No Subject

[owner-rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com]

[149.174.217.139])
	by parachute.whirl-i-gig.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA32008
	for <rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com>; Sat, 23 Jan 1999 14:19:23 -0500
Received: (from root@localhost)
	by arl-img-9.compuserve.com (8.8.6/8.8.6/2.17) id NAA17062
	for rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com; Sat, 23 Jan 1999 13:14:19 -0500 (EST)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 13:13:48 -0500
From: jeffrey jones <Diogenes_@compuserve.com>
Subject: RAT famous last words
To: "INTERNET:rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com" <rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com>
Message-ID: <199901231314_MC2-67B9-F62F@compuserve.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by
parachute.whirl-i-gig.com id OAA32009
Sender: owner-rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com

To Mitchell, Laurel, Nick, Gaby, Aileen and all...

I have been snowed under with work or would have responded before this, but
I do want to set the record straight on one important matter. I expressly
gave Mitchell permission to distribute the password as he saw fit, and if
anyone is culpable (and y'know, if there's one aspect of moder life I'd
like to expunge, it's this craving for culpability abroad in the land) it
is I, for having been too modest (read "vain") to advertise it myself to
the rest of you.

The fact is that I detest passwords and secrecy in all forms. I think they
are so profoundly un-American that I almost consider it my constitutional
duty to violate them whenever possible. Why then, I ask myself (and you may
also), did I bother to encrypt my plays in the first place? And since I
don't have a sensible answer, I can only offer the next best thing, which
is a contradictory, incomplete and factual answer. 

I respectfully disagree with Brother Erik on many things, mostly having to
do with his brilliant and subversive cooptation of Catholicism, but he
certainly got one thing right.  We (meaning I, possibly you) are not doing
theatre because it is our job. From time to time we may wish that it could
become our job--though a few minutes inside any of our funded non-profit
theatres generally clears that nonsense up pretty fast--but for the most
part we pursue theatre despite the fact that it is not and never will
become our job. [A job being something one does for money, a good job in
America being defined, at least since WWII, as one that provides enough
money to buy one a home, the case could me made that almost no one in the
funded non-profits has a good job. Like, duh...] 

Erik's great insight was to offer a model--worship--by which our strange
behaviour could be understood as something other than self-delusion.  As I
say, when he gets to the soup-kitchen part I respectfully hop off the
train, but likening theatre to a life of devotion is not just profound but
invigorating. It begins, for example, to reconcile our deeply felt sense of
purpose with the indifference with which the rest of the world greets our
efforts. Even more, it suggests not just why we work as we do, not just
what kind of work we should aspire to do, but what kind of creatures we are
and should strive to become. It inbues our otherwise marginal lives with
spiritual discipline. And (finally getting to the point) it makes giving
and receiving--not getting and spending--the fundamental transaction of our
business.  

Friends,  I have spent the last (jesus, where does the time go?) twenty-odd
(some odder than others) years doing theatre in 99-seat houses and I have
become rabid about the importance of giving. I consider anyone who does not
approach this work with complete generosity of spirit to be an EVIL person.
Bad. Wicked. And the funny thing is that for all the desperate and
short-sighted and unenlightened people you bump into in the 99-seat
theatre, there are remarkably few bad and wicked people there, for the same
reason there are so few armed robberies in church. No percentage in it.
Waste of time. 

So in that sense we are indeed a confraternity (sorry, old sexist term)
regardless of whether we are aware of it. And in my case, as I say, all of
my work has not only been done in small theatres but for the most part by
and with people who all knew one another and passed scripts along to each
other like samizdat (which leads me to remark disrespectfully that
Communism may be far closer than Erik's Catholicism to the model for what
we are all embarked upon. Good old American Communism of the sort our
fathers practiced before the fathers of Barr, Starr & Hyde rooted them out.
Now it turns out even dreadful old "Gadge", Elia Kazan, has suffered enough
and will be rewarded with his lifetime-achievement Oscar. We are very close
to the last days, friends. But I digress). Giving my scripts has always
been important to me, and you are probably saying to yourselves, "Well and
good, Mr. Jones, but do you mean that you aren't asking for royalties
either?"

Well, um, no. I still do, but guiltily.  Since I don't have an agent, I get
to set my own rates (unless you are a school, in which case Broadway Play
Publishing sets my rates). And I spent some time thinking about what to
charge. Should I charge nothing?  There is much to be said for that
position--since the total amount is trivial anyway, why not charge nothing
and free oneself with of the burden altogether?  In fact, sometimes I do
charge nothing. If somebody calls me up with a horror story of how they
only got a couple of performances in before the lead actor walked, I'm
happy to say "No charge." If a college student calls me up and says they
want to do a couple of performances in the midnight slot because they just
love the darned play so what'll it cost, I typically say "Send me your
favorite CD or buy a nice bottle of booze and have the cast sign it" or
something like that. Send me a love letter, you know? And of course, if a
theatre isn't going to charge for the play, why should I? Which gets to the
real answer. As long as everybody else has to be paid (however much), why
shouldn't I (however much)?. My rule is 6% of the gross (which is a figure
I snagged from the Dramatists Guild, not that they should be a role model
for anybody)--up to 2/3 capacity. Because in my experience, if you can get
2/3 capacity you are doing really really well and anything above that is
your effort, not mine, so you're entitled to it. Whenever I've checked, my
figure is always less than the going rate elsewhere, which makes me feel
good. But if I were a more rigorous man, I  would probably have to concede
that I should really give my plays away for free. And maybe I will someday.


Yes, but what does all this have to do with passwords? 

When the web (or rather, free websites) came along, I realized this was a
fantastic way to leave my work sitting out on the sidewalk for passers by
to pick up and carry away as they liked.  When it crossed my mind that
people could now actually "steal" my plays, I loved the idea. I had a
fleeting fancy of hundreds of covert, illegal Jeff Jones shows going on
around the country--none of which I would know about, of course--and this
tickled me to death. But then it occurred to me that if I just left my
plays out on the web, I would never get to meet the kind of people who were
interesting enough to want to take them. So that's how the password idea
came along--as a way of making strangers ring my doorbell before they could
snitch my trash.  Secretly (well, not so secretly any more, Jeff) I was
hoping EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU would sneak onto my website and download
my scripts and put them on, over and over, world without end. But I was too
proud (read "ashamed of myself for thinking this way") to do the dirty work
myself.  Too proud--forgive me, Erik--to wallow in shameless
self-promotion. I was a rat, sure, but I wanted to pretend I was a dog or a
horse or an eagle or an ethnic Albanian... anything but a shameless
self-promoter like Enola Gay. So what did I do? I let Mitchell do it. I let
Mitchell do my dirty work for me and he did (that sucker....) and he got
good and punished for it, so let that be a lesson to you, reader. 

Depend upon the kindness of strangers at your own f!@#$%ing risk, amigo.
(Baby, it's cold outside).