RAT - Sunday, 8/17 - Day 3

[leewochner@movingarts.org (Lee Wochner)]

>>Subject: RAT - Sunday, 8/17 - Day 3
>>
>>I didn't make it to RAT: WHAT DO WE WANT?, a roundtable hosted by Mitchell
>>Gossett of Bottom's Dream (L.A.) that sought to answer that question, but I
>>did get varying viewpoints of it. One person told me that the session had
>>ended with a new manifesto that said such-and-such, and that Erik Ehn had
>>proposed a three-person moderating committee of some sort that would make
>>decisions. And then other people told me that that manifesto had been shot
>>down and that the moderating committee was practically hooted out of the
>>room. So I guess the true Rat spirit carries on. (Much like the Dada spirit
>>of the 20's.) I think the answer to "Rat: What do we Want?" by the way, is
>>this:  We want to disagree.
>>
>>Theatre Adm-Ehn-Istration, at the Ohio Theatre, was fascinating. Erik (Ehn)
>>proposed the following in reorganizing our theatres:  no box office, no
>>salaries, no season, no plays, no reviews, no grassroots cash, no money, no
>>unions, no advancement, and no audience. (Personally, I think the first nine
>>GUARANTEE that last one.) Now, it would be easy to poke fun at these notions,
>>even when proposed by as well-meaning and, well, saintly, a guy as Erik. And
>>in a different moment of existence I no doubt would have lots of fun with
>>this. I might even extend it. No purpose. No long hair. No chewing gum. Or,
>>the big one:  No theatre. But what Erik is really doing is expanding the
>>debate, and I'm glad for it. We need to at least think about the
>>possibilities for doing things wildly differently to reject them, even when
>>the particulars don't work. Artists tend to be anti-war, for instance, but I
>>don't think too many of them were (are) sorry we decided to fight Hitler.
>>Being anti-war is a nice goal that, in the 40's, went unachieved for a very
>>valid reason. Brad Rothbart of the Living Theatre drew a terrific comparison
>>when he said that what Erik is essentially talking about is a monastery:  20
>>people living together doing theatre for each other. And nobody in the room
>>wants to be a theatre monk. I also want to stress Erik's graciousness. He was
>>not only fully willing to make these wild proposals that no one wanted to
>>accept, he was also gracious in his eagerness to hear opposition. When he
>>talked about theatre as a service to the public, for example, I said, "I'm
>>going to be bold enough here to be ignoble" and he said, "Great. By all
>>means." Then I said, "I don't want to run a soup kitchen or solve
>>homelessness by way of doing theatre. I want to do theatre. I resist the
>>notion that plays have to 'serve' some community. Just exactly whom are we
>>serving with our plays? My mission is to do new plays for an audience and
>>then send those new plays out into the world. It doesn't involve curing
>>tuberculosis. When not enough people come it isn't because I wasn't saintly
>>enough; it's because of marketing, or timing, or a bad show." I also rejected
>>the notion of no box office, but not even on the grounds of losing the
>>theatre's financial support:  "Have you ever tried to give away free tickets?
>>When it's free, people equate it with 'worthless' and don't want it." A lot
>>of people have come up to me since that workshop and thanked me for saying
>>what I did. There was also someone -- sorry, I forget who -- who said that
>>she did a show at a theatre (La Mama?) across from New York Theatre Workshop
>>when they were doing Blown Sideways Through Life. She said Blown was a good
>>show but not any better than hers; it just had fabulous reviews and therefore
>>was packed every night. Hers wasn't, and she resented it. So, at the risk of
>>sounding ignoble (my word), she had to admit she WANTED reviews (good ones)
>>and audience and acclaim, and what was wrong with that? My final thought on
>>Erik's ruminations (besides my gratitude for hearing them) was this:  I've
>>seen his plays and I don't think they're serving any great need. Neither are
>>mine. But who says they have to? What about the value of something that
>>stretches the mind and soul, rather than leads us out of capitalism, or
>>whatever? I'm less interested in going out into the community and seeing what
>>they need and providing it (Erik's example) than I am in doing good work that
>>I believe in and having the audience discover it and come back. In Erik's
>>example, plumbers troll the streets looking high and low for people who might
>>have leaky faucets and overflowing toilets. In my example (which I'm going to
>>coin "The Way the World Works"), people with bad plumbing call me for my
>>service.
>>
>>Mitch's RAT CO-PRODUCTIONS -- HOW DO WE GET THERE? workshop was next. I'm
>>grateful for having come out of this with several ideas for how Moving Arts
>>might be able to travel. Essentially Mitchell laid out the norms of traveling
>>co-production:  that the host theatre should be responsible for hospitality
>>(putting people up), the artists should provide their own travel (and try to
>>recoup it through box office, perhaps), and everything else was Big Cheap
>>Theatre -- i.e., minimal set and costume pieces picked up in situ. "Three Day
>>Jesus," Erik's piece they're performing at HERE while they're, well, Here,
>>has a budget of $100. (Not counting those plane tickets, buddy.) Mitchell
>>said this sort of arrangement was like "a dance company mentality."  Others
>>like Jason Neulander from Salvage Vanguard in Austin talked about how
>>festivals of artists coming in for a very short time have worked. It sounds
>>good. Maybe we at Moving Arts will try it with those fun and friendly Annex
>>people if we can.
>>
>>After that I caught my first meal of the day (4 p.m.) with Ian from
>>Washington Shakespeare Company and Bonnie (an actress associated with
>>Bottom's Dream and the Colony in L.A.). The Colony is a rather mainstream
>>theatre and I kept kidding Bonnie that just because of her presence, the
>>Colony was now a RAT theatre; she said Barbara Beckley would be thrilled to
>>find out. We had diner food (but good diner food) and eagerly agreed we were
>>all willing to sell out. Sure, write us the checks right now! We'll take 'em!
>>Commercial work? Why not? Disney makes the big offer? SURE! Because I love
>>Nick Fracaro's line:  "Don't forget, the hand that feeds you is food, too."
>>
>>I then spent about an hour and a half on the phone in the basement of HERE
>>doing Moving Arts business from 3000 miles away from Moving Arts. But enough
>>about that.
>>
>>At 7 I hustled back over to the Ohio to see Peculiar Works Projects'
>>presentation of "Privileged and Confidential," an ur-text composed from legal
>>documents scammed from a law firm. This particular case proves the adage
>>"truth is stranger than fiction," and I wondered what my friend Nat Colley (a
>>lawyer and playwright) would have made of this; perhaps equal portions
>>fascination and outrage. Anyway, the case is too convulated to recapture
>>here, and it does need a bit of work (I told the playwright I thought it was
>>75% there, he said, "I think it's 65% there," so at least he thinks in the
>>right direction), but I was hooked. Barry Rowell directed, and I loved his
>>work; he definitely gave me ideas (not the least being that Barry should move
>>to L.A. and direct for us).
>>
>>After that I ran back over to HERE to catch the performance of Erik's "[0]"
>>(which I have to call it, because Erik said "plays are dead" and that he
>>doesn't write plays), but not before getting an assurance from Barry that the
>>FAILURES DISCUSSION slated for 8-10 at the Ohio would wait for us. Erik's [0]
>>was called "Three-Day Jesus" concerned the three days in the Apocrypha (what
>>non-Catholic Christians -- like the way I was raised -- call those "extra"
>>books in the Bible) in which Jesus is unaccounted-for. Unsurprisingly for
>>anyone who knows Erik's work, Jesus has various sexual encounters, including
>>one involving a knotty plank of wood (ouch!).
>>
>>True to his word, Barry held the failures workshop until my return -- which
>>wasn't until 10:45. He tried to postpone entirely for another day of the
>>conference, but I said, "Fuck that. There's eight of us. Let's go." We all
>>laughed, I swiped the last piece of pizza (whereupon Mary Agnes said, "I knew
>>you were going to do that..." and I said, "Guess that betrays me as a
>>producer, huh?"), and we got started. Every "failure" discussed in the room
>>-- actually on the edge of the loading dock of the Ohio while we drank beer
>>and smoked -- was in some way a failure of relationship. This person let us
>>down; this person was evil; I made a mistake here; I said this but she
>>thought that, etc. Gabriele Schafer (Thieves Theatre) said that what she took
>>out of this was that good communication was essential, and I think that's
>>true. Also, added Cathy of Peculiar Works, thanking the volunteers. This
>>discussion went on 'til 2 and was too wide-ranging to encapsulate here, but
>>again, as with everything I've been to at the Rat conference, it was not only
>>fun, it was useful. (I guess that constant search for "usefulness" is the
>>German Lutheran in me.)
>>
>>After that, much to my chagrin everyone wanted to head home. Once again Gaby
>>and Nick were nice enough to drop me off (and Mary Agnes, staying in a
>>different area of Brooklyn). In rat-esque repayment, we stopped at a deli and
>>bought them Hagen Dazs (sp?), which turned out to be Gaby's favorite. I got
>>in at about 3, checked my email, did some work, crashed, and wished that
>>every discussion of the day could've been longer.
>>
>Michael T. Folie
>

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