If you’re in South Florida, come check it out! The show runs until November 27th at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale. More info at http://thinkingcaptheatre.com

I think this line in particular really resonates: “[I]t remains crucial for a developing theatre culture that there is coverage of all types of theatre in all parts…”

And I would add that a diverse and healthy theatre culture needs not only coverage and coverage of all types of theatre, but also diverse critical voices willing to experience a range of work, from the most tried and true plays on Broadway to the unknown, sometimes idiosyncratic plays of  offoffBroadway and beyond.

(P.S. I loathe the word frenemy. I’d like to see it on Lake Superior State University’s list of banished words this year!!!)

Everyday life experiences are an obvious influence.  History, another.  Politics, psychology, religion, science, too.

Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, other playwrights, practitioners, and companies inevitably influence the theatre we create.

We are also influenced by other kinds of art and media apart from our own genre.  I, myself, have always been captivated by paintings, the stories the and the style in which they do so.

Since I first laid eyes on the paintings of Rene Magritte about ten years ago, I have remained fascinated by  his work and the mind behind them.  His paintings raise countless questions; whether they provide any answers depends on the (in)sight of the beholder.   I find Magritte’s dissection, morphing, and recasting of the human form to be TRULY provocative (*this word has been WORN OUT, what does it mean anymore?), sometimes disturbing, and always mysterious.  Some of his paintings destabilize notions of body and gender; others reveal our own fetishization of body and gender. I am inspired by theatre pieces that somehow tap into what Magritte taps into in his medium; I think Barker, Beckett, Ludlam, late Strindberg, Ionesco, and Kane all do this.  I also think that there are plenty of talented, living playwrights tapping into mysteries and sublime truths in their plays; there work doesn’t get produced (enough) outside of MAJOR theatre cities, and so it has become my mission to find them and stage their work.

The impetus behind this post was Magritte’s “Intermission” (fitting title, huh?).  In this marvelous painting, Magritte does what might be called bodyf*ck. I wonder how this piece might look and sound if it were interpreted into a playscript?  It might resemble Mariah MacCarthy’s new play The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret, which I’ll be directing for Thinking Cap Theatre at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale in June 2012.

What influences the theatre you make?

Melissa Hillman of Impact Theatre, Berkeley, CA. 

Kate Powers, freelance director, NYC.

Julieanne Ehre, freelance director, Chicago, IL.

Also, I’m working my way through American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century(2008). It’s fantastic!

Feature image above is of Carolina Neuber (1697-1760), an innovative German theatre practitioner, who brought a director’s sense to her role as stage manager.

Meet Kevin Houle, Rebecca Zellar, Tony Adams and Melissa Hillman. 

Back To Brook: I’m also 2/3 of the way through re-reading Peter Brook’s 1968 work, The Empty Space. It’s amazing how a book can register so differently with you at different stages of your life. It had been a decade since I last read this, and I now feel compelled to re-visist about a dozen other books from my college days.  One of Brook’s most noted contributions to 20th c. theatre was infusing new life into Shakespeare productions, and almost every remark he makes about Shakespeare in The Empty Space is quote-worthy.  As someone with a sensibility split between early modern drama and more experimental work of the mid-20th c. to the present day, I really appreciate Brook’s defense of and innovation with Shakespeare.

Here’s a notable passage:

“Shakespeare is a model of a theatre that contains Brecht and Beckett, but goes beyond both. Our need in the post-Brecht theatre is to find a way forwards, back to Shakespeare. … It is through the unreconciled opposition of Rough and Holy, through an atonal screech of absolutely unsympathetic keys that we get the disturbing and the  unforgettable impressions of his plays. It is because the contradictions are so strong that they burn on us so deeply.”

*Photo from Brook’s 1970 production of Midsummer Night’s Dream for Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

The current production of The Tempest directed by Robert Sturua at Moscow’s Et Cetera Theater does, indeed, look visually stunning!  As someone who has read, seen, reviewed, and taught the play many times, I really appreciate the aural and scenic freshness of this production.  Yet, I do wonder how well this interpretation conveys the ‘story’ of the play to someone who has never read or seen it before.  Since its founding in 1992, Et Cetera Theater has earned a reputation for brave experimental work.  It was the first company in Russia to mount Alfred Jarry’s 1896 surrealist work, Ubu Roi (which, incidentally, my company, Thinking Cap, will mount next year).

This piece in The Guardian by West End producer Anna Waterhouse on why she chose to do the world premiere of Neil Labute’s In a Forest Dark and Deep is an interesting read.

George Hunka on Beckett’s last play, What Where.

*Featured Image: “Homeless Man,” 2008. By Blek Le Rat. Spray paint on metal. Inspired by graffiti artist saw on NYC streets in 1971.

In this post, I draw your attention to two links:

A director-to-director interview series that I’ve just kicked off at the 2amt site.  South Florida director Michael Leeds is the first director profiled.

and…

Thinking Cap Theatre’s “Que(e)rying Shakespeare” event in celebration of the Bard’s birthday on April 23, 26, & 27th. Our 2011-2012 season is also up on the site, so check it out.

S/HE is about the journey of a man living in a woman’s body that compels audiences to rethink their answers to some of the most basic questions about human identity: Are you a man? Woman? Both? How do you know? Thinking Cap first presented Mwaluko’s bold new play back in November as part of “Plays with a Bite,” an avant-garde dinner theatre series at The Wine Cellar.

• For more information on the Black Queer Arts Festival, a Black Gay Pride event at The Pride Center, click here.
• For more information on Thinking Cap’s upcoming events click here.
• Read playwright, Nick Mwaluko’s Huffington Post article, “Degaying Uganda,” about the recent murder of prominent Ugandan gay rights activist, David Kato.

You’re in the profession, but are you a ‘professional’?

I like to read mission statements.  In particular, I find it interesting to compare how a company self-identifies against what kind of work it programs.  Just recently, however, while reading the mission, vision, and plans of Fusion Theatre in New Mexico, I found myself taken with something else—the extensive emphasis on the equation between ‘professional’ theatre and Equity.

What makes a theatre company a ‘professional’ one? Are there degrees of professionalism within our profession?  Or is it settled—you’re either in or you’re out? Is the negotiation of AEA contracts the single greatest measure of a company’s professionalism? Or do other factors figure in determining a company’s ‘professional’ legitimacy, factors such as the following:

• the education, training, and/or experience of members and affiliated artists;
• the type, frequency, and/or quality (a somewhat subjective matter) of the work produced;
• a designated performance space—a home base;
• 501c3 status;
• budget size, profit margins, wages, stipends, funding sources (state, federal, subscription, donation, other);
• audience and critical affirmation;
• artist and/or play development initiatives;
• community and educational outreach programs;
• something else?

Many new or indie companies do not have union contracts; does this preclude them from assuredly designating themselves ‘professional’ companies and relegate them to the status of other, non-professional, pro-amateur (the term Isaac Butler opts for inthis June ’09 post on Parabasis), showcase (the term Jason Grote prefers over pro-am in Butler’s aforementioned post), or community theatre outfits?

The idea that a union contract is the barometer of a company’s professionalism rests on the premise that union membership is the measure of an individual actor’s professional status.  AEA, as well as UK and Irish equity, all avow that membership makes a positive statement about one’s commitment to the vocation and ensures international recognition of one’s ‘professional’ status in the industry.  Yet there are plenty of dedicated, talented, educated/trained/experienced, non-Union, working actors that, I believe rightly so, would identify as ‘professional’ actors.  In querying actors that fit this description in my immediate theatre community of South Florida, it becomes clear that AEA ties can limit one’s castability and that actors desirous and worthy of steady work may fair better by remaining non-Equity—a point that speaks to the geographic differences in the benefits of AEA.  When I asked the non-union actors with whom I spoke, all of whom I consider ‘professionals’, if they considered themselves ‘professionals,’ they provided a range of responses, from a confident ‘yes,’ to a modest ‘I don’t know. I’m definitely not an amateur,’ to skirting a label altogether.  While labels can be discriminatory, misleading, restrictive, and all-around sinister, they remain necessary for conveying a sense of identity. The ‘professional’ tag just so happens to be a particularly contentious one, especially in the theatre. The widespread emergence of specialized post-grad degrees in theatre has, no doubt, made the matter of theatre professionalism an even more complex matter.  Try telling someone with tens of thousands in student loans from an MFA or PhD program that he or she is still not a professional.  Yet, at the same time, many have argued that the academic institutionalization of theatre has simply given birth to another elitist membership system.

Most actors (both union and non-union) that I talked to felt, AEA aside, that the ‘professional’ tag should be reserved for those who earn enough from their work in the theatre to feed, clothe, and house themselves. While this post has focused on companies and actors, it can and should be extended to discussion of others in the field: designers, directors, dramaturgs, producers, stage managers, and, of course, playwrights. A Theater Development Fund study last year found that the average playwright earns $25,000 to $39,999 annually from all income sources, with 62 percent making less than $40,000 and nearly a third making less than $25,000.  Does professionalism in theatre, then, all come down to money?  And is this argument feasible in a time when so many people are barely able to support themselves through their work outside of the theatre?

In this post, I realize that I’ve posed many questions and offered virtually no answers. My aim is simply to (re)open this conversation so that we might further investigate the criteria with which we judge ourselves and others in our profession, taking into account the current conditions—economic, political, social, technological, and so on—of the world in which we live.  The conversation would also greatly benefit from more international perspectives: what constitutes theatre professionalism outside the U.S.?  As Kate Foy (http://twitter.com/dramagirl) has pointed out to me, in Australia there is no such thing as non-union, which, if I am understanding her correctly, makes the matter of union membership there a common denominator rather than an exclusive status marker such as it is here.  Bottom line: it’s complicated. Let’s discuss.

Photo Credit: “The Women of Equity”, 1919 http://actorsequity.org/AboutEquity/timeline/timeline_firstyears.html