We always see you guys as a success. Congrats on all the souls you stirred on your latest tour.
Look forward to breaking bread with you again soon.
Debbie & Jay
24th Street Theatre
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From: The Independent Eye <bards@independenteye.org>
To: Theatre List <theatrediscussionlst@onelist.com>
Subject: RAT Success
Date: Sat, Jun 3, 2000, 3:15 AM
Friends-
We just came back from 6-1/2 weeks in the East, earning the first
bucks we've seen since we left Philadelphia 10 months ago. A good feeling,
and glorious to come up over the hills, see the full expanse of the Bay
Area at night, and think, "Ye gods, we live here!"
The trip was extremely exhausting, and we both came down with flu
and other mortal delights during the course of it; but coming home, it felt
like a great success. Which got me to thinking, "What is it that
constitutes 'SUCCESS' in this racket?" If you're making a ton of bucks and
you're lauded in the NY Times and your phone's ringing off the hook and Hal
Prince, Robert Wilson, Ellen Stewart, and Michael Eisner are all clutching
at your panties, that's pretty obvious.
On the other hand, if you've paid your dues with 30 years of
hard-scrabble touring and marginal existence, you're in your late 50's and
quite unknown, you draw 200 people for one performance and 6 for the next,
you accumulate reviews that ricochet between the warbles of doting mom and
the rank cackles of evil stepmother, you look ahead to the dead certainty
that nothing will *ever* get easier, or bring more recognition, or more
resources, that you're no longer an emerging genius but, at best, an
only-to-be-posthumously-recognized one - what then? what sustains? what
makes one feel that this is not only the only fucking thing you know how to
do, so you have to keep flogging the dead wart hog, but is actually
something that gives you deep joy?
Some of it has to do with the fact of working very close to the
ground. By that I mean in contexts where you're totally open to the
immediate, one-on-one response to what you're doing. Yes, I enjoy vigorous
applause, but that "high" passes fast, and the pleasure is diluted by
seeing work that I have no respect for roundly applauded and praised.
During this span of time, we did three very intensive weeks of acting
classes and improvisation workshops at high schools in Philadelphia; a mask
workshop at Hedgerow Theatre; a weekend of our new show, HITCHHIKING OFF
THE MAP, at the Brick Playhouse, a small theatre in Philly; an evening of
MATING CRIES and three condensed versions of HITCHHIKING for Unitarian
fellowships; a Beltane ritual for friends in Philly, few of whom knew
anything about neo-pagan ritual; and two weeks of MATING CRIES at Theatre X
in Milwaukee, mostly for an older, relatively affluent audience. Then home
to lead a playwrights' workshop at Z Space in San Francisco. In every one
of those events, there was at least one person, participant or audience,
whose response remains intensely vivid to us.
That's only possible to know when we can bring ourselves - not easy
for me - to be totally open and vulnerable. To stand in the lobby after
the show, let people pass without a word if they so desire, or to approach.
So a couple approaches, tearfully, after MATING CRIES, tells Elizabeth
they'd been going through very rough times recently in their 25-yr
marriage, and this piece opened huge doors for them. And an elderly man,
after a piece about truth in relationships, said he was very upset, because
after seeing it, he felt he was going to have to tell his wife something
he'd concealed, to protect her feelings: that she'd been unwittingly
responsible for starting a fire in their house. Was that a good result of
our work, or a terrible one? All we know is that for someone the work had
a serious consequence. It wasn't a game. It was real. That sustains.
Another source of power is the sense of "tribe." Some would call
this "preaching to the choir"; others would say that one loses objectivity
if you're playing for your friends. But I'd say the choir *desperately*
needs attention, and that the very strongest currents of theatrical magic
come when there are open channels to receive it. It's an infinitely
stronger performance for me when Steve & Elle come up from DC, when my son
comes down from NY, when JJ & JC & Grant & Tori & Kelly & Mark & Michael &
Mary & Abe & Bergen & Ruth & John & Flora & Kish & Deborah & Maria & Ken
are there. It's people to whom you're naked, people with whom you're
family. When the performance solidifies that bond and extends the
boundaries out to more people each time, then I think it's filling the
primal function of theatre at its birth: bringing the tribe together to
celebrate being alive, being mortal, being together. And that feels good.
And it's not tangential. It's dead center.
A third marker of success for us, maybe, is just being able to pull
it off: Egad, the trick worked! We poured barrels of energy into the teen
workshops, and one day they'd really be cooking and the next they'd have
the attention span of a gnat, and at the end of the three weeks they were
to do an improvised public performance, and what the hell was it going to
look like!? - and they were great. And retroactively, I felt I'd been
fairly incompetent: we should have pushed them much harder, demanded a lot
more, not coddled as much. But hell, we got away with it! They
transcended their limits, and so did we. We all survived.
And being part of a continuum. At Theatre X, a late 10:30 pm show
followed us: The Attention Deficit Disorder Follies. They're a group of
Marquette U. students, doing short sketches, with wonderful,
individualistic comic sense. Going to see their show, their coming to see
ours, was a mutual gift, and within the embrace of our friends Theatre X,
celebrating their 30th anniversary as an ensemble. I guess it's part of
that ravenous human quest for meaning.
At one time, I think it was possible for me to construct my
universe of meaning entirely within the dynamics of a work. Simply doing
the work, doing it well, knowing in my bones that it had an integrity, was
sufficient. Not entirely: if it didn't make money, somehow, we didn't
live. But the system of work & reward was basically self-contained. That
doesn't work for me now. It has to be part of a larger context - a tribe,
a continuum, a powerful bonding with others. There has to be jazz in the
air we're breathing together. The ADD gang does it with exuberance and
silliness and youth, while we use other tonalities, but we're both aiming,
I think, to make those moments happen that are vivid, unforgettable for
everyone sharing the roof. The paradox of the Dionysian mask suddenly
becoming alive, startling us with what being alive is all about.
Anyway, nice to be home for six weeks, then heading out to play at
the Winnipeg Fringe, then exhibit at ATHE, then the Victoria Fringe, and ye
gods, then it's fall.
Peace & joy-
Conrad
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