There’s recently been some discussion and complaining after John Simon remarked that bloggers are “the vermin of this society.” After attempting to write a post, I found that the best way I could discuss this was through a comic. As a result, I drew the following comic. Please remember: I don’t draw comics or cartoons, so this is a first for me.
I present, “Do Critics Matter Today?: A Cartoon”
(Click to enlarge)
By now, you are probably sick of this Chase Community Giving thing. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s currently being done on Facebook where non-profits try to get you, the Facebook user, to vote for their non-profit to receive at least $20,000. The annoying thing about this if you are Facebook friends with people that are ensemble or staff members at a theater or are a “Fan” of a theater company, particularly in Chicago, is that you end up getting your wall spammed with pleas for votes.
I will be honest, I have voted for some theater companies to receive money. However, the theater companies I voted for I would give money to and they did make a good case as to why I should vote for them other than, “Hey, we did [show x] last season and it was awesome.” I even donated money to one theater, Strawdog Theatre, long before I voted for them.
And there are problems with this approach to funding. By asking on Facebook “walls” for votes and sending messages, you can eventually alienate potential artists and patrons because someone like me might be a “fan” of several theater companies competing for this. Some have suggested that by just asking for a vote you’re not actually making a connection with the audience. (Kris Vire wrote a piece for last week’s Time Out Chicago about the pros and cons of the Chase Community Giving.)
You need money to do theater and grants help provide that money. But is it worth participating in the social media equivalent of a student council election to get that grant? I can’t deny that $20,000 is a lot of money and sometimes you wouldn’t get that with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, for example. But with a grant proposal from an arts council or from the NEA, you have to write grant submissions and try to prove to those overseeing the grant awards that your theater deserves the money. Ultimately it is up to a theater company to decide if it is worth their time to participate in this.
But while there are the theater artists that look at the Chase Community Giving as a possible nuisance to audiences, there are others that are upset because Chase is a BIG EVIL CORPORATION! (I also realize that the blog I linked to no one should be shocked by the writer making those remarks.)
First of all, everyone that is virulently opposed to this really needs to be quiet or calm down because I keep hearing about theaters trash talking those participating in the program, even referring to those theaters as “whoring” themselves out. If you have a problem with this, which a lot of artists do, including myself, that’s fine. But bashing other theater companies is not cool and when you do that, my respect for you as a an artist and/or a theater administrator significantly decreases.
Now that is out of the way, I would like to get to the main point. I realize that Eastern Iowa theater and Chicago theater are vastly different things, but in Eastern Iowa, it is not that uncommon for a production to be sponsored by a corporation with local ties. The first play I was in, Nate the Great, was sponsored by John Deere, who has plants in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area. Still Life With Iris was sponsored by Quaker, who has a plant in Cedar Rapids not far from the Iowa Theatre Building. I believe a production of The Music Man I worked on was sponsored by Wells Fargo and while it might not have major offices in that area, it still seemed appropriate that Wells Fargo would sponsor that show. Target, who has two distribution centers in Cedar Falls, has sponsored quite a few productions at the Waterloo Community Playhouse and Black Hawk Children’s Theatre. Sometimes local businesses are at least one of the producers for a play. Hansen’s Dairy in Hudson, which produces dairy products from the family cows—and operates my favorite ice cream shop in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, Moo Roo—sponsors productions at the Cedar Falls Community Theatre, where one of the Hansens has performed in productions.
As a result of doing theater in Eastern Iowa for 7 years, I used to think that in order to do a play you had to have a company sponsoring the show. Does this mean that the sponsors were awkwardly worked into the play? No. They’re usually acknowledged in the curtain speech and on the posters. Sometimes at the Waterloo Community Playhouse, the sponsors will have tables set up in the lobby to let patrons know more about what they do.
And you know what? The theater companies in Iowa work really hard to get these companies to sponsor their shows. I know from first-hand experience that Danny Katz, who works for WCP, tries very hard to get sponsors and it’s actually pretty incredible to know how hard he tries.
As a result of this, if I was going to start a theater company in Eastern Iowa, I realized that I would have to court companies to try to donate money or sponsor a show. Does that mean I’m “whoring” myself out to corporate America or to even small businesses? No. It means that I’m trying to keep my theater company running. And most corporations and businesses want to do philanthropic acts. In essence, Chase Community Giving is philanthropy, even though the mechanics of the act are a bit debatable.
But as far as I know (and most of my knowledge comes from talking to Katz), these theater companies don’t just send out a Facebook message. They’re out there, meeting with businesses or at events in their city to try to get more audience members to at the very least see their shows.
Ultimately that is what theaters need to do: they need to make a face-to-face connection to get money or donations or an audience. Facebook is not a cure-all for our problems as non-profit theaters.
It was recently announced that the Iowa City Community Theatre is in debt and needs $20,000 by the end of May.
ICCT has known for a while that they were in debt; this is not news to them, they almost canceled their production of Wonderful Town because of their debt.
I don’t remember when their production of Wonderful Town was, it might have been while I was still living in Chicago. Their production of Wonderful Town went on because of some last minute fundraising. An email that was sent out by board member Kehry Lane says this:
This past year has been a struggle. We nearly canceled Wonderful Town (due to lack of funding), which was saved by the extraordinary fund raising efforts of it’s production team. Due to their hard work, ICCT was able to proceed with the show, and make some money in the process.
Unfortunately, the money made on WT wasn’t enough to bring us out of the hole. We still find ourselves in need of a substantial amount of money, or we should seriously consider closing our doors. The target is $20,000.00 by the end of May. We’re hoping for 200 theatre lovers to contribute $100.00 each. If we meet this goal, we’ll be able to retire our debt, and start next season with some cash on hand.
So, they only did fundraising to put on Wonderful Town? They didn’t raise money to pull them completely out of debt?
The email continues:
We’ve assembled a line-up of shows (and directors) for next year that we believe will enchant and delight audiences. We’re planning on pursuing grants to help us sustain ICCT over the long term. We’ve got a strong slate of candidates for next year’s board. We’re moving in the right direction, and we need some brave, generous folks to contribute.
So they’ve already planned their new season and have a line-up of both plays and directors. I would like to know why they’ve planned a season if they’re so deep in debt that they can’t go on if they don’t have $20,000 by the end of May.
I then read Kris Joseph’s post on this same issue. This is brought about by a production of Blood Brothers at Gladstone Theatre that might close two weeks early due to slow ticket sales. (Which, I do have issues with.)
From what Kris has written, it’s being made out to be that if Blood Brothers closes early, it will be because YOU didn’t buy tickets. Which is blaming the public and a future audience and only pushing them further away.
DO NOT DO THIS.
This is what ICCT’s plea sounds like: We didn’t pull out of debt because not enough people saw Wonderful Town. (I didn’t even know it happened; I must have still been living in Chicago at the time.)
That is, of course, not my biggest problem with this. My biggest problem is that ICCT has known that they are in debt for quite some time and this is the first time that they’ve really done something major about this. Someone, a managing director or a board member, should have seen this coming and said something.
I do realize that this occurs with some theaters; some theaters are genuinely caught off-guard by lost revenue from a show or a project, especially with bad weather. But if a theater does this, they have to prove to me that they will stay out of debt. If you get press and you get attention and people donate, does that mean they will come and see the plays? Not necessarily. What will you do to keep this from happening again?
Theater is a business; money has to be earned in different ways to keep the theater afloat. I can personally say that fundraising is something that genuinely terrifies me when it comes to running a theater, but I realize that by courting businesses to sponsor plays or to do joint projects, it can keep my theater open.
There is a certain urgency to saying, “We need $x by this date.” It is, as Travis and Kris put it, a ransom note. But when you provide the facts, people that don’t have bleeding hearts might seem a bit skeptical.
Ultimately, it’s not over until the artistic director chains himself to the stage door.
Would the real Neil LaBute please stand up?
That’s a summary of what Chris Jones says in the Tribune.
The play in question is A True Story of the Johnstown Flood, which is running at the Goodman Theatre and is directed by Goodman artistic director Robert Falls. Chris Jones wasn’t too thrilled with the production in his first review. None of the critics were enthusiastic about the show.
But in this piece, Jones says:
I think “A True History of the Johnstown Flood,” which deals with the horrific events of 1889 when a man-made lake washed away an entire town, has some significant flaws. But I also think some of the people who don’t like this play haven’t understood it. It’s not easy to understand. And as one of my shrewder correspondents observed, you have to sleep on it a bit. And now that I’ve stared at the ceiling for a few nights, well … I suggest you go and see what all the fuss is about. I’m not sure I made that clear enough in my review.
My immediate question from this is how is the average theatergoer in Chicago supposed to understand this play if the mighty Chris Jones says that “It’s not easy to understand” and that he had to reflect on the show? Yes, I like it if the theater challenges people’s minds, but if the most influential, most read and best known theater critic in Chicago has a hard time understanding a show that either says something about the play or about the critic.
I have other problems with what Jones wrote, like that he says that the Goodman is “our [Chicago’s] flagship theater” and that “Falls is Chicago’s most essential director. It is inconceivable that this town would be without his work.”
Wait? The Goodman is Chicago’s flagship theater? Not that theater on the North Side that uses mostly Chicago actors, has Tracy Letts and many others in their ensemble and doesn’t open plays intending to transfer to Broadway? You know, Steppenwolf?
And Robert Falls is Chicago’s most essential director?! Not Amy Morton, Charles Newell, David Cromer, Mary Zimmerman, Sean Graney or Nathan Allen, but Robert Falls? (p.s., that was a shortlist of Chicago directors that are probably more essential that Falls).
I also find it interesting that he discusses the accusations of historical inaccuracy in a work of fiction. The only one that I’m immediately aware of is from Chicago Magazine (which is part of the Tribune Company), where it is discussed that an actor uses a zipper on his pants when the zipper wasn’t in existence at the time. I don’t care that it’s a work of fiction; that’s an error that a costume designer or a dramaturge, if it was in the stage directions, should have taken care of beforehand.
But ultimately my annoyance goes back to my original point: a critic should not need to write about a play a second time to clarify his point. And when clarifying a point, it is insulting to your readers and to your colleagues to say that they didn’t enjoy a play because they didn’t understand it. It is also baffling to say that a play is difficult to comprehend, that the critic had to think harder on it, and then suggest it.
I’ve missed writing about other season announcements, but I’ll write about Steppenwolf’s because I’m remembering to do so (I’ve been busy unpacking and dealing with angry mothers) and I was outrageously ebullient at 9 p.m.. (I didn’t read it when the Tribune posted it at 8:57, three minutes before the embargo was up.)
The theme for Steppenwolf’s 2010-11 season is the public/private self, which is a relevant thing to examine in the day of social networking. For more info, visit Steppenwolf’s website and/or the post on Time Out Chicago’s blog.
Steppenwolf has planned an interesting season that will, at the very least, make me visit Chicago regularly. A new play by Lisa D’Amour that Steppenwolf commissioned, a play by Lanford Wilson (their production of his play Blam in Gillead in 1980 was, er, landmark.), the transfer of a play from their First Look Repertory and a new Will Eno play. (I like Thom Pain (based on nothing). I’m not sorry.)
Oh, and Tracy Letts and Amy Morton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? FTW! (See, Steppenwolf can get me to use FTW.)
Here’s the word from the Steppenwolf folks.
September 9 – November 7, 2010
Detroit
A new play by Lisa D’Amour
Featuring ensemble members Kate Arrington and Robert Breuler
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
Picture-perfect couple Ben and Mary fire up the grill to welcome the new neighbors who’ve moved into the long-empty house next door. Three barbeques later, the fledgling friendship veers out of control, shattering Ben and Mary’s carefully maintained semblance of success—with comic, unexpected consequences. Detroit is a fresh, off-beat look at what happens when we dare to open ourselves up to something new.
December 2, 2010 – February 6, 2011
Edward Albee’s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Featuring ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
On the campus of a small New England college, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife home for a nightcap. As the cocktails flow, the young couple finds themselves caught in the crossfire of a savage marital war where the combatants attack the self deceptions they forged for their own survival. Ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton face off as one of theatre’s most notoriously dysfunctional couples in Albee’s hilarious and harrowing masterpiece.
January 20 – May 15, 2011
Sex with Strangers
By Laura Eason
Directed by associate artist Jessica Thebus
Featuring ensemble member Sally Murphy with Stephen Louis Grush
In the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre
Ethan is a hot young writer whose online journals of “sexcapades” are the buzz of the blogosphere. Olivia is an attractive 30-something whose own writing career is fizzling. They hook up, sex turns into dating and dating into something more complicated. A break-out hit at Steppenwolf’s 2009 First Look Repertory, Sex with Strangers explores how we invent our identity – online and off – and what happens when our private lives become public domain.
March 24 – May 29, 2011
The Hot L Baltimore
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by ensemble member Tina Landau
Featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman and Yasen Peyankov
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
The Hotel Baltimore used to be the swankiest place in town—now it has a date with the wrecking ball. Eviction notices just went out to its residents, who live on the fringes of society and call the seedy hotel home. This acclaimed play from the author of Balm in Gilead is filled with everyday humanity—unexpectedly intimate and moving. Helmed by visionary director Tina Landau, Hot L Baltimore reveals the private lives of an unconventional community about to be turned inside out.
June 16 – August 14, 2011
Middletown
A new play by Will Eno
Directed by Les Waters
Featuring ensemble member Alana Arenas
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
Mary Swanson just moved to Middletown. About to have her first child, she is eager to enjoy the neighborly bonds a small town promises. But life in Middletown is complicated: neighbors are near strangers and moments of connection are fleeting. Middletown is a playful, poignant portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious.
First of all, I turned on my computer yesterday morning to find messages telling me that I was mentioned on The Guardian’s theater blog. Chris Wilkinson of the Guardian addressed the lack of female theater bloggers on his 2009 best theater bloggers list. He pointed to a list on the Drama, Daily blog, which I was mentioned on along with many other very talented writers, many of whom I admire greatly.
He then pointed to particular posts that caught his eye and one of them was my post about the Halcyon Theatre’s Alcyone Festival, which is featuring the works of María Irene Fornés.
I’m really not sure what to say about this. I’m quite flattered and a bit surprised because I’m just a college student. I really don’t expect to find my blog linked to by the Guardian.
The second moment of wow is brought to you by Catey Sullivan of the Chicago Theater Blog, who sent WNEP founding artistic director Don Hall, who writes the blog An Angry White Guy in Chicago, a cease and desist letter after he put her review of WNEP’s The (edward) Hopper Project on his blog and commented on it.
It should be noted that Hall has done this with all of the reviews of the show, including the ones from the Windy City Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago. Sullivan is the only one to send a cease and desist letter and I’m really not sure why other than that she was upset that it was put on there without her permission. In my opinion, if you’re writing something that will be put online, be prepared for people to copy it in its entirety. However, I also think that what Hall is doing is a great idea because it’s creating a dialogue between the critic and the artist, which I think needs to happen more.
Since 2008, Halcyon Theatre has done a festival of plays by female playwrights as a part of their season. The Alcyone Festival is done every year to “combat the absolutely awful percentage of female playwrights produced,” as Halcyon artistic director Tony Adams puts it.
This year’s festival focuses on the works of María Irene Fornés, a Cuban playwright.
“Other than Eugene O’Neil, no other playwright has had a greater influence on drama. Most people haven’t heard of her, but they know of her through whom she influenced and taught,” Adams said.
Fornes has written about 40 plays; among her works that are being performed for the festival are Letters from Cuba, Tango Palace, Sarita, Manual for a Desperate Crossing, Summer in Gossensass and What of the Night. Five of the six plays haven’t been seen in Chicago before.
For Gina Lopiccolo, the director of Sarita, the ability to direct one of Fornes’ plays is exciting.
“I had directed one of her shows in college, The Conduct of Life,” Lopiccolo said. “I’m a huge fan of hers and she doesn’t get produced a lot. I had wanted to direct Sarita for a while.”
Sarita is a “play with music” that tells the story of a young girl named Sarita. The play focuses on her life from age 13 to 21 as she pursues a troublemaking boy that no one approves of while another boy is in love with her, while she doesn’t care for him.
For Lavina Jadhwani, the director of Summer in Gossensass, which is about the first American production of Hedda Gabbler, this is an introduction to the work of Fornés.
“I was more familiar with Ibsen,” Jadhwani said. “When I read all of the subbmissions that Tony had, I felt drawn to this play. What’s fascinating is that they’ve heard about Ibsen, they’ve heard about Hedda, but it’s not until halfway through the play that they get their hands on the script. It was not a play, it was the play. I saw a lot of myself and my peers in that. What does it mean to create meaningful art? There are some very high stakes in that.”
The other directors include Juan Castañeda, Coya Paz, Margo Gray and Halcyon Theatre’s associate artistic director Jenn Adams.
“It’s a pretty formidable group of directors, which is exciting for me,” Tony Adams said. “At the end of the day, they’re great plays and they’re fun to watch.”
The Alcyone Festival begins on January 21 and runs through February 27 at the Lincoln Square Theatre in the Barry United Methodist Church at 4754 N Leavitt. For more info, visit halcyontheatre.org
Due to the number of shows closing this month on Broadway for various reasons, and the hits that have huge movie stars, I thought that the video “The Superior” by the Southern Mothers would be rather appropriate, particularly since Superior Donuts is closing today.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go kick myself for not seeing it when it was running at Steppenwolf. And try to find donuts.
The Addams Family, which began it’s pre-Broadway run at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre on Wednesday, is a very enjoyable musical with terrific performances from several of the actors. But the musical has two problems: it is too long and the characters are underdeveloped, even though there is too much exposition for the family that many people are familiar with.
To clarify, the show isn’t really too long; it simply feels too long. The musical follows the familiar macabre family that was created by Charles Addams as they spend one night trying to entertain (and act normal) around the family of Wednesday’s (Krysta Rodriguez) love interest, Lucas Beineke (Wesley Taylor). The Beineke’s are very conservative Ohioans and a foil to the Addams, giving the show a plot very similar to La Cage Aux Folles.
The musical, which presently clocks in at about two and a half hours, has a lot going for it. As Morticia, Bebe Neuwirth is very refined, elegant and dark and gives a terrific performance in a role that is saddled with a weak plot about Morticia worrying about looking old and being upstaged by her children, which she sings about in the showstopping, “Second Banana.” Neuwirth is not upstaged by either Rodriguez or Adam Riegler, who plays Pugsley, and looks quite fabulous in the low-cut, form fitting black dress she wears throughout the show. Nathan Lane does as best as he can with what he’s been given with the role of Gomez. At many moments, Gomez is a suave man with a Spanish accent and a love for swordfighting and torture instruments. But at other moments, he seems like an immature individual who laughs at his own jokes, which are lost to Mal Beineke (Terrance Mann). The moments where Gomez is the romantic yet demented Spaniard are the moments where Lane has some of his finest moments and that personality is shown in both the numbers “Passionate and True” and “Happy/Sad.”
As for several of the other actors, they are giving performances that are so good that it seems as though their characters are underused. Riegler manages to even be a bit adorable as Pugsley, who laments the possible loss of being literally tortured by Wednesday. As Grandma, Jackie Hoffman is really given nothing better to do than say lines at the end of act one and act two that old characters have been saying in comedies for several years and is hilarious because of her delivery of these lines. In a scene between her and Pugsley, Hoffman acts like a sweet old woman before dropping her voice to tell Pugsley to stay out of her stuff. At the present moment, Uncle Fester (Kevin Chamberlain), acts as a bit of a narrator and commenter, but is also saddled with an odd plot line about being in love with the moon. Even though his number “The Moon and Me” is very tender and uses old theatrical methods to create the illusion of him being near the moon, the plot line suddenly comes out of nowhere towards the end of the show, making it seem very abrupt and lacking in the emotion needed to really draw the audience to the character’s problems. And as Lurch, Zachary James is on stage for only a few scenes and only does much of anything in about three of them, but is very funny as he walks slowly and speaks in low, slow sounds.
Mal and Alice Beineke (Carolee Carmello) suffer from coming into the show late in act one and being rushed through their plots as they suffer a transformation. While Mal’s takes more time and is much more straightforward—although how his passion for his wife is rekindled is disturbing—Alice’s transformation is just downright confusing. Carmello sings a number entitled “Waiting” at the end of act one and while she puts quite a bit of energy and emotion into this number, it comes off as being a hot box of crazy with muddled, incomprehensible lyrics, which may have been difficult to understand since I was sitting in the front row and very close to the 17-piece orchestra. But she sings a very emotional song about waiting, collapses on the table and then tries to find a way to rekindle her romance with her husband. All of this occurs in a short time and feels very contrived because of that.
But above all, the Addams family is overly aware of their oddity, while in Charles Addams’ cartoons and in the TV series and the films, their behavior was to them perfectly normal and the rest of the world was odd. Although, since Wednesday is reduced to little more than an angsty teenage girl in this musical, her over-awareness of her abnormality is understandable.
As for the length, this is the result of quite a few numbers going on for too long of a time. The opening number, “Clandango” is very energetic and busy, but it felt like it went on for several minutes as the actors did a lot of dancing and never really seemed to explain what exactly a clandango was. Another number, “Let’s Not Talk About Anything Else But Love,” is very sweet, but then turns into a bawdy dance number for no explicable reason, other than to maybe pump up the sexual frustration between Wednesday and Lucas. If the number ends before the dance sequence, it works very well.
As for Wednesday and Lucas, even though their conflict is what causes the events of the night to begin, it feels as though there is too much time spent on them. Either that, or Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book is filled with too much of Wednesday and Lucas’s dialogue consisting of Lucas saying something and Wednesday responding with “That’s hot” for their problems to really matter because their lines and problems are now very clichéd. Rodriguez also gave a very monotonous, robotic performance in the first act, but loosened up by the second act.
Andrew Lippa’s score, although in need of some pruning on some numbers, utilizes a wide variety of musicals styles from flamenco to power ballad to pop rock that sounds terrific when played by the orchestra. Co-directors and co-designers Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch have a grand, majestic set for the family’s house that almost is a show in itself as it moves around to show the exterior, the interior and the various rooms with several panels and doors and windows for the characters and Basil Twist’s elaborate puppets to enter and move around on. It is a rare instance where a set can be very extravagant but seem necessary and work beautifully with the play without being a distraction.
The Addams Family is certainly kooky at this moment. But with some pruning of the numbers and some more development of the characters, the show could also be creepy, mysterious and spooky and altogether ooky.
“The Addams Family” runs through January 10, 2010 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theater at 24 W Randolph St. Tickets range from $28 to $105 and can be purchased at all Broadway in Chicago box offices, by calling 1-800-775-2000, or by going on to http://www.BroadwayInChicago.com
In keeping with the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations that unfairly discriminate against bloggers, who are now required by law to disclose when they have received anything of value they might write about, please note that I did not pay for a ticket for this show.
Fragments 