Victory Gardens’ Elaborate Entrance.

Victory Gardens has announced its 2009-10 season.

I’d do like I usually do, talking about the relative diversity of the season, the representation of writers of color, of women, of new voices, and all that is important and all, but I’m a little distracted by this paragraph:

The new season kicks off in the fall with “Year Zero,” a play about a 16-year-old Cambodian-American, penned by Michael Golamco. That studio production will play simultaneously with “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, ” a mainstage play about a professional wrestler penned by Kristoffer Diaz and directed by Eddie Torres.

We’ll be talking about this more later. A lot.

(EDIT: here’s the actual press release, as reprinted by Newcity Stage.)

Wrestling = Theater.

I’ve made this argument many, many times. So I’m not quite sure how I feel about what I’m reading here:

A group called Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling has for six years packed bars around this city with its lampoons of World Wrestling Entertainment, the pro league. Cast members have included a husky everyman who likes to tick off environmentalists by boasting about chopping down trees, and Ronald McFondle, a raunchy rendition of a clown character, who finishes off his opponents with a lewd gesture. They grapple on foam pads placed on stages in bars, not in rings.

The SSP, which calls itself a “fight cabaret” — theater with singlets, suplexes and sweat — has entertained crowds for six years in simple settings, fighting on foam pads placed on in Seattle-area bars.

Washington state’s Department of Licensing takes the high jinks seriously. Earlier this month, it classified the performances as “sports entertainment.” The ruling means the spoofers must meet safety regulations and could force the league to post a $10,000 bond, station medical personnel at events and buy a regulation wrestling ring.

Of course, here’s what this makes me wonder: if a theater in Seattle wanted to do Chad Deity, would it be classified as sports entertainment? And wasn’t the whole point of the term “sports entertainment” to allow the WWE to avoid the licensing requirements many sports have to face?

I Just Want To Point This Out.

Best Musical: In The Heights
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

This is not a coincidence, nor or these two unrelated events. I’ll say no more on that topic.

But I also want to point out that if you add those two and then multiply by The Wrestler, you get…The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.

More Reasons Why Wrestling is Beautiful.

Or more beautiful than you understand, at least.

The woman in this clip is Victoria, long-time bad guy in the WWF/WWE.  Her character has always been a psycho bully, beating up the more popular women and never really being a fan favorite.  She was never the most popular performer in the business, but she worked hard, made her opponents look good, and always gave the fans a great show.  Last week, she retired.  The clip below takes place during a commercial break, meaning that it wasn’t televised for the folks at home.

What you see here is one of the moments that only wrestling can do — and I’ll repeat that — ONLY wrestling can do this.  This woman has played this character for years, and here, in her retirement, she drops her character to thank the fans and get a well-deserved moment in the sun.  Important things to look for:

1. The “Please Don’t Go” chant that starts at about 1:07 — wrestling fans show appreciation like no one else.
2. The way she’s limping around the ring — the story of the match she just fought was that her opponent had messed up her leg, so she’s selling that injury, even in her one moment in the sun.  She’s making her opponent look better, even though she’s not fighting anymore.
3. The brief interaction with the little girls at about 1:51 and 1:58 — there’s some true emotion in that, because you know that no matter how effed up the view of femininity that wrestlers have to present sometime, there’s pride in being a strong, hard-working woman, and to have a young girl thank you for it and tell you that she loves you or that you’re awesome — you win at life.  Really.
4. And then, the moment, the killer, the thing that actually has my eyes all kinds of misty as I write this, it happens at 2:38 or so — she takes a long, deep final bow (something that you never really get to do in wrestling), soaks up the cheers, and then…at 2:45, she dives right back into her character, tearing at her hair, playing the crazy evil psycho one last time, but this time, instead of stirring up the crowd to hate her, to fear her, to want to see her lose…she stirs the crowd to applaud her career.

Seriously.  It’s poetry.

(I hope it doesn’t get taken down.)

More on Women Playwrights.

From Bloomberg:

Let’s call this drama: Many Women Playwrights in Search of a Stage. Because if you write plays and have the wrong chromosomes, you’re in for a lot of frustration in New York.

I’ve touched on this before, then again, then again, and I still think it’s a great and important conversation to be having.  My points remain the same:

1. It’s a travesty that more women aren’t produced, especially in New York.
2. It’s ludicrous that more plays with female protagonists aren’t produced.  Every time I write a play like The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (which calls for an all-male cast), I’m drawn to write a play about women in counterbalance.  It’s a personal and emotional decision, not a social one, and I can’t expect anyone else to stick to the same standards, but at base, the idea is that “women’s” stories (whatever that means to you) are just as vital as the same old male stories we hear all the time.
3. All that said, and this is my major major major bone to pick with the whole discussion: this isn’t just a question of men vs. women.  People of color, male or female, are drastically underrepresented on the stage.  Period.  And take it further: all we see on a great many stages, especially on the New York stage, is an educated (often highly educated) white moneyed male’s view of the world.
   

The Bloomberg article cites Oskar Eustis (for whom I have a lot of respect–I think he’s doing a great job at The Public) as saying (and I’m quoting the article here, not him): people tend to associate with those they’re comfortable with; among artistic directors that often means male playwrights they’ve worked with before.  This is true, for sure.  John Patrick Shanley can get a new musical done because of his track record.  A new John Guare play is going to programmed into a major company’s season — and it should.  Theaters cultivate relationships with playwrights, not just plays, and that’s a good thing for the health of the art form.

But.

Look at the new writers being cultivated and produced throughout the city (and the country): they’re young.  They’re white.  They’re men.  They’re straight.  They’re of a certain economic class.  They’re products of the big schools.  And look: I like a lot of their work.  I know some of these guys, and I dig them as people.  I’m not begrudging anyone their success.

But there are great playwrights out there, female and African-American and Asian and Latino and gay and lesbian and so on and so on, and theaters have relationships with them, and are even developing some of their work, but that work is not being produced.  Punto.  There’s something else at play here.  Yes, artistic directors tend to associate with people they feel comfortable with, but that comfort doesn’t just come from having worked with a writer before.  People tend to feel comfortable with people who look like them, speak like them, share some kind of cultural background with them.  Punto.

There’s a lot at work here, and a quota system doesn’t fix the problem.  Here are some things that will help:

1. More women and people of color in decision-making and decision-shaping positions (not just Artistic Directors, but all throughout the administrative side);
2. Willingness from Artistic Directors to trust the instincts and value the opinions of these folks in the decision-making/season-planning process;
3. Willingness from Artistic Directors to produce seasons that reflect the make-up of the United States (and New York City), not just their current audiences.  The audience myth is a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you program shows that appeal to a particular audience, of course they’ll be the only audience that shows up;
4. Break away from the slot system: everyone can’t do their “Black” play in February.  It’s bad business, for one thing.  It’s offensive, for another.  It doesn’t build sustained new audiences, for a third.
5. Develop new audiences.  Really.  Aggressively go out and build new audiences.  Cultivate relationships with communities, with young people, with folks that don’t traditionally go to the theater all that often.  Find out what they like.  Find out what they need.  Work with them.  Theater should be a populist art form.  Populist does not mean dumbed down.  It does not mean a lowering of standards.  It means doing work that actually matters to someone, that impacts them.  I walk out of 50% of shows saying some variation of “that was fine, but why should I care?”  If you’re asking people to pay five-to-ten times as much as they’d pay for a movie ticket, you better be giving them a reason to care.

This went on way longer than I planned.  I’m sure we’ll come back to it.

So.

I won this.

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.)