New York Times Coverage of the Thespian Festival

Charles Isherwood wrote an article about the International Thespian Festival.

It’s a pretty solid article, even though it leaves out a lot of the stuff I would have covered. To be fair, there’s way too much happening over the course of the week to mention it all.

Here’s the first couple of paragrapsh to get you started:

THE room hummed with excitement. Table hopping was rampant. Warm congratulations and lavish compliments spritzed the air with fizzy good cheer. That secret ingredient that transforms a festive gathering into an electric one — the presence of celebrity — was easily detected.

The opening-night party for a Broadway show after the socko reviews have come in? Bar Centrale, around midnight at the height of the season?

No, it was an Applebee’s here, just after noon on a Wednesday in June.

This particular branch of the restaurant chain, you see, sits on the edge of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For a week every year the tides of Husker fever that roil the university are stilled, as this sports-crazed campus becomes the world capital of high school drama geekdom. More than 2,000 students from across the country, joined by a sprinkling of foreign visitors and a couple of hundred teachers and chaperones, descend on Lincoln for the International Thespian Festival, an annual extravaganza organized by the Educational Theater Association.

And when you’re done with that, you can look at this — pictures of the entire Festival.  I’m in that second link somewhere if you look hard enough.

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.

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.)

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.)