RAT about cabages, etc

[Mary Ann McGivern <mmcgivern@stlnet.com>]

I like to read Lahr's New Yorker essays. I like reading the New York
Review of Books too. And sometimes I can do criticism on that level. But

when I'm immersed in creating something, if I pause to look at what
others are doing, I'm often picky, angry, jealous of their having been
produced or published. In so far as this is a listserv of working
writers, directors, and producers, I suspect we are all limited in the
quality of the criticism we can produce.

About crap, the same way nobody ever conceives their own acts as bad (we

all choose the good), nobody sets out to write or participate in crap.
We are all striving for the good. Here's where the excellent is the
enemy of the good. The theater needs room for mistakes. But neither we
nor our audience are willing to pay for mistakes, in time or money.
We're like everybody
else in the old US of A. We want instant gratification.  (And I agree
that time spend watching live bad theater is more painful than time
spend watching bad television.) And again, we don't talk very well about
our mistakes. We're reluctant for fear our funding, and worse our
audiences, will be put in jeopardy.

But we can talk about our experiences in theater. What worked? What was
satisfying? what do I keep trying to do, over and over? What rocked me
back on my heels? By talking in some depth about those experiences,
being questioned further about the meaning of those experiences, and
stimulating others to describe ways they've tried to accomplish the same

goals and their similar methods that achieved different goals -- these
are ways we can overcome the limits of geography and build a useful sort
of aesthetic dialogue. I think the john cage poem does this, but I've
only read it once.

I was interested in what
the guy had to say who had produced some Wellman, whom I've never seen
or read. The producer described making theater out of words that lacked
plot and theme and maybe even meaning. What he and his actors made of it

was strong emotion. But the producer didn't say enough.


So who am I? A political activist, arms manufacture and trade
specialist (I know more about weapons transfers than my mother
would like). In the '80s I quit my job at the Economic Conversion
Project and wrote four plays that got local productions, one about
protesters in front of General Dynamics. The cast quadrupled as
protesters, board of directors, passers-by, and arresting officers and
action was ongoing in several venues
simultaneously. The script was hell to memorize. But no out of town
theaters gave my plays a nibble, the St. Louis Theater Festival fell
apart, the Berlin Wall fell down and I went back to
attempting to convert military industry -- which is also theater. Now
I've quit my day job again and I'm trying to write once more, supported
by free-lance community organizing jobs. (I promote independent films
shown on public television, do workshops to rid Missouri of the sales
tax on food, and other radic-lib endeavors.)

About audiences, yes, the people who see theatre -- friends of the
company, relatives, other actors, directors -- are many of the same
faces. They are a community. I do lots of street theater -- leafleting,
picketing, trespassing. People come because they get a part to play.
This is creation of community. Community is good.

About tickets: For almost twenty years the Economic Conversion Project
has sponsored a
Charlie King folk political concert. We mail out tickets and
self-addressed envelopes. People could come to the concert and hand us
the tickets without ever having paid for them. We don't have the time
that night to check on who's actually sent in checks. But we make plenty
of
money every year.

Finally, about the Iowa conference, I plan to attend. How do I register
and who do I tell that Agnes and I are veggies? I find the reading list
daunting. I'd recommend reading an annual report from one of the weapons
manufacturers: General Dynamics, Boeing, Martin Marietta.

Mary Ann