The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King
an original play by Andrew Dolan
Directed by Rod Menzies
and presented by Ensemble Studio Theatre of Los Angeles

The writer of this premiere I think might appreciate the following sentiment, as I've seen it often in LA: a play about social issues will typically get a great review or a pass by reviewers simply because it's about social issues relevant to our time and place. Issues do not make a play great. Likewise, simply attempting to turn an issue on it's head does not make a play great. The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King is an incredibly well produced play. The acting is top notch, the direction is very competent and inventive, the set, lighting and sound design are some of the most professional I've seen in LA, the writing is intelligent, clever and involving. My first time seeing a show at EST Los Angeles, and I'm without a doubt impressed. In spite of all of this, the show itself falls short of being great. It has all the necessary elements, but doesn't quite know how to piece them together to make them impactful or to create a relevant whole.

This is a play about the anger and honesty of the misunderstood white man and the people who assume he's racist because of it. Great! It's as provocative as the title, kind of. It pretends to be as provocative as the title, which honestly didn't provoke me that much. I'll explain. The main character, Simon (Philip Casnoff), male, white, late 40's, the voice of the play is a supposed provocateur; a professor that lost tenure for writing his request for tenure in crayon simply to make a point. He's hyper-intelligent, more so than those surrounding him, and has the ego of a God. The play asks us if he's a tragic character. A character asks him this at the end, he dreams that he is, a cleverly created Greek chorus implies that he might be. But the only mistake he makes throughout the show is that he's a prick. He cares so passionately about what he believes that he doesn't allow for any other opinions to be relevant. Okay, so that makes him a prick, but it doesn't make him wrong in what he believes. It doesn't make him uncaring or inhuman. The tragedy here is that people are so ingrained with what they are told to believe that any dissent from that or anyone who asks a question putting those beliefs under scrutiny is immediately thrown on the fire and thought of as evil or racist - the type of arguments I see thrown around on Facebook all the time. Great. Outstanding point. An appropriate critique of the world and how it works. But having a great point also does not make for a great play. Stay with me...

The writer, Andrew Dolan, sets Simon up with a younger black wife, a bright student of his, Lashwana (Tracey A. Leigh), who is not afraid to tell him he's full of shit. It's why he's attracted to her. Her brother Anquan (Theo Parks) has been put on probation from school for stealing an iPod from another student - I will take the leap and buy that (You get the feeling this is a very conservative, politically correct college campus.) - and is staying with them, because he doesn't want to go back to his family living in a rough part of town. They have invited over one of Simon's fellow ex-teachers Augustus (Carlos Cassasco) and his wife Janine (Judith Moreland), both of whom are black, and for reasons that really have no emotional relevance to the story - it's simply a reason to get them all in the same room. You have one white man espousing his ideas of the black culture and where that culture is at and what the real problem is while surrounded by black people. Both sides have valid arguments. Simon is willing at times to admit this and even apologize for his candidness and anger; the other four are not willing in any way to admit that Simon has valid points because he is, after all, white.

The first half of the play was exceptional, it handles all of this with competence, wit, heart and fire. Here's where the play loses me: Yes, Simon is white, but he's quick to point out that he was a social worker for nine years in a poor, black neighborhood. That's it. The play leaves it at that. That's as much as we get to know about Simon and why he is the way he is. Mr. Casnoff, along with no doubt excellent direction, fills in the blanks beautifully, bringing a level of dimension to the character that is not in the writing, as do the other performers. But that's the problem, through the writing we never get to know who these characters are. In the end it's literally black and white. The joy of seeing O'Neill, Shephard is that we not only get to the heart of the theme or argument, but we get to see the hearts of the characters exposed. Not just their ire or passion, but why it exists. In the end, while I understand Simon's arguments, I don't understand Simon, and that can be said for all of the characters in this show, except for Anquan. He has the fewest lines in the play, yet we see who he is in the beginning, we hear why he is that way, and we see how the events in the play effect or don't effect him. He is a fully developed character with a clear arch. It doesn't take much. For Simon, all it would have taken is a few more brush strokes, what happened to him during those 9 years as a social worker, but we're left to guess. And because we have to guess, the drama of the show suffers. Yes, there are still incredibly effective moments throughout, brought on by intelligent and creative directing and palpable performances, but we're only allowed to see shadows of who these people are, and never truly begin to understand them.

The biggest problem with the play is the macguffin, the book itself that Simon writes and publishes, "The Many Wives of Martin Luther King". I cannot begin to tell you what the purpose of it was or why Simon wrote it, except to provoke his readers, but I don't buy that. There's too much passion instilled in Simon for that to be true. Maybe he's simply tired of a single train of thought that really isn't getting us anywhere, so he's shaking the boat, much like Andrew Dolan is trying to do. So delve into that. Don't simply allow Simon to tells us what he thinks is wrong, but let us hear those outlandish ideas about what should be done about it, something that could really, truly get him in trouble for saying. Instead we get to hear an argument that's familiar. Dolan doesn't give the audience credit in this regard; he's not the first to make this argument. In the end, like Simon, Dolan has forgotten the hearts of the people he's writing about, who they are as individuals. They shouldn't exist on the page and on stage just to make a point.

In spite of these drawbacks, there is much to like about the production, particularly as I've mentioned the layered performances, the beautifully written, often funny and striking dialogue and the atmospheric and balanced direction. Some of the hopping around in time killed a little of the emotional continuity - a minor complaint. No doubt Dolan has talent as a writer, I hope with his next piece he works on the core of the characters as much as he does the thesis of the argument. Until that happens, the arguments presented remain slightly convoluted and in the end lacking a level of thoughtfulness and weight.

The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King. Written by Andrew Dolan. Directed by Rod Menzies. March 17 - April 29, 2012. Fri + Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm and 7pm.

Ensemble Studio Theatre of Los Angeles, 3269 Casitas Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90039. (323) 644-1929. For more info: ensemblestudiotheatrela.org

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
BY EUGENE O'NEILL
PRESENTED BY THE ACTOR'S CO-OP

This is the first Los Angeles stage production I've seen in a long while in which I felt like almost every minute of the three and a half hour run time was necessary and well executed (are you allowed to cut Eugene O'Neill if you're not head of a motion picture studio?) The Actor's Co-op, under the direction of Marianne Savell and with incredibly capable actors from the company, have put under the lights a gripping, mature production of O'Neill's autobiographical masterpiece that falls just short of transcendent, and let me tell you, that's quite the compliment coming from me.

This is one of my favorite types of stories in which the characters dictate the action of the play, as opposed to the plot. And no plot could match the poetry of O'Neill's words and characters and the life that these actors fight to put into them, laying a piece of their soul on stage for all to see. A family of four: Nan McNamara plays the medicated matriarch, Mary Tyrone, as a girlish soul, a ghost of who she once was before her growth as a person was stunted by her overbearing, stingy, drunken, ex-actor of a husband James Tyron, brought to life with fierceness and a surprising vulnerability by Bruce Ladd. James is none too pleased with his eldest son, James Tyrone, a drunkard and failure in his eyes, played by David Scales, who has influenced his younger brother, Edmund Tyrone, with his dark heart. Daniel J Roberts naturally brings a balancing act of sensitivity, intelligence, ignorance, despair, loathing and most importantly a desire to grasp onto what little hope remains intact to the character of Edmund. In fact, I've just described each of these characters and the performances in this show. O'Neill has crafted these characters, at the end of their rope, each who loved too much but are too imperfect to know how to do it well. Who fight as hard as they can for that last shred of hope and possibility. And each actor allows us to see every angle of these restless and lost souls, loving and hating them, blaming and finding forgiveness in them - we understand them. No one is the villain and no one is the victim. As they un-weave a carefully knit web of self-denial and false security in each other, each ironically with their own vice, we hope for them as well. Their histories unfurl in their interplay and we see Mary crumble on the stage before us, until James Tyron is left holding in his arms what is one of the most staggering visual metaphors I've ever seen in the final few minutes of a play. I was deeply moved.

Playing the fifth character Cathleen, the hired help, Selah Victor, brings an unaffected soul to the proceedings that allows Mary to free herself momentarily from the suffocating presence of the men in her life and we're allowed to see her for who she is. And while Cathleen is a necessary character for this reason, I felt an opportunity was missed. She didn't quite resonate with that spark of life that would have placed her outside of the world of these characters, instead she felt to near the world weariness of them. It's a choice and not a bad one, but one I feel, if a little more light came from the character, another dimension would have been added to the show, and really allowed us to conceptualize just how corrupted this family unit had become. Nitpicking, really. A tough balancing act and one you may not want to mess with, as the tone of the show is near perfect; to add an element such as that if handled incorrectly could border on distracting.

However, what almost derailed the show just as it was beginning could have easily been avoided. The performances began a little hesitant, nerves of the actors perhaps, within minutes they found their natural flow, so this wasn't the problem. The problem is what makes the play a difficult one to pull off, where to begin the decline of Mary Tyrone, when to show the facade start to crack. In my humble opinion, they began too early, almost from the first few moments of the show. Somewhere along the way, between the actress and director, this was a choice that was made. Mary's energy was too scattered, too nervous, there was nothing to hide, nothing to wonder about. This decision sacrificed, in the beginnings of the play, a certain nuance to ms McNamara's performance, and kept her from exploring the full extent of Mary's arch. These nuances I hoped for in voice and movement came back into the play later, especially with the moments shared alone with Cathleen. Fortunately I found myself unconcerned, I patiently waited, thankfully not for long, for the show to catch up with the performance, and when it did, McNamara was riveting. Another almost hour long sequence shared between Ladd and Roberts, father and youngest son, was an exquisite exchange between two seasoned actors - worth the price of admission alone to see actors actually listening to each other as opposed to waiting for their turn to speak. Another compliment I can lay on all five of them.

I can't finish up without talking about two other things. First the inventive set, a maze of bookcases, full of much referenced books, hiding other areas of the house between their staggered placement. This brilliant design allowed us to feel the depth of the space and in turn the emptiness these characters lived in. The lighting design smartly highlighted this effect.

The second is something I discussed with my fellow theatre enthusiast while leaving the show, is simply the difference between the tone of this show compared to many of the other current, original works being produced now days. It seems like the current trend in original productions about characters with problems simply exist for the writer to complain about how horrible life is and how poorly they were treated, subjecting the audience to shallow shouting matches and pity-me-antics, most often times touching on things of "topical importance". This seems to be an LA-centric disposition. The shows lack the depth and maturity writers like O'Neill used as profound tools, but they also lack one very important thing, hope. The desire of the characters involved to seek out that glimmer of hope, no matter how difficult it may be for them. It has become the modern tragedians aspiration that everyone has succumbed to tragedy before they ever had a chance to live...and to me, that's not tragic - that's pathetic. You have to begin high before you can fall to the earth. Up and coming writers, tragedy cannot be found without first showing us hope and empathy.

I hope you all take an evening to go see this wonderful, layered production. You can tell they care about their theatre.

Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill presented by The Actor's Co-op. 1760 North Gower Street, Los Angeles, CA 90028 (323) 462-8460. March 16 - April 29, Fri and Sat at 7:30pm, Sun at 2pm.
For more information: http://actorsco-op.org/

Of Pinterest to Collaborators

The Pinterest Logo, designed by Michael Deal and Juan Carlos Pagan

Are you familair with Pinterest? 

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

A simple idea -- really, an obvious idea.  The good folks have Pinterest have filled a much need niche with a very intuitive set of tools.  The "Pin It" button is camped out on my browser tool bar right now, and I'm playing around with it for a history project I'm picking away at.

I think this is a tool theatre makers could use.  Let's say a theatre company wants to adapt and develop an all Japanese-American version of Miss Julie, set in Los Angeles in the Spring of 1942.  A dramaturg could use a Pinterest board dedicated to this project, and fill it with images of the time and place.  A design team could share their visual research with each other, and possibly even sketches and rough drafts of ideas.  The director could contribute to such a board, as could the actors.  The audience could follow this online visual dialogue between the collaborators, contributing to it in the form of re-pins and comments, thus building anticipation for the coming production.
 
I hope some bright theatre companies are already doing this.  Since there is no such thing as an original idea (although I try, damn it!) I'm sure there is a company in my own backyard doing this right now.  If you know of any such brilliant souls, let me know.  I'll do a little poking around on my own, to see what I can find.
 
A couple of things to note:  First, Pinterest is not about self-aggrandizement, it's about sharing.  Going into this thing as another way to advertise shows would be a very bad idea.  Use it as a tool to facilitate conversation, collaborating, sharing, etc.  Second, the copyright issues around this site seem a little murky to me, and could possibly bite everyone in the ass in the end.  So tread cautiously, and read their Terms of Use very carefully.
 
Happy collaborating!

The Phases of Disaster

I am currently wrapping up CERT training, and just this week was exposed to the "Phases of Disaster" chart:

i.e. "Phases of Starting a New Theatre Company".

(Clarification for the humor impaired:  In this example, starting the new theatre company would be the disaster.)

Drawing a Bright Line

I just ran across this old-ish post on a blog I follow (yet don't read as often as I should.)  Yowza.  I'm not sure that it's a bad thing for non-profit theatre to serve as the "minor leagues" for commercial theatre, but boy howdy do I appreciate the Spartan resolve of Scott Walter's modest proposal:

While I was thinking about this issue and how best to address it, I came up with an idea that absolutely everybody will hate which, if I were an avant garde artist, I would see as proof that it is an excellent idea. And while I acknowledge its likelihood of universal horror, and also the complicated details that would be involved, I am going to share it anyway as a "modest proposal" offered to provoke thought if nothing else.

Go to Scott Walter's blog and be provoked:  An Idea That Everyone Will Hate

A Modest Proposal: The Theatre Guide for People Who Hate the Theatre

I have a pet theory as to why Joe Public stays away from the live theatre: He doesn't want to be disappointed. It's not so much a pet theory as a dead horse I like to wail on from time to time.  Almost as much as I like to quote Seth Godin.  Speaking of which:

So who comes on opening night? No discounts, no reviews, no warning...

The patrons come. For them, part of the attraction of art is that they don't know in advance if they're going to like it. They come for a simple reason: it feels good to support something because they can, not merely because it's a good value.

And the true fans come. They come because the artist has earned their trust. "If you made it, that's good enough for me," they say. They come because to not come is to not be a true fan, with all that entails.

Gotta love them "true fans."  They're not your problem.  Your problem is Joe Public!

Joe has no patience for crap.  He's outcome oriented:  "Entertain me!" he says as he plops down his greenbacks.  He'll go see whatever big action movie just opened because at the very least, he'll get spectacle.  Joe Public wants a good value.  He wants to know in advance if he's going to like it.

And at $25 a ticket, why the hell shouldn't we give him a clear indication of whether or not he will?  A clear and concise -- some may say cynical and crass -- guide to what's currently occupying our Under-99's across Los Angeles may just encourage Joe to put down the Xbox controller, cancel that pay-per-view UFC fight, or eject that Blu-ray disc and instead throw on a clean hoodie and go see a play.

You may be saying to yourself, "Do we even want that kind of patron to darken our door?"  Look, just quit entertainment.  There's still time to get a job in arts administration.  Seriously.

So here's the proposal to bring Joe Public into our meager little black boxes.  I call it ...

The Theatre Guide for People Who Hate Theatre

... and it would have the following sections:
 
RUN TIME  Three hour plays may be incredibly gratifying to the people putting them on, but let's not kid ourselves:  A three hour MOVIE damn well better have a major battle scene involving giant robots, orcs, spaceships, WWII or some combination of all four.  At the very least, give Joe a heads-up.  A short runtime = "At the very least, it's short."  A long runtime = "There had better be swordplay and/or gratuitous nudity."

GENRE  Is it a light-hearted romantic comedy or a serious psychodrama?  Look, let's make it easy on Joe Public:  "ROMANTIC COMEDY". Oh God, do we hate labels. "We're all iconoclasts, dammit! You can't label what we do!" Look, either you provide the label, or Joe Public will. What you're doing here is managing expectations. The choice to call it a "Romantic Comedy" instead of just "Comedy" or "Romance" will actually color the way your audience perceives the play. Make it accurate! (Don't we all just hate the romantic comedy that pitches itself as an action film?)

SYNOPSIS  Logline.  TV Guide synopsis.  Don't write a novel, just tell Joe what it's about.  You would be surprised how many show postcards omit the very simple step of TELLING THE AUDIENCE WHAT THE DAMN THING IS ABOUT.  Sure, the postcard is pretty, but what's the story?

WHAT IT IS LIKE  You're going to hate this one: Yes, I'm suggesting you describe the show in terms of "high concept." This guide is all about letting Joe know what he can expect, right? So tell him, in words he can instantly translate into concepts. "The guide says it's 'Donnie Darko' meets "Gosford Park.' Sweet. I'll have to check out this 'Hamlet'." (What a piece of work is a man.) And by the way, every play about a pedophile ever written is "Law & Order: SVU" meets "Stealing Home".

PRODUCTION VALUES  Are there any?  As I said, Joe Public is willing to pay to see spectacle, if nothing else.  A set, decent costumes, more than three semi-functional fresnels -- these things matter.  You don't have to belabor it (unless there's something worth noting like flying monkeys or gratuitous nudity), maybe just give it a star rating.

PARKING  Will Joe Public miss the first ten minutes of the show because he's doing laps?  True confession time:  I've bailed on seeing a show because I couldn't find parking, and I got fed up looking.  I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who's done that.  So break it down for Joe Public: "Meters are safe after 6pm."  "Park around the corner at the Moose Lodge."  Etc.

CONCESSIONS  "If you can't entertain me, at least give me a snack."  A genius once said this to me, and it is as true as it is pithy.  We all know that alcohol is the social lubricant, and theatre is a social art, so lubricate the audience!

In closing, one of my fellow Die Grüppe castmates recently had this to say after one of our shows:  "I had some audience members who were NOT friends of mine tell me they thought it was really funny."  That should be what we're shooting for:  entertaining complete strangers.  Yes, we love the True Fans, and we are always happy to see familiar faces in the audience.  The real challenge is to reach the seemingly unreachable, to push out of our circle of True Fans and create new fans.  That's how you grow.

Rockstar Theatre

Dave Grohl is Rock and Roll
image: Some rights reserved by Krypto

From ArtsHub, "7 tips to promote a gig and pull a crowd" by Lachlan Bryan:

It’s a fundamental question in the live music business; why do some some local gigs pack in the punters, whilst others fail miserably to draw a crowd? Often the venue is the same, the night of the week the same, sometimes it’s even the same band. Few are naive enough to think it’s actually ‘the music’ that makes the difference.

Whilst there are always variables at play, my observations have led me to this 7 point checklist for promoting a successful hometown gig…

Go read the whole thing. 

I think we can learn a lot from the work-a-day world of the gigging musician.  Musicians have to make it happen for themselves, and as into their own art as they may be, they must contend with the practical matter of reaching an audience (literally) staring them in the face.  You can't fill an arena with friends and family, you need fans.

So how might we apply these seven rules to small theatre?

1. The Venue Stay nomadic.  Don't enter into a long-term agreement with one theater.  For your three-person drama dealing with fe-e-e-elings, find the smallest hole possible.  If you have a cast of twenty in "Twilight: The Stage Play," go big.  In otherwords, rightsize the venue to fit the production.  And keep an eye on your nut!  If you need to make X dollars to cover your expenses, don't shackle yourself to a ticket price/number of seats that will guarantee you'll never cover your nut.

And here's a crazy idea:  Work with the theater management.  The better your show does, the more likely you won't be paying off the back-end of what you owe for rent a month after the show closes.  Theater owners got into the business because they actually like theater.  Ask their advice, pick their brains for promotional ideas in the neighborhood, etc.

2. The Lineup Share the venue.  Find another company that would like to do a double-feature.  This happens a little with late-night shows (improv or something scrappy like that) after a so-called mainstage show.  You can pool audiences with another company!  NOTE:  If you do this, please refrain from producing a 2 - 3 hour-long show.  (Actually, as a general rule avoid producing 2 - 3 hour-long shows.)

3. The Poster One of the most brilliant things I've read this week came from Amarita Ramanan at HowlRound:  "A marketing manager practices dramaturgy by communicating to an audience to mission and vision of the art through website blurbs, posters and brochures." Yes. That.  If the graphic designer isn't sweating as much as the cast, he or she isn't working hard enough.

4. The Online Stuff Theatre seems to be generally ahead of the curve on this point, so I won't say much more than this:  What Ramanan said about dramaturgy applies to the online stuff.  Just because the internet makes it seem effortless to promote doesn't mean you should put as much effort (and thought and creativity) into it as possible.

5. Pre-Sales  Again, we seem to be ahead of the curve on this one.  Brownpaper tickets, Goldstar, etc.  Now, the idea of using pre-sales as a way of monitoring your marketing efforts?  Brilliant.

6. The Show Itself Words I never want to hear again:  "I wish you hadn't come on opening night!"  Look, opening night is not a dress rehearsal.  Bryan's advice regarding "Have a thorough sound-check" could not be more applicable to what we do, as well.  Get to the theater early enough to fix the invariable technical issues that will have come up between curtain call last week and house opening this week.  Talk to the people you share the space with.  Work with the theater management.  Don't be surprised by a dead light or dimmer pack.

And, of course, put on a good show.

7. The Follow-Up Theatre tends to have this covered as well.  Tends to.  I think the last time I saw an email list for a stage play was for Re-Animator at the Steve Allen last year.  Lili VonSchtupp, producer of Monday Night Tease puts the email sign-up on stage at intermission and has the host say, "Join the email list."  Her shows have been standing room only for some time now (of course, she has boobs in her show, so that may be a factor.)  The point is, it's easy to forget.  A blanket "thank-you" on Facebook is great.  An email address has value. (Also, you can forward an email.)

...

To quote the great Jeff Bebe in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, "You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn't getting off, and I make him get off." That, my friends, is rock and roll.  It's also theatre -- or should be.