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Artistic Director of New Dramatists
Author of the study: Outrageous Fortune: the Life and Times of the New American Playanother take on this talk. I’ll look to link to the video recorded version once it’s up.

New Dramatists: background — 50 playwrights in former Lutheran church former soup kitchen and homeless shelter; how fitting: metaphorical for playwrights now.

London spoke of the strangeness of creeping around New Dramatists and finding original scripts: Red burning light of the American Life Fornes; “Millhand’s Lunch Bucket” — 1st draft of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Plays by David Lindsay Abarre and Nilo Cruz

Toyed with more comic elements, song creation, including a song “What a difference a play makes” — Marsha Norman’s response to a request for a song about a play; but seriously, for London, plays do make a difference; there’s not a playwright that he’s met who doesn’t have the answer to the question: can they single out the play that changed their life. London, again, posits the question: “Do plays really make a difference? Do they really change lives?”

London does not shy away from mentioning his own longing for good movies, books, and music from his ipod. So, as such, London often feels that he is a “rabbi in a church for playwrights where I constantly question my faith”.

London wondered: does the difference a play makes pass from writer to writer; that is, is there a charge that can be passed from one writer to another?

Quote: Nothing is ever gone as long as there are people to remember; people to write it down.

London noted that forms of theatrical expression are fading: seder play, burlesque; although, I will point out that in Cleveland, so far as I can tell, vaudeville and burlesque forms are making a come back.

London: find your faith where you can; hoping people meet you where they live.

London bemoaned the “energy of where our culture is directed” and that we all know what that me;ans. The theaters that were supposed to help instead have invested in “large administrative staffs”; “monumental buildings”, and have failed to provide “structures for sustaining playwrights over time”. One need only look at what is happening in Cleveland to see the constant reality of this.

By exploring the needs of playwrights, London was lead to the study that became outrageous fortune.

Highlights (as fast as I could type, so you’ll be better off reading the full report):

American non-profit theaters are risk averse, corporate-board-driven entities that lack daring leaders; what non-profit theater leaders mean by “audience” likely refers to “large donors” or “key assets”; the economics of playwrights is impossible: otherwise employed or poor $20k – $40k per year; half of sources come from elsewhere; of 90+ percent of income only 15% comes from plays; 3% comes from royalties: $750; average was 35-40 and a winner of Obies, etc.

Surprisingly, despite the posturing, the functioning and economics of theaters have made it impossible for playwrights to exist in them.

MFA programs are pumping out playwrights and saddling them with debt that they will never be able to repay.

Without theaters that support playwrights, can one imagine the early plays of O’Neill; the success of Odetts and Albee; the delicacy of the plays of Horton Foote?

Playwrights need to ask themselves, “how do you get sustained by an environment that won’t love you?”

a challenge to idealism
soul in the machine of a capitalistic economic structure

After casting out an immense IMMENSE oppressive darkness, London switched gears to allow a bit of light in: that we seem to be living during a moment of extraordinary change; Mellon was re-evaluating its priorities; there exists now a great moment of energy and intention (for playwrights). That there is “a weird seismic shift” underway.

Arena Stage: a resident theater embracing its historical responsibility to lead

where do we look for inspiration?
when you stare at something long enough it grows larger
large theaters aren’t evil they are misguided
david grimm

keepers of ecstasy and empathy
bitterness kills playwrights (poets)

You aren’t free when you are passive…can’t blame others, theaters, etc. Playwrights must lead, must be a force for change on your own.

Playwright leadership

passivity and blame are the unfortunate response of artists in a market economy

what will you make happen, what will you do with the gifts of this weekend?

guarre to wilder

theaters serve to stop the homogeneity of our society; to defend against a monoculture.

matt–playwrights–lazy writing practices?
what does it mean to be a writer in a collaborative art?

don’t understand the impulse to write something and then give it to others to fuck it up
plays are unfinished (artistic directors)–but the expectations are different now — playwrights know the play will change, etc.
richard nelson — speech several years ago — treat us like children and we’ve allowed ourselves to be treated like children

troubling in research: despite the fact that there were great stories of collaboration; critiquing institutional theaters of a certain size.
let go of the notion that the institutional theater is “the theater”
pig iron
13p
children’s theaters
theaters in their own community
new theater (create your own)
different models

Howl Round
Arena Stage
http://www.howlround.com/

Went to a conference on Saturday that was sponsored by Baker-Nord at Case. It was about digital technologies and contemporary art–their merger and the cool things that emerge from it, the challenges facing contemporary art museums, and creating collaborative communities to support art museums. It was a fascinating conference if for no other reason than the presence of all these people collectively contemplating how collaborative communities can be created to support the creation of new approaches to thinking, addressing problems, making art, working regionally, and bringing people from different disciplines or schools of thought together.

Some of the guest speakers included: Ken Goldberg, Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley; Anne Balsamo, Professor of Interactive Media in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC; and Anne Murphy, Co-Chair of the Digital Promise Project.

For Ken Goldberg, one of the most fascinating “installations” he showed was this project he worked on that used the tracking of seismic activity of the earth. He noted that the earth is always moving and, of course, an earth quake in Japan can register in vibrations in the crust here in Ohio, etc., so the earth is this living thing that is constantly moving and reverberating right under our feet (even though we often think of it as just dirt, solid, etc). Regardless, it is constantly vibrating and these vibrations are captured by seismic equipment. Well, I’m not sure how it all came about, but he was next working with a musician, who found a way to amplify these vibrations and essentially turn them into music–live music coming from the earth (it makes me think of whale sounds)–and they created this installation in a museum that people could walk into and then lay down and just listen to the music of the earth. Then, a dancer became interested in it and they took the piece to the San Fransisco Ballet and played, live, the music of the earth while a dancer interpreted it physically. It was called Ballet Mori (which makes me think of Memento Mori, which is more gruesome/depressing). But the whole thing is not only fascinating, but demonstrates in New Media terms, how a project can move from a science sphere to a contemporary art sphere and then into a performing art sphere. Very fascinating and cool.

For Anne Balsamo, I was impressed with her “Reading Wall” which is like a plasma display oriented vertically that can slide horizontally along a timeline and as it passes over a point the plasma display brings up events, descriptions, “tombstones” as in art museums, etc. Her work surrounds new technologies and gender and culture.

Anne Murphy’s talk was about Digital Promise which has been re-named the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies which has received an “authorization” from Congress to exist, but needs an “appropriation” of funds to start. It hopes to be very like what the National Institutes of Health is for health/medicine–only, of course, for Digital Technology–i.e. massive amounts of money to put toward new projects and ideas.

Probably one of the central themes of interest to come out of this day, for me, was the tension between Art and Science. In fact, Goldberg began his talk by drawing attention to the root of each word: Art (ars: Latin, to bring together) and Science (skei: Greek, to cut). I think that is fascinating in and of itself. Nonetheless, this tension that revolves seemingly around the notion that Science is important because it is practical, has utility, has a value that can be concretely demonstrated and felt by all; where as Art deals much more in intangibles and has no perceived practical utility. I have been thinking about this and found myself listening to the moronic ravings of congressional republicans like Duncan Hunter and some other yahoo from Arizona who have been crying about the stimulus package providing $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts. They all are saying, “what value is this?” They don’t seem to understand that, for instance, in Cleveland, the Cleveland Public Theatre complex on the Detroit Shoreway, in keeping with James Levin’s vision, has re-vitalized an economically depressed neighborhood: arts have the power of economic development. Actors, directors, tech people, writers, musicians, all earn money and pay taxes and buy food and contribute to the economy in other ways, too. The stupidity is staggering.

The confluence of this question and the Cool Fusion conference has me thinking about a play that deals with the issues surrounding Science, Technology, and Art and Jared Bendis and I have started some give and take with ideas. We hope to generate a performance piece this year.