel’s name as a tag in every post from now on.

Welcome to all the Rentheads and Wicked fans who stumbled on the blog with the last post.  Check out the rest of the archives.

Still posting irregularly for a few days while I’m out of town.  See you for the real schedule next week.

Let’s Talk About Rent.

So I’m out here in Nebraska, right?

I’m teaching and dramaturging for the International Thespian Festival, which is basically a massive gathering of high school theater nerds (and of course, I say this with the utmost affection) for a week of workshops and plays and community. The whole experience is pretty amazing, with thousands of kids swarming the University of Nebraska campus, singing showtunes, and being, for once at least, completely in their dream element. There’s theater everywhere you go, and it’s wildly accepting and open and positive, and when you’re involved in high school theater, that’s exactly what you need (and rarely get in real life).

Every night during the week there is a different show on the mainstage of the campus; these shows are kind of the main event of the week, and are attended by hundreds of students and adults. Tonight’s show was performed by students from Mary D. Bradford High School from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Tonight’s show was Rent.

Let’s back up and talk about Rent itself for a second. The first time I saw Rent was back in 1996 in its original incarnation at New York Theatre Workshop as part of a school trip. We sat in the front row center. Idina Menzel flirted with me from the stage. Taye Diggs spit on me as he sang Seasons of Love. My jaw stayed pretty solidly on the floor throughout the night (although thankfully, it was closed as the spit was flying). I had never seen a show like this–young energy, music that seemed to follow more in the footsteps of Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair then in the traditional show-tune stuff that rubbed me the wrong way. More importantly, I had never seen actors who so deeply cared about what they were performing, who were so ludicrously invested in the show and its message that the audience couldn’t help but be dragged right along with them into the story, into the world of the play. It’s impossible to explain to folks who didn’t see that production exactly what that production was, because I’m not sure there’s ever been anything quite like it, not with that moment and those circumstances. It was a true phenomenon, and to this day one of the most moving theatrical experiences I have ever had.

And then, tonight.

I don’t do reviews on this blog, and I’m certainly not going to review a high school production of anything, let alone of an edited (read: sanitized) version of a musical with, as they say, “mature themes” that are probably far and beyond what any high school student has a right to be able to play. But I will say this, and I’ll skip a space for emphasis:

God damn, that was amazing.

I’ve never been a party to giving a show a standing ovation in the middle of the performance. I was tonight. We talk about showstoppers. We overuse the term. Tonight, I saw a showstopper. An audience full of high school students were sobbing, audibly sobbing. Grown folks were sobbing, audibly sobbing. We’re talking a bravura performance here in the middle of the show, with an ensemble that virtually became a church choir, and a Joanne/Tom Collins combination that, that, that–I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. Beautiful, moving, powerful. Stunning really.

And that’s not the thing; here’s the thing. If you dive back a few posts (I’m to lazy to link for you), you’ll see my feelings about In The Heights and the way it activates audiences and celebrates community in that way that only theater can do. Rent does that naturally–that’s why it’s run this long, sold this many CDs. Now take what Rent does naturally, and multiply that by hundreds of high school students who have been listening to the CD their entire theatrical life, who have memorized every line without ever having seen the show in person. Multiply that by this atmosphere, this glorious week-long oasis where the theater geeks are the rock stars, are the centers of our own little isolated universe, where we all sing along to Rent and aren’t ashamed, don’t consign it to the guilty pleasure column but embrace it, embrace it as a sign of our communal values and beliefs, cling to it as a validation of our deep need for community and union and acceptance and yes, love, unconditional love, the kind of love, as they say, “that Angel had.”

Go ahead. Multiply it by those things.

If you can’t work out the equation, here’s what you get:

When Maureen tells the audience to “moo with me,” everyone–everyone–in the auditorium starts to moo, and moo loudly, and moo the way the character actually wants them to moo: deeply, from the heart. These kids are mooing as a sign of resistance, as a sign of rebellion and transgression, and yes it’s sanitized, and yes it’s censored and controlled, but you know what? These kids would have mooed for ten minutes straight if the cast had let them, because right there, in that moment–and this sounds stupid and overdramatic, but I’m a dramatist, so whatever–right there in that moment, a generation of theater kids belonged. And belonged together. And I went all kinds of emo.

And for me, the thing is this (I know I said I already discussed the thing, but here’s the thing behind the thing, which is a Guernica reference for those of you who know that play): I didn’t think Rent was going to hold up all that well. I thought it was dated. I let the awful movie and the last 30 minutes of the show itself (which I think is pretty uninspiring and unfinished, quite frankly) blind me to the fact (and I think it is a fact, not an opinion) that the first 3/4 of that show is pretty effing remarkable, and unique, and groundbreaking just like all the press and hype had claimed it to be. It’s a powerful show, period, not just for those of us who saw it in the shadow of Jonathan Larson’s untimely passing.

And these kids–these kids got it. Twelve years later.

Now look. It’s not a perfect show to begin with (like I said, the last 1/4 really falls apart, I think, and there are some problematic story points throughout), and the censored-down high school version raises a whole bunch of other questions and issues, particularly in the realms of gender and sexual politics. But tonight–tonight I saw something that I really liked: a theater world that’s evolving, becoming contemporary, becoming relevant to young people while maintaining some kind of socially relevant edge. And I realized that In The Heights and Passing Strange and the like are keeping this alive and taking it new directions, and I remembered that the only person out of his seats to give the Rent performance at the Tonys its due and well-deserved standing O was Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Because he got it.

Like these kids get it now.

(Slightly unrelated–I stumbled across this on youtube just now. Wow.)

Briefly.

I’m in Nebraska. It took me 13 hours to get from Houston to Lincoln. Good times.

Playworks is about to begin at the International Thespian Festival. That really is good times. We’re having fun already. I will try to be semi-actively blogging about the process this week.

Houston was ludicrous and excellent. I watched a lot of soccer. I don’t really like soccer. But still.

Pictures from Houston…will not make their way to this blog. Not most of them. Most of them won’t make it anywhere. You all don’t need to see any of that.

Weather is good, life is good, I will try to be as present as possible in the blogging world this week.

The Telectroscope.

So a while back I went to see the Telectroscope in Dumbo. I was very excited about it. I’m not sure why. There’s not a lot to the Telectroscope–I mean, you get to look at people in London via live video. If I knew someone in London (I mean, I do know people in London…hmmm), then maybe I could make a date to see them face-to-face, and then (cue music) even though we’d know how very far about we are, it’d help to think we might be wishing on the same bright star. Ahem.

So I wasn’t really all that impressed by the video part of it, but I think the video part of it is really not the point. I mean, look at this:

And then this:

And it’s kind of amazing.

More pics of this and other awesome stuff from DUMBO can be found here.

A Brief Update on Me.

For those of you who care to know what I’m working on/doing for the rest of the summer:

1. For the past week I’ve been in NYC, finishing up a first draft of the adaptation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding that I’ve been working on for the past year with director Jaime Castaneda. I’m also starting a new play called VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) – an absurd comedy about baseball sabermetrics (expect a more detailed post on this within the next week or so). After a year of school where I’ve studied nothing but the business of show business, it feels good to devote some time to the show.

2. Tonight I head off to Houston for a mini-vacation (one that undoubtedly will result in a great many stories that will not be related on this or any other blog ever), then over to Nebraska, where I’ll be dramaturging and teaching as part of the International Thespian Festival (which I feel like I’ve already blogged about, but whatever–most of you are just getting here for the first time now anyway). I’ll be working on a one-act play (written by a high school student) about a small community whose government forces all personal interaction to take place through a Facebook-like application. It’s exciting. Last year, I worked on a play about Ireland and the IRA and hunger strikes–I guess I’m the go-to ‘turg for plays with some sort of issue-mindedness. Can’t imagine why that is.

Also, I will be eating lots of soft-serve ice cream.

3. July is a bit up in the air, so if you’ve got some gigs for me, let me know. I’ll be turning 31 at the end of the month, and since I spent my 30th birthday in Cleveland (no offense to Cleveland), I might just treat this year like the big 3-0. i’ll also be looking for full-time employment for the fall, so if you know of any good artistic associate/manager type gigs, keep me in mind.

4. In August, I’ll be in Chicago twice (or possibly for one long trip), working on two different plays. First up, I’ll be working on The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Victory Gardens from August 5th to 10th. Then, Jaime and I will be back at American Theater Company, working with Teatro Vista on a large-scale workshop of our Blood Wedding. That runs until the 24th or 25th–I’ll update when I know more.

Then it’s back home to Brooklyn, jumping back into school and (hopefully) some kind of awesome new job.

So there you go.

(EDIT: So with my trip out of town, posts will be somewhat non-existant for the next few days, unless I can figure out how to auto-post the one bad boy I’ve got left.  Take the chance to read through the old posts [there are some good ones in there, I promise], leave some comments, suggest some things you want me to write about, and I’ll deal with it all from Nebraska.)

The Dramatists Guild Beef with The Tonys

I’m a member of the Dramatists Guild, which, if you don’t know, is the organization that works to protect the rights of playwrights throughout the industry.  It’s not a union, because playwrights are independent contractors and therefore not legally entitled to collective bargaining, but it is a group of affiliated artists often working towards common goals.  This morning, I received the following e-mail, and to be honest, I hadn’t really thought about how much of a problem this was.  Now granted, the big money categories are all in the musical realm, and playwrights and book writers (outside of Tracey Letts these days) are not big Broadway stories.  The Guild is right though–the reason that a lot of playwrights work in the theater is that we get to create worlds from scratch.  We get to put the whole process in motion.  It’s a shame that we were relegated to the pre-game show this year.

Here’s the e-mail:

Dramatists guild statement on the tony awards

On Sunday night of June 15, the annual celebration and commendation of this year’s Broadway theatre season was celebrated at the Tony Awards hosted by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League. While we gratefully acknowledge the program time spent on how playwrights construct their dramatic ideas (and the mention of all four playwrights’ names), we are concerned (and have expressed our concern) that the awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Revival of a Play were relegated to pre-televised programming. Council President John Weidman maintains, “The theatre is an art form which is driven by writers. Nothing exists before the script. So when theatre awards are given out, it’s appropriate that the writing awards should take first position. Even acknowledging the enormous time pressures on the producers of the Tony Award broadcast, Best Book of a Musical and Best Revival of a Play belong live, on the air.”

Kevin Garnett.

And you know what, folks?

On a whole lot of levels, this is the equivalent of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s speech from Sunday night.

I actually just meant to post the link and then go to sleep, but I’m going to expound a little bit.

See, I come from a generation that often didn’t/doesn’t thrive on excitement.  Our athletes are encouraged to act like they’ve been there.  Our performers are drilled on professionalism and saying the right things.  Our politicians–well, first of all, we haven’t had our politicians until lately, and I’m not just talking about Obama–have learned to play political games, walk the straight and narrow, avoid offending folks.  And of course, there’s value in all that.  But there’s also a lot of value in this:

And this.

We need emotion.  My generation needs emotion.  More importantly, we need joy.

Congratulations, KG.

So Hamlet.

I’m not sure I have a whole lot that I want to say about the Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet, but I did say I’d come back and write about, so let’s see what comes out. And I guess that this is as good a place as any to get started: I don’t think I like Shakespeare.

Now yes, I respect Shakespeare and his works. I see great value in his work being produced and read and studied. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw Shakespeare that wowed me. Hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Shakespeare that wowed me. The work is the work and the words are the words and there’s a lot that’s impressive about it, of course, but does it still strike me as great theater? Rarely, if ever.

Now granted, I’m pretty particular in what I like onstage, and my tastes tend to run to works that are (a) relatively accessible, (b) containing some kind of young person energy, and (c) by or about contemporary folks, especially folks of some kind of color (and maybe in another post I’ll write about how insufficient that phrase feels to me, but how I can’t think of anything that better expresses what I’m trying to say). Shakespeare, no matter how you slice it (fitting choice of words for the last scene in this production), no matter how you jazz it up and reimagine it, is none of those things.

And yes, there is a timelessness to Shakespeare’s work, and I understand the idea of universality, and Shakespeare is important because he speaks to everyone, and it’s not about race or creed or color, or even about specific issues, because the plays are about big themes, big ideas–I get it. I understand the argument. And I believe the argument, up to a point. I think kids should be reading Romeo and Juliet. I think Iago is the baddest dude on the theatrical planet (although watching Hamlet again reminded me of how evil Claudius really is). I’ve even seen a really good production of Cymbeline (at the Pearl, many years ago) that spoke to Shakespeare’s effectiveness as well as any production I can remember.

But I mean, seriously. Enough.

Enough for me, at least. Part of my problem is structural–Shakespeare’s plays are five acts, and they climax in weird places. The main character dies, and we’ve still got speeches left to be told. We spend big chunks of time on subplots and disconnected thoughts that don’t do it for me–not that I think neoclassically and want unity of time, place, and action, but I do want continuity and connection and steady forward movement. That’s not what Shakespeare’s game plan was. He’s got a different pace (and really, all classical theater does, and really, all theater that is of its own time–that is, all good theater–is operating at a pace specific to its time period. It’s written for its audience, not an audience 400 years later), a more languid pace at times, more about language and poetry, which is all well and good (I mean, I write 1000 word blog posts about punching monkeys, so you know I’m not afraid of language), but really, seriously, enough already.

So that said (545 words before getting to the point), any production of Hamlet is starting out in a hole with me. I’d rather be seeing a production of a new play. And yes, I understand the economics, and that Shakespeare sells tickets, but that doesn’t change my personal preference. So that’s the hole any production has to dig itself out of with me: proving why this show needs to be done now. And I can’t say that this particular production made itself feel especially essential to me, even though I certainly didn’t hate it, and probably even kind of liked it some, if not many, levels.

What I definitely liked was, maybe surprisingly, all the TV actors. Sam Waterston was hilarious, Andre Braugher is a bad ass still, and Lauren Ambrose is, as we previously discussed, one of my favorite actors ever. They all brought good natural feels to their roles, regardless of how small those parts might have been. But Hamlet obviously lives and dies with Hamlet, and I’m not sure how I felt about Michael Stuhlbarg (and I haven’t read the Times article on him yet, which might provide some insight into how he approached the role). His Hamlet felt kind of legitimately crazy–not putting on airs to lull his enemies into submission before attacking–and I think that it hurt my overall connection to the show. It’s an interpretation, of course, a choice in acting and directing, and it’s completely legit as a choice, but I couldn’t help feeling that if Hamlet felt less crazy, then Ophelia’s legit madness would feel more tragic, and everything else would fall into place to have more of a moving impact.

But honestly, I’m not sure I even agree with what I just wrote.

(NOTE: I wrote this post a few days ago.  Since then, I have read the Stuhlbarg article in the Times, and didn’t find much of anything to change my view.  Then today, Brantley’s review came out, and I can’t say I disagree with any of it, really.  The moment he’s referring to did indeed inspire a reaction from me, one of those verbal “huh.” things you make when you appreciate an impressive beat.   And the “actor, direct thyself” bit — I couldn’t agree with that more.  In fact, I think I predicted a version of that line in the review as soon as I saw the scene.  It was hard not to see it coming)