RAT Re: obscurity

[Chris Jeffries <cjeffries@seanet.com>]

Karen,

Enjoyed your post.  Please don't apologize for ranting; we all do it, it 
was your turn, we understand.

Theatre is a people medium.  Whatever other elements may be in the mix, 
call them "theory" or "language" or "politics" or what you will, those 
things do not put on a show.  People put on a show.  And people come to 
see people put on a show.  That is why Jason and most others prefer to 
work with people they know; because people is what they work with, over 
and above "scripts" and "materials," and the better you know someone, the 
more of a person they are to you and the richer your theatre experience 
will likely be.  People who select plays read a lot of scripts; all of 
them find it more fun to feel like they are producing people, or even 
better, relationships, and not simply pieces of writing.  This has 
nothing to do with "connections" in the corporate-jargon sense.  It has 
everything to do with "connections" the real word referring to real 
things that happen to real people when they work together and change each 
other doing theatre together, whether or not they are in the same room or 
city at the time.

Why _should_ a theatre undertake to produce a script that arrives in the 
mail?  Isn't there something wrong with that model?  Speaking for Annex, 
we've done about two hundred shows in a dozen or so years, nearly all of 
them unpublished, and I can't think of a single one that simply showed up 
in the mail.  Which is not to say we know every writer.  Sometimes the 
company does "What?" by "Who?" because the person proposing it has a 
connection to the piece, and the others choose to trust that connection.  
But Annex considers itself most successful when the bulk of the work it 
is doing comes from "in house" -- from people who help take out the trash 
and sign up to work box office.  This is not to be snotty and exclusive 
and shut anybody out.  It is because the biggest rewards come when 
everyone involved feels as invested as possible in the work -- and, in a 
breathlessly busy organization that doesn't pay people, those rewards may 
not be dispensed with lightly.  Now, no one guarantees production or 
casting to anyone who empties the trash, and plenty of people do theatre 
at Annex who don't do those other things and disappear for months at a 
time, and that's fine, but who feels more connected?  The ones with the 
trash bags.  And theatre is connection.  For my money that's a far 
stronger "why they do what they do" than any "intellectual framework," 
however appetizing, will ever be.

RAT was dreamed up (or hacked up) precisely to create connection where it 
didn't exist, to remove some of the horrible impersonality of American 
theatre, an impersonality that includes the tradition of cold mailings of 
plays.  RAT conferences happen, for one, because getting one's work out 
is often better accomplished by sharing a pizza than by "getting one's 
work out."  I personally have found it ten times more valuable to have 
sat down with some of these RATs and talked with them than if I'd 
received a list of them and mailed them all a script.  I may mail them a 
script or I may not, but frankly I'd rather hang out and just be people 
together, not wanting anything from them but _them_.  The way out of 
"obscurity" is to offer, not your scripts, but yourself.  Ask any RAT.  
It works.

When a person whose job it is to choose plays decides to reject a 
particular script, she or he is thinking about a lot more than just that 
script.  They are looking at it in the context of other projects already 
chosen or under consideration.  They are using all of their knowledge of 
their theatre and its history, its audience, its budget, its personnel, 
its resources, all of the particular strengths and weaknesses of their 
organization and its people.  Above all its people, which includes its 
audience.  Chances are they know better than the playwright which 
projects are best for their people.  It may be that they are trying to 
please the "wrong" kind of people for you, in which case you're better 
off without them.  Or it may be that they've tried projects like yours in 
the past and had bad experiences for one reason or another.  They didn't 
do it justice and felt bad about it, or nobody liked it, or it got them 
into debt, or the theatre down the street could have done it much better 
and everybody knew it.  Every theatre, every group of people, is unique 
and special, and so the best way to get produced is to be familiar with 
what's unique and special about a particular theatre and offer them 
something that either fits them like a glove or stretches them in a 
positive way.  This, again, is why it helps to know people.  It sounds 
very hard and very slow.  IT IS.  But that is the difference between 
building relationships that matter and sitting around giving strangers 
the power to make you feel more or less "obscure."

And if all else fails, say "fuck it" and do it yourself.  That is why the 
Compound and On The Boards were formed, that is why Y York is 
self-producing this spring, that is why Bret Fetzer self-produces if no 
one else is excited about what he wants to do.  We've all been there and 
yes, we've all experienced doing a great show that nobody cares about.  
So what.  If you have to do it, you have to do it.  Even a worst-case 
scenario is an opportunity for everyone involved to exercise tremendous 
patience and generosity, qualities this country desperately needs, more 
than it needs theatre.

Chris

>Subject:     RAT Re: obscurity
>Sent:        2/19/19 2:13 AM
>Received:    2/20/99 3:07 PM
>From:        Karen Cronacher, kcron@ix.netcom.com
>Reply-To:    rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>To:          rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>
>hi brad,
>
>I love your list and didn't take my omission personally.  I just have a
>basic rat question:  how do we get far-out language plays, that are black
>comedy and avante-garde, etc., produced???
>
>i've discussed this topic with Mac Wellman and heard Jeff Jones speak on it.
> Basically they were very sad and embittered.  They both told me they'd sent
>out their plays to every theatre in the country, spent a lot of money, and
>nothing happened. (this was 10 years ago, before they were known).
>
>My friend Y York warned me before i sent my play out that no one would do
>it.  And jason neulander warned me that even he rarely produces a play by
>someone he doesn't know.
>
>so i sent my play out anyway, spending $2,000 i don't have, after spending
>another $2,000 to produce my own solo show in the Seattle Fringe, which
>received reviews that said i could win the Pulitzer (i'm not kidding--i was
>shocked) but still no one came and i lost all the money.
>
>basically, no one will produce my play, tho every rejection comments on my
>brilliance, my wildly imaginative play (magic theate, playwrights horizons),
>how much they love it, etc.  this just makes me crazy--everyone knows it's
>good, it's been done successfully, it got great reviews, it's won awards,
>but no one will do it.  I have this  faith--i believe if you have talent,
>then people will recognize it, but i'm totally wrong and it's really about
>connections. 
>
>so, i'm in a quandry, an existential crisis, etc.  i'm thinking of coming to
>the conference.
>
>about grad school:  my years at Brown were the happiest ever.  I just lived
>the passion of writing and working with people, and didn't have to think
>about the real world.  My years at the U.W. were horrid--no one was alive
>with ideas.  But i got a ph.d. there a while ago with Sue Ellen Case, who
>was very abusive.
>
>i just wanted to let you know where i'm coming from.  I will send you the
>play, and see what you think, thank you for agreeing to read it.
>
>seattle has a lot of theatre going on but none of it is idea-based or
>language oriented.  The compound does some interesting non-linear work and
>on the boards is great (i've performed there) and Brett fetzer does
>Mabou-Mines type stuff, but i've studied lots of theory, and no one comes
>from that place.Also, even the interesting stuff is so apolitical.  People
>do not seem to know why they do what they do--they don't have a sense of
>theatre history or an intellectual framework.
>
>i do not usually rant, i swear.  What is your opinion of all this?  We can
>open up this discussion on the list, too, if you want.
>
>--Karen