RAT Road Rambling and Rants

[NOMADMONAD@aol.com]

Lisa of Love is a playwright in residence at the Playwrights Center in 
Minneapolis.  Just prior to the NYC Rat Conference she sent the Road 
Ramblings and Rants that she wrote as she drove from Oregon to Minnesota in 
her Eagle.  That same summer Bucci, the Playwright sent his series of 
postcard musing while touring with his band Enduro.  They both were reacting 
and rewriting to a road piece that I had written.  Bucci had brought up the 
idea of writing a collaborative road piece using CB jargon as the language.  

You need to have the RealAudio player on your browser to go to Lisa's road 
music musings. The technical conversion/compression was done with low end 
equipment, but even the times that the  audio file becomes incomprehensibly 
"noisy", you're still in for a trip through a state of mind other  than just 
the state of Montana and its Corn Palace attractions.  Tune into Lisa 
D'Amour's thirty-minute rambling road contemplation at: 

http://www.manwithvan.com/LisaTrip.ram

But how does one write something collaboratively?  I saw a most excellent 
example of such this weekend in Dallas.  Erik and another San Francisco 
playwright Octavio Solis have jointly written a play called Shiner that is 
premiering now at the Undermain.  I'm looking forward to talking to Erik 
about the process that created it.  Having worked and played one beautiful 
hot Texas summer with that most amazing Undermain ensemble, I have to suspect 
that the success of the writing that the two playwrights achieved was do in 
the largest part to director Raphael and his brilliant cast of actors. The 
production is playing to sold out audiences and the critics are raving about 
it.  That's heartening, but equally encouraging is how the two writers 
achieved such a seamless joint vision and poetry in the piece. 

I am interested in the discussion at the Conference on the collaboration by 
playwrights in the Mark Taper Forum commission.  If I have a prejudice 
against the work in this instance, it's because it looks too much like a 
"job" certain playwrights were hired to do.  My belief is that the kind of 
mindset at work in these commissions by institutions usually deadens as much 
theater as it creates. For instance, what incentives are in place to bring 
this experiment in writing into some fruition beyond the commission to write 
it.  In his essay _Geezer Theater_ Jeff Jones wrote that a simple solution to 
the stagnation in theater and lack of innovative new work would be to give 
grant money directly to the artists instead of to the institutions to 
redistribute it.  Let the artists choose what institutions will produce their 
work.  Let the institutions compete for the artists.  

Although Erik and Octavio were also commissioned for their piece, it was 
their (Octavio's) idea to collaboratively write it, not the Undermain's.  
Unlike institutions, Rat Theaters seem to compete for playwrights, most often 
using their commitment and understanding of the playwright's vision instead 
of the cash or the career prestige that the institutions offer.  Is the Mark 
Taper Forum an institution or a Rat Theater?   Neither I suspect, but it 
doesn't really matter.  What does matter is whether this commission actually 
created some theater or not?  If large theater institutions commission or 
secure rights for scripts they are either afraid to produce, or never intend 
to produce, or "are waiting for the right time" to produce, shouldn't they 
call themselves institutions and not theaters?  Again, Jeffery Jones' 
prescription: give the artists the grants directly.  Maybe some institutions 
will discover how to become theaters again.

--nick

PS Jonny Pascoe is New York and I'm in Texas!  Who's trying to steal my mojo? 

Jonny left me a message on my hand phone.  At the end of it he said "Keep the 
faith, brother." except he misspoke and said *face* instead of *faith*.  So 
the message didn't end and he went on this long riff on how it's important to 
"Keep the face, brother."

Jonny Pascoe has got the word.  You know what I mean?

PPS Thanks Bowler X for your Lone Star hospitality and conversation.  I think 
I'm going to write a country song about you.  It will go something like: "If 
you ever find a Jersey Girl in Texas, you may only be half way to heaven, but 
you are all the way home."