kudos

To all of the Obie winners last night.

Especially glad to see Sarah Benson get the nod, she's done amazing things down at Soho Rep.

And a new streak begins for the Lampshade Queen.

best laid plans

You know how some mornings you head out of the house for a quick errand and one goddamned thing turns into another which becomes a third and then a fourth and you wind up limping your befuddled ass home at five?

Yeah.

One of those.

Still have time for a MEMQ, so here's a golden oldie:

Who, in fact, wrote The Book of Love?

1. The Hollys

2. The Monotones

3. The Sliders

4. The Drifters

or

5. God His Own Self?

Winners remember the meaning of romance, losers get their reading privileges revoked.

when words fail

Looking for some help here.

The folks in Edinburgh are looking for press release for The Event pretty soon.

I can usually bang these things out in my sleep, but I'm having trouble nailing this one down in a couple of sentences.

So, loyal readers, if you caught the show anytime over the last year, send me a few lines.

Thanks and enjoy the weekend.

sick day

Canceled a morning meeting and stumbled back to bed.

It's not the Death Suck, just some low-level nastiness.

Interesting stuff over at 99 seats:

http://99seats.blogspot.com/

new blood

At the LIT board meeting last night we officially voted in our three new Artist/Professional board members.

Welcome Amanda Feldman, Chris Harcum and Chris Heath.

And thanks to the outgoing board members, Michael Goldfried, Moira Stone and John Pinckard.

That big wheel keeps on turning.

iron man

Chained to the desk prepping for a LIT board meeting tonight and trying to figure out how to rehearse the same show with two different actors.

Had my annual physical this morning and once again was astonished to hear the doctor say:

"You're in great shape."

Man, if I quit smoking and drinking I'd be a triathlete this time next year.

Thanks for the genes, o mighty ancestors.

And a fabled streak has ended, friends. The Lampshade Queen has stumbled, bringing sweet Rose down with her. Elliot's older brother Mike is an Elvis Costello fan, singing Accidents Will Happen in the kitchen while the alien waits above.

Deeply obscure, I know. Sorry, ladies.

double act

Looks like we're doing a one-man show in two different Fringe Festivals at the same time.

Hmm.

Dave Calvitto will be doing The Event at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August while Matt Oberg will be doing the show at The New York International Fringe Festival.

I'll be directing both while balancing a chair on my chin.

Just keeping things interesting around here.

Last week for some inexplicable reason I watched E.T. The Extraterrestrial from beginning to end. And so to our deeply obscure MMMQ.

Elliot's older brother Mike comes home from football practice after school, rummages through the fridge and sings which song?

1. Psycho Killer

2. Accidents Will Happen

3. In the Flesh

4. I Don't Like Mondays

or

5. The theme music from E.T. The Extraterrestrial?

Winners get the Reese's pieces, losers get left behind.

hot off the presses

UPS dropped off my ten complimentary author copies of Fatboy last night.

Every writer will tell you it's a surreal thing to hold in your hand an object that began with a few scribbled words on a yellow legal pad.

Yup.

Pretty cool.

And this has been bothering me:

Dom Deluise made me laugh my ass off when I was a kid and he seemed to be a decent man and it's a sad thing that he died, but let's stop calling Space Balls a classic, all right?

A funny guy is dead, but let's keep some perspective.

Great weekend to all.

fine televised viewing

Just heard from the good folks at New York Theatre Experience, Inc. that the first episode of Indie Theater Now! will be showing on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network:


Wednesday, May 20 at 7:00PM on channel 56

Monday, May 25 at 11:00PM on channel 67

Sunday, May 31 at 11:00PM on channel 56

You can hear me and Kirk Bromley and Elena K. Holy and Ellie Covan pretending that we know what we're talking about.

Right there on your TV.

O, brave new world...

traveling

On the road today, back to Rat City and the Fat Bunny.

Check out Don Hall's post from yesterday about technique:

http://donhall.blogspot.com/

Couldn't agree more.

robbed

Tony nominations are out and I got overlooked again.

It's like you have to have a show on Broadway to even be considered.

It's all politics.

Kirsten and Ann split the imaginary prize (and it's a good one this week)and Rose gets the imaginary consolation prize just for playing.

So everyone wins.

monday on the road

Family business has taken us to Greenfield, MA, Spitfire's hometown and drum major stomping grounds. Nestled here in the Berkshires, the town hasn't changed in the 20 years I've know it. Beautiful.

We had the Super Hits of the 70s cranking on the way up here, so here's an easy MMMQ:

In which song will you hear the bizarre but immortal chant

"Ooga-ooga-ooga-chakka"?

Is it

1. Jungle Boogie

2. Boogie Fever

3. Hot Child in the City

4. Hooked on a Feeling

or

5. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring?

get LIT

Put it in your calendars:

Monday May 4th at 7pm
Free for LITNY Members
$5 for non-members

@ the Red Room 85 EAST 4TH STREET Between 2nd ave and Bowery.

This month's guest is Phillip Matthews, Director of Audience Programs with TCG

Get Lit with LIT! is a monthly Cocktail Salon hosted by LITNY board member Leonard Jacobs. Each month the League will invite an important VIP from our sector to join our membership for cocktails and intimate question and answers.

houseguests

Holed up in the woods for a few days with my folks who are on their way from touring Gettysburgh, PA.

We'll be doing re-enactments and waiting for this swine flu thing to blow over.

Loved the 100 day press conference last night, how refreshing to be thinking that the President is the smartest guy in the room.

60 is the new 100

Welcome to the fold, Arlen.

Now let's make Franken official and get something done.

lend a hand

Check this out:

http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?p=1940

The Clyde Fitch Report is a great site and Stolen Chair is a great company, so do what you can.

Ann knows her Boys, sorry Rosie.

When traveling the MMMQ, always ride with the Lampshade Queen.

blazes

As in "hot as..."

Yesterday was another example of the new world of postmodern weather, in which the traditional narrative of seasons is disregarded by the Sky Gods.

Crazy out there.

Yesterday was also the first annual members meeting for the League of Independent Theater. Thanks to all for showing up. Always great to sit in a room brainstorming with like-minded people.

And yesterday I found myself listening to Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians and remembering a Sacramento summer many years ago when my buddy Steve Summers turned me on to Mr. Hitchcock. In those distant days Robyn's band was:

1. Lost Boys

2. Hard Boys

3. Soft Boys

4. New Boys

or

5. Blue Ridge Mountain Boys?

Winners get a ride on Brenda's Iron Sledge, losers have to hang with Leppo and the Jooves.

making shakespeare dull

Can't remember if I've posted this before, too lazy to check the archives.

In honor of the late great Billy Shakes, a day late, something from the vault:

MAKING SHAKESPEARE DULL


When I think of Shakespeare, I think of Gulliver in Lilliputia: a giant tied down and held fast by hundreds of tiny ropes. We are the Lilliputians when we approach Shakespeare, busily fastening our slim theories, inspirations and critical interpretations to the great bulk in a foolish and futile attempt to hold the Titan still.

Another metaphor: a ship so covered in barnacles that the weight makes the sailing sluggish and slow. The generations of criticism, prejudices, assumptions and unchecked misperceptions cling to the great ship Shakespeare and all but drag it under. The barnacles are then blessed with the pomp and sanctity of hallowed writ and the once living ship descends to the depths, the Titan becoming a Titanic, distant, cold, dead.

The constant miracle, of course, is that all one must do is read the lines aloud and listen to them, unvarnished and alive and Shakespeare is among us again, breathing hard on our neck and pushing us about the stage. And if we hold three things in our heads and refer to them throughout the rehearsal process, Shakespeare again becomes accessible, simple and immediate.

The first thing to hold in your mind when working with Shakespeare is that he wrote for the stage, not for the page. The Globe was open to the sun, half the audience was standing and the reverent, hushed atmosphere of today’s audience was something a player had to earn and fight to keep against great odds, not something assumed. For the actor, this translates simply to making the primary focus and scene partner not your fellow actor, but the audience immediately in front of you. It is not a job for psychological realism or imitative dexterity; it is a job for speaking clearly and standing still. The audience is directly addressed, of course, in the constant soliloquies and asides, but these moments are not departures from the world of the play but rather logical extensions. When playing Shakespeare, you are never in Verona, never in Arden, never in Egypt, Rome or England. You are always on a stage, playing a role in front of an audience. This consciousness will both heighten the urgency of your speech and action and add a necessary freedom and critical distance to the degree of your role-playing. By not burying yourself in character, you remain free to engage in the larger wordplay and dramatic conceits of the language. While this understanding is blatantly essential when playing a fool or a rustic, it is no less necessary in the more subtle and complex roles. There is always an awareness in Shakespeare that another living being is watching and listening. To disregard this is as crippling as disregarding the rhythm and meter of iambic pentameter.

The second principle, which follows from the first, is that Shakespeare used poetry to write drama, not the other way around. Since the formal, rhythmic constraints of blank verse shape the thoughts and expressions of his characters, the actor must understand and respect the rules of the verse. But neither the actor nor the director should ever be concerned primarily with the beauty of the language. Shakespeare has already created the language; your job is to make sure it is heard clearly. The creative team must be concerned with action, character, and drama. The reason Shakespeare’s plays are still performed is not because of their gorgeous language, but because of their theatrical economy, wit and intelligence. You are never reciting. You are always playing. The character is never engaged in wordplay for it’s own sake, but only to complete or initiate an action. One must accept that the characters speak in this fashion, understand the rules and governing principles of the style and then banish the idea of “poetry” and all of the word’s passive associations in order to chase and follow the actions and thoughts of the character and the play.

The third essential thing to understand when playing Shakespeare is the simplest and yet the most widely disregarded. This is the principle of playing the opposite. Over and over we see “regal” kings and “comical” clowns and “virtuous” heroines and “noble” heroes plodding dully across countless stages in what seems to be a conscious conspiracy to render Shakespeare dull, obvious and dead. Playing a clown as comical is as good an idea as pouring sugar on ice cream. To approach a villain with the goal of expressing his malice is to twirl a mustache and wear a black hat. It is a universal truth that comedy is funny in direct proportion to the gravity of the comedians. If Lou Costello doesn’t passionately want to know who’s on first, the bit becomes quickly endless and endlessly annoying. If we remember that the fools in Shakespeare’s time literally lived on their wits and depended on the understanding and appreciation of their words for their food, clothing and shelter, we would see far fewer slouching, winking, leering and unfunny fools on our stage. In the same way, a tragic figure is only tragic to us when we are allowed to see his frailty, her humanity. Play the man who bears the crown, not the king who wears it. Pay attention to the heroine’s work, not her worth. You will find Shakespeare reaching towards you and handing you the tools if you begin to play the opposite and the weight of the great roles will lift from your shoulders and become wings.

When working on Shakespeare, stay on the stage, aware of the audience, study but never play the poetry and look for the opposite of the established understanding of the role. With these three things in mind, Shakespeare becomes your collaborator and partner and his plays live again, rescued from the depths of unthinking tradition, liberated from the thousand thin ropes of theory.

scotland

Looks like my one-man piece The Event is going to play Edinburgh this summer, thanks to the indomitable David Calvitto.

Thanks, Dave.

interview

A long, profane and pretty hilarious interview Spitfire and I did for the International Brecht Society:


http://www.ecibs.org/new/ecibs/37/anthony-hostetter-interviews-john-clancy-director-quotfat-boyquot

faster

Great piece in the Science section of the Times today about some guys modifying a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter so that it will run on ground so's that they can break the land speed record.

Current record is 763 miles an hour.

On land.

I'd just like to be in the passenger seat playing with the radio on that ride.

Ann aces, Rose reaps well from under the wing.

good news, true words and the MMMQ

This from David Pincus:

Last week, Community Board 5 unanimously passed a resolution drafted by
its Arts Task Force, under the leadership of David Diamond, calling for
City and State Agencies to recognize the value that Small to Mid-Sized
Theaters add to the financial and community stability of New York City
neighborhoods.

In addition, this week's edition of New York Press has a feature article
on the State of Small to Mid-Sized Theaters, which provides an excellent
overview of the problems and positive strategies that some theaters are
employing in order to stay vital to their artistic missions.

Please read and pass this link along:

http://www.nypress.com/article-19673-stage-struggles.htm

So the Community Boards keep stepping up.

And in New York Magazine, Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin are talking about Waiting for Godot and Lane quotes Elaine Stritch:

“Oh, Nathan, if that play isn’t funny, it’s one long fucking night in the theater.”

Words that should be printed on the first page of every published copy of that play.

It's Monday morning and we've got Dylan playing over the loudspeakers of the Museum. Listening to the Bootleg Series Vol. 3 and for my money the best song on any of the volumes, Blind Willie McTell.

God is in his heaven and we all want what's his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

Our troubadour stands at the window of which hotel when these words come out of his mouth?

1. St. James Hotel

2. Clarendon Hotel

3. Heartbreak Hotel

4. Golden Gate Hotel

Losers get their big plantations burned down, winners get to strut their feathers well.

jesus

Just finished reading the Justice Department memos laying out how our guys could torture people and not worry about going to jail.

The most heart-breaking thing I think I've ever read.

Jesus.

My country, tis of thee...

http://documents.nytimes.com/justice-department-memos-on-interrogation-techniques#p=1

gratitude

I get so wrapped up sometimes in what's ahead I forget what's right around me.

Grateful today for a loving wife, good friends, health, supportive and funny parents, the opportunity to work in the field I love and the sun shining down outside.

That's all.

history

Randomly checking out a This Day in History site this morning and found out that this is the day Lincoln died, the Titanic sunk and Jack Roosevelt Robinson integrated baseball.

Sort of makes you want to check out the news tonight.

quick post

Up against it a little bit today with a self-imposed Kill Me Now deadline and a raft of the usual nonsense.

Went to the 24 Hour Play Anthology launch last night, saw a lot of old familiar faces and then walked uptown for an Advisory Council meeting at the New York Theatre Experience, Inc.

Love them Dentons.

Ann continues her MMMQ domination and brings Rose along for the victory lap.

24 hours in a day

Got my copy of the 24 Hour Play Anthology in the mail on Friday, spent the weekend reading it.

Having been through the process, it's hilarious to read short plays by Adam Rapp, Theresa Rebeck, David Ives and others and know that at a certain point, say, 3:30 AM, they were staring at the page or screen thinking:

Fuck.

This is going nowhere.

Why did I agree to this?

And then they solve it at, say, 4:30 AM and these beautiful short pieces are born.

The anthology includes a short work by Mike Doughty, one of my favorite pieces in the collection, Ray Slape is Dead.

And this leads us to our MMMQ.

Besides being a fine playwright, Mike Doughty is also known as the frontman for what great alternative rock band?

Is it

1. Husker Du

2. Pavement

3. Blind Melon

4. Soul Coughing?

or

5. Porter Waggoner and the Waggoneers?

proofing

Spent most of the week with the Fatboy proofs.

The thing about being a writer/director is that you know you're going to be directing the thing so you don't need a lot of stage directions or extensive character descriptions in the script.

And then when you eventually stage the thing you come up with all sorts of gags and bits and blocking that don't get written down but become essential to how the thing is played, especially if you've got a comedy. If you know from experience that without a gag during a speech there's no laugh and the moment dies, you should write in the gag, right?

Anyway, that's the road I chose.

I used to laugh at all of the stage directions in the Samuel French scripts:

(She crosses three feet DS, stopping at the end table and furtively fingers the snapdragons in the vermillion vase, a wistful and winsome expression on her face.)

But now I'm spelling it out point by point.

What the hell. No one ever reads the stage directions anyway.

mike lends a hand

We're getting a little help from above, as the press release below shows:


MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES NEW INITIATIVES TO HELP NEW YORK CITY NONPROFITS COPE WITH CASH CRUNCH AS A RESULT OF THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

Steps Will Reduce Organizations’ Fixed Costs, Improve City’s Contract Procedures and Build New Partnerships to Help Strengthen Nonprofits

Assistance Will Support More than 40,000 Nonprofit Organizations and their 490,000 Employees

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today outlined new initiatives to help New York City’s more than 40,000 cultural, health and social service nonprofit organizations survive the economic downturn. A growing number of nonprofit organizations in New York City – which collectively employ more than 490,000 New Yorkers or 15 percent of the City’s non-government workforce – are experiencing an increase in demand for services while facing major cash flow problems and steep declines in operating support. To address these challenges, the City seeks to reduce nonprofit organizations’ fixed costs, expand loan programs, enhance the responsiveness and efficiency of City contracting procedures to speed payments, and build new partnerships to help foster stronger nonprofits.

men at work

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

little theater tonight

One of the most consistently entertaining salons in the city, Little Theater at Dixon Place is happening tonight.

The lineup:


SHE DIES IN A DAY
(after Mary Webb)
written & directed by Normandy Raven Sherwood with Jenny Seastone Stern & Edgar Oliver
music by
SEAN MEEHAN & RICARDO ARIAS

an excerpt from
THE UNFORTUNATE SQUIRREL
words by Sonya Sobieski
with Stephen Bel Davies, Robert Davenport,
Lawrence Jansen, Allison Whittinghill

a performance by
JONES & ALLEN

TUPU, TUPU, TUPU
a play by Scott Adkins
directed by Erin Courtney, music by Kris Kukul
with Neil Hellegers, Matthew Korahais,
Jocelyn Kuritsky, Preston Martin,
Jenny Seastone Stern, Nathan Shapiro

***************************************************************

Monday, April 6, 2009 at 8:00 pm
The NEW Dixon Place, 161 Chrystie btw. Delancey & Rivington
(F/V 2nd Ave; R/W Prince; 6 Bleecker, JMZ Bowery)

And as it is Monday out there, here's the MMMQ humdinger:

The all-time greatest supergroup of the 80s, The
Traveling Wilburys was the brainchild of George Harrison. George got his buddies Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan to sit down and play and the result was joyful, simple rock and roll. On Volume One, what name did Bob Dylan play under? Was it:

1. Lefty Wilbury

2. Muddy Wilbury

3. Boo Wilbury

4. Lucky Wilbury

or

5. Rose Howard Wilbury?

Losers get rattled, winners get handled with care.

random Friday

Rainy day in Rat City. Walsh is out in the country, I'm at home, prepping for meetings, scribbling notes, returning phone calls, answering emails, doing all the mindless drone work that has to get done.

Thrilled at the Hair reviews. Diane Paulus is an old friend and Lower East Side compatriot. She was a brilliant director fifteen years ago, great to see her getting the Big Nods.

Occurs to me the only two Broadway directors I know well are both women: Diane and the great Leigh Silverman.

All right.

Back to the grind.

CB4 steps up

The following letter was passed by Community Board 4 last night, joining Community Board 3 in the fight to preserve small and mid-sized theater in NYC.

The Community Boards are great allies in this campaign, everyone should check their calendars and show up at the meetings.

Here's the letter:


Dear Governor Paterson,

Manhattan Community Board 4 overwhelmingly objects to the debilitating
(100%) 2009 second round funding cuts to the New York State Council on the
Arts (NYSCA) that occurred in the fall of 2008. As Manhattan District 4
is home to over 40% of all small to mid-sized theatres in New York
City[1], we ask that you restore funding to those theatres whose 2009
applications were being considered in that round of NYSCA funding. This
NYSCA cut blind sided scores of theatres in our area that were placed in
financial peril due solely to their arbitrary position in the
application cycle.

We further object to your proposed $7 million cut to NYSCA’s 2010 budget.
This amount represents a very small ‘savings’ for the State, but a
substantial loss for the performing arts. Given theatre’s proven ability
to leverage government contributions by a 5 to 1 ratio, this $7 million
savings could mean as much as a $35 million loss to the State in arts
economic activity[2].

With New York State’s budget currently slated to be $131.8 billion, the
restoration of NYSCA’s share represents a negligible addition to it. What
in the big picture would be considered a "rounding error" could literally
mean survival for a crucial component of the City's arts infrastructure.

Theaters provide jobs, support neighborhood economies, and enhance New
York's competitive edge. New York City's status as a culture center
attracts both the most ambitious and accomplished artists & professionals,
and as a result, the tourist and other revenue streams that follow. In
addition, small to mid-size theatres provide valuable research and
development for the entertainment industry; acting as entry points for
actors, choreographers, musicians, designers, et al. Nowhere is that more
evident than in Community District 4, which has had a major role in the
development of theatre in New York City for generations.

At the recent and unprecedented public forum for theatre professionals
(hosted by Community Boards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), the displacement of small
to mid sized theatres was of crucial concern. Restoring NYSCA funding
will have an immediate and positive impact on the stability and survival
of many of our small to mid-sized theaters and the economic resilience of
our neighborhoods.

We urge you, please, to restore the NYSCA funds.

Sincerely,

Manhattan Community Board 4

24 Hour Play Anthology

In 1995, a group of writers, directors and actors gathered on Manhattan's Lower East Side for what was supposed to be a one-time-only event: write, direct, produce and perform new plays with the span of 24 hours. More than a decade and just over 300 plays later, The 24 Hour Plays have been produced on Broadway, in London, Los Angeles, Chicago and across the globe.

24 by 24 features the work of today's most celebrated theatrical voices, including Tony Award winner Terrence McNally, Adam Rapp, Tina Howe, Will Eno, David Ives, Theresa Rebeck, Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire, and many more!

I'm one of the many more.

Playscripts is publishing this, looks great.

love from L.A.

Just heard that needtheater's production of Fatboy out in Los Angeles picked up three L.A. Weekly Theater awards.

Congrats to Ian Forrester for direction, Alexander Wells for Male Lead and the entire company for Comedy Ensemble.

Missed the MMMQ yesterday, next week will have to be a humdinger.

today is world theatre day

World Theatre Day message by Augusto Boal:

All human societies are “spectacular*” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre!

Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting - all is theatre.

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.

Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide, slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in some respectable bank or in some honest trader’s hands in the stock exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theatre, a dark plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have remained spectators in the last row of the balcony.

Twenty years ago, I staged Racine’s Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each presentation, I used to say to my actors: “The fiction we created day by day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right to lie. Theatre is the Hidden Truth”.

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the “spectacle” which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.

- Augusto Boal

L.A. weekly awards

Monday night Fatboy is up for six awards, thanks to Matt Wells, Ian Forrester and a kick-ass cast and design team.

Way to go, kids. Hope it's a good night for you.

Meantime, I'm just kicking around the old museum, shuffling paper and trying to find my way into two impending projects.

Day by day, step by step, word by word.

good news and a good night

A resolution composed by the Community Board Arts Task Force that was the result of the CB 1-5 Public Forum on small theatre in NYC & a March 10 Arts Task Force meeting, passed unanimously last evening by Community Board 3, paving the way for other Community Boards to use this language to adopt similar resolutions.

The community board can now bring the resolution to elected officials, requesting further support.

I was there representing the League of Independent Theater to speak in support of the resolution, as was Shay Gines from the NYITA Foundation (and a fellow LIT board member).

Thanks are due to Paul Nagle and Paul Bartlett on this, well done, gentlemen.

It's a first step, but it's the right road to be walking on.

After the CB3 meeting Walsh and I booked up to Center Stage to catch the end of the first Get lit with LIT event, an informal Q and A and meet and greet with Robert Zukerman from NYSCA hosted by Leonard Jacobs (yet another LIT board member).

Robert was informative and hilarious. Never heard someone from NYSCA tell a group of theater artists to simply "fuck that noise" when bullshitting on a grant application. A good reminder that human beings read those applications and not some faceless "panel".

Thanks to Leonard, Robert and Jennifer Conley Darling, our new Managing Director for putting it all together.

It's looking like a good spring coming.

zukerman tonight

Come talk with Robert Zukerman and have a cheap drink at Center Stage tonight, doors open at 7:00. LIT members get in free, for non-members its a mere five bucks. It's the first get lit with LIT event, hosted by the inimitable Leonard Jacobs.

Rose and Ann win again.

It's Main Street Eyes and it's got to be some kind of a record.

city mouse?

Back from a solid week out in the country, Sunday to Sunday.

Walking across town on 23rd Street yesterday afternoon I got a good mainline injection of that Rat City high, face after face appearing in front of you and then gone only to be replaced by another life, another universe, another stranger pushing his way through the world.

And then last night out with friends at a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood, all very artsy/Manhattan/chic.

But I'll tell you. A week out in the quiet, a week seeing maybe one other human a day.

Half of me some days is ready to jump ship and swim to the shore of America.

We're listening to the great Iggy Pop this morning at the Museum. For a free two day pass to the Poconos, what kind of eyes are extolled on the second track of Brick by Brick?

Are they:

1. Faraway Eyes

2. Wild Devil Eyes

3. Angel Eyes

4. Main Street Eyes

or

5. The Eyes of Laura Mars?

Winners get to run in the woods, losers get stuck on the subway.

get lit with LIT

The first installment of Get lit with LIT! is here:

Get lit with LIT! A Monthly Cocktail Salon hosted by LITNY board member Leonard Jacobs. Each month the League will invite an important VIP from our sector to join our membership for cocktails and intimate question and answers.

Our first guest will be Robert Zuckerman, Theatre Program Director, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and will be held at:

Center Stage - 48 West 21 Street, 4th Floor, Buzzer 401

TUESDAY March 24th. Doors open at 7pm.

Free admission for Members and $5.00 for non-members.

Come on down.

rain day

Pouring down out here in the mountains.

Had to make a fire this morning with wet wood, as I forgot to cover the woodpile last night.

Nothing to it, just takes patience and a hell of a lot of cardboard.

Catching up on a myriad of projects today, household and otherwise.

R.I.P. Natasha Richardson. Met her once when Walsh did a staged reading with her years ago, seemed like a very nice woman.

anniversary

It was a year ago today that Walsh pulled the Fireball Trick and earned the moniker Spitfire McGee.

A hard year, but she's healing beautifully.

Thanks all, again, for the support and love.

Couldn't have done it without you.

celtic pride

Today the land of Beckett, Joyce, Behan and Synge is honored by rivers of green beer and vomit.

Always a proud day when your heritage is reduced to crowds of drunken people in leprechaun hats.

Ann and Heather ace the MMMQ and Rose gets the secret bonus question right.

Can't stop that Rose.

Careful out there today, it's Amateur Hour all day long.

back to it

Spent a great week down in Philly working with Peter Clerke and Melanie Stewart on a Jekyll and Hyde inspired piece for next fall. Pete works with benchtours, a Scottish theater company and Mel is a director/choreographer down in Philadelphia. I've known Pete for awhile, we met up in Edinburgh years ago, but never worked with him before. I spent most of the week in the back of the room observing and taking notes as I'm the designated text guy for the project.

Pete does a lot of work with neutral masks and I hadn't seen some of the techniques he was working with. Always amazing how much power and presence those exercises can create in such a short time.

It's Monday, so here's your MMMQ.

It's 70s punk time again here at the Museum, so answer me this:

Which of the following bands are not English?

1. 999

2. The Buzzcocks

3. Generation X

4. X

Name the Yanks and collect the big bonus prize.

soul samurai

Caught it last night.

Very funny stuff, indeed.

Everyone was great but for my money keep an eye out for a young actor named Jon Hoche.

The style is so way over the top that everyone onstage is committed to making big choices, but this guy stands out there all night making GINORMOUS choices to the point that I started helplessly giggling every time I looked at him.

I'm down in Philly all next week working on a collaboration with a director from Scotland. We're starting with Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde and seeing where it takes us. May be going deep, so posting may be light here.

We'll see what happens.

Good weekend to all.

R.I.P. Horton Foote

92 years old and still working.

May we all be so blessed.

everything comes to light

This from the Times today:

In an Oct. 23, 2001, memo, John C. Yoo, then a Justice Department lawyer, explained how Mr. Bush could ignore the Fourth Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act and deploy the military within the United States in “anti-terrorist operations.” In the same memo, Mr. Yoo argued that Mr. Bush could also suspend First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press.

On March 13, 2002, Jay Bybee, the head of the office at the time, wrote that Mr. Bush could ignore the Geneva Conventions and the anti-torture treaty. Mr. Bybee, who now has a lifetime seat as a judge on a federal court, said Mr. Bush was free to send prisoners to countries known to employ torture — a practice known as extraordinary rendition — as long as there was no agreement to do the torturing.

And note that Bybee has "a lifetime seat as a judge".

Dark days, kids.

charas/el bohio

Eight years later and the fight is still going on.

Now that's what I call tenacity.

City Councilmember, Rosie Mendez, has called for a Press Conference for March 9, 5:30 PM on the 10th Street Side of former Charas / El Bohio, Old PS 64.

This from the press release:

Since Landmark Designation, the capstones of the dormers on the 10th St Side have been destroyed. Tarps inadequate to the weather were put over the raw brick, and these have been ripped and completely open to the rain and snow for two seasons.

Letters have been written by Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to the current owner, encouraging the owner to make repairs, but the owner has done nothing. LPC has imposed no fines.

LPS must take action, as it has elsewhere but inexplicably not here, to repair the willful damage to a landmark structure crucial to our community.

Rosie slipped, but Ann was there to pick her up and share the coconut love, along with those sailin' shoes.

nor'easter

Eight to ten inches and they're digging us out here.

And I thought we were home-free.

MMMQ, in deference to the centigrade:

Lowell George's classic Cold, Cold, Cold first appeared on which Little Feat album?

1. Sailin' Shoes

2. Little Feat

3. Waiting for Columbus

4. Let it Roll

Winners get a peach or a pear or a coconut, losers stay cold.

springtime in rat city

Get outside.

It's almost sixty, kids are playing, winter is a memory today.

Going to see The Wendigo tonight.

Good weekend to all.

thinking outside the box

Best headline from the Times yesterday:

Puerto Rico Decides to Ship Wild Monkeys to Iraq

Now why didn't we think of that?

tv boy

Had to get up at the crack of hell and run out of the house this morning, so it's a rare afternoon post from all of us at the Museum.

Spent most of yesterday with a mic running up my shirt.

Did a long segment for the Tokyo Broadcasting System's New York bureau on the plight of small theater in New York.

Sing it with me, "I'm big in Japan."

Then a thing for a new thing that Martin and Rochelle and the good folks at the New York Theater Experience, Inc. are cooking up. Sat with Elena and we did the old creation myth of FringeNYC dog and pony show we used to have to do at the drop of a hat years ago.

We still got it.

Then home to catch the President's address.

Holy moley, I wanted to run out and vote for him all over again. Just seeing Biden sitting and grinning in the Dark Lord's old seat was magic.

We may all be going to hell in a handbasket, but we're going to be inspired as all hell when we get there.

four hundred

According to the internal blog calculatron and backed up by top-secret Museum records, this is our 400th post.

Don't I get a watch or something?

The banks, the auto-makers and A.I.G. are asking for more money today. I'm no economist (and I don't know how that rumor got started), but isn't there some rule about when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging?

And didn't some wiseguy once write "If something is falling, push it."?

Talking to Japanese TV today about the plight of small theater in New York.

I'm not sure what that last sentence is about either, but it's true.

Answer to yesterday's MMMQ is actually Signed, Sealed, Delivered, but it should have been Chocolate City, so Rose gets a pass.

get behind the mule

Some mornings you just have to suck it up and get to work.

Living the free-lance life is scary and fun and all like that, but sometimes it's just digging a ditch like any other wage slave.

I'm just staring at this list of phone calls to return and emails to respond to.

Put on a barrel of coffee and let's get to it.

Missed last week's MMMQ because of President's Day, so this week's quiz will have a presidential twist.

What did then candidate Obama play after losing in New Hampshire? Was it:

1. Signed, Sealed, Delivered

2. Chocolate City

3. I Believe in Miracles

4. Everyday People

or

5. Loser


Winners get stimulated, losers get nationalized.

good ideas

Check out Matt Freeman's post today, www.mathewfreeman.blogspot.com.

It's a great start to many conversations.

about last night

So we had the joint Community Board Theater Task Force Public Forum on Saving Small Theaters last night at the Players Club.

The place was packed. Capacity was 250 and if we didn't reach that, we were close.

Borough President Scott Stringer spoke. Besides the ususal rah rah, he said a very interesting thing:

Liberal Democratic elected officials often get a "pass" when it comes to the arts and we should demand more from them.

Then Ben Cameron whipped up the crowd, something he's very good at doing. I've heard Ben speak a lot and he's always got the passion and the great quotes from Lincoln and Gertrude Stein and Che Guevera on tap.

And Judith Malina got up and spoke, which is always like some Magical Visitation from an alternate reality where theater actually changes and challenges the world.

The place was humming at this point. We all leaned forward into our microphones, elbows on the table, ready to figure out how we were going to Save Small Theaters, goddamnit, and save them tonight.

I talked a little bit about the primacy of space, space being more important than money at this point, and about the dream of sustainability, the dream of rehearsing and performing in the same space, the dream of an artistic home.

And others talked about other things.

And the whole thing started to drift away.

We went from talking about "historic moments" and "crisis creating opportunities" to discussing the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure and suggesting that if a company can't afford a space, they should perform outside.

Which is a little like saying if you're homeless, why don't you go camping?

It was no one's fault, or everyone's fault, we just slipped into the paralysis of panelitis.

Here's what I wish I had said:

Theaters need space. Space exists. Space doesn't disappear like money or have to be wooed like an audience. Space is just sitting there. Let's focus simply on getting artists space. Any and all ways we can. There are three initial approaches I see:

1. Existing cultural institutions can share their space. Give us your lobbies. Adopt a homeless theater company. Make a commitment that your stage will never have a dark night and appoint an auxiliary programmer, someone you trust who will bring new artists and work into your theater.

2. Identify empty city-owned property. Turn that property over to artists.

3. Work the Chashama model all over the city. The empty big box stores, the vacant commercial real estate, we can use that to rehearse in and maybe for performance.

Now, that's simple and wildly over-simplified, I know. But if we focus on the concrete, physical task of putting artists in affordable, sustainable spaces, then we have a focused and objectively verifiable goal.

In other words, a year from now we'll know if we got anything done.

tonight

A COMMUNITY BOARD PUBLIC FORUM ON THE STATE OF
SMALL TO MID-SIZED THEATERS

*Developing Strategies in this time of Crisis and Opportunity*

*Hosted by NYC Community Boards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5*

*TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17TH AT 6:30 P.M.*

*at*

*THE PLAYERS CLUB*
*16 Gramercy Park South*

*Panelists and Scheduled Speakers include*: *

* Scott Stringer, Borough President of Manhattan *

* Ben Cameron - Program Director for The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

* Virginia Louloudes – Executive Director ART/NY

* Tamara Greenfield – FAB Arts District

* Paul Nagle – Arts Representative for Council Member Alan Gerson

* Judith Malina – The Living Theater

* Anthony Borelli, Director of Land Use, Manhattan Borough President's
Office

John Clancy, Executive Director, League of Independent Theater
***

*Manhattan Community Boards One, Two, Three, Four and Five are coming together for an unprecedented joint Public Forum on Small to Mid-Sized Theaters, which are an important part of the sustainability and resilience of NYC small businesses and local economies. *

* *

*Unfortunately, many of the smaller theaters that bring so much life to our neighborhoods have closed their doors or are in imminent danger of closing. The problem is acute. *

* *

*The economic climate, along with the rising cost of real estate are making it difficult for smaller theaters to retain their spaces for performances, rehearsals and offices. With the recent closing of the Zipper Theater in CB4, almost 30% of Midtown performance venues have been demolished in the past three years, along with 25% of West Village theaters. At the end of
the Nineties* *many of the Lower East Side's theaters were repurposed for bars (e.g. Pianos, Todo Con Nada) or displaced and laid vacant and demolished by speculation (e.g. Present Company, and Collective Unconscious). The Community Boards realize that when the theaters leave, the cultural richness and attractiveness of their neighborhoods will diminish, and opportunities for local artists go away. *

* *

*But with crisis, comes opportunity. *

* *

*The goals of this Public Forum are (1) to clearly explain the depth and urgency of the issues facing smaller theaters; (2) to discuss potential solutions based on expert opinion from communities outside of New York where there have been successes, and from political, real estate and artistic
experts in New York; and (3) to gather community support to advocate for changes that will help the theaters and ensure their survival.***

*Space is Limited, For further information and RSVP:
david@workshoptheater.org** *
--------------------

scrappy jack wants you

We're kicking off a membership drive for the League of Independent Theater, the advocacy group for 99 seat theaters and the artists who love them.

LIT is a grassroots organization of professional independent theaters and artists. Through advocacy and collective action, we work to strengthen our role in the cultural landscape of New York theater.

We have both artist/professional and company/venue members, as well as students and supporters.

It's a good group made up of a lot of good people, so come on and join the party.

You can go to www.litny.org and download an application.

Good weekend to all.

twitter?

I signed up a while back on our business partner's advice. He got me blogging way back when and hooked us up on Facebook, both of which turned out to be fun and useful.

But Twitter?

Can't figure this one out.

TimeOut New York has a new blog, worth checking out:

http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyor/upstaged/

All for now.

mid-week hustle

Just doing the Wednesday shuffle at the Museum today, lot of paperwork and maintenance and whatnot.

Saw my old buddy Aaron Posner got nominated for a Helen Hayes Award down in D.C. for his work on Macbeth at the Folger.

Mazel tov.

Freakishly warm in Rat City today. Going to walk to the post office slowly, face raised to the heavens, soaking in that sunlight.

two years

It was two years ago today that Barack Obama announced his presidential run. Watching him at the podium last night you could see the thought flickering in his eyes and almost hear the words he had to keep biting back:

"This is not the job I applied for."

It's like Bush and the New Crazies drove the car until it was out of gas, oil and water and then at the last moment slammed it head-on into a brick wall. Then they climbed out, handed the kid the keys and said, smiling,

"Good luck, son."

Maybe two years from now we'll begin to get out of this Great Downward Slide to Hell or whatever we end up calling it.

Ann and Rose take their familiar victory laps. Ann because she got it right, Rose because she correctly sussed the subliminal question: who duets with Laurie Anderson on Excellent Birds?

Good sussing, Rose.

sick bed

Spitfire's down with a nasty cold, so we're staying in, drinking juice, all of that.

Had a long-awaited League of Independent Theater Board of Directors meeting on Friday, got some things figured out so that we can move forward. I'm always impressed by that group of people.

Our MMMQ comes from the obits, sadly, or what my uncle calls the Irish sports page.

Dewey Martin, drummer for Buffalo Springfield died last week. His bandmates included Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer and

1. David Crosby

2. Neil Young

3. Graham Nash

4. Robbie Robertson

Winners get some chicken wings, losers move to Springfield.

plays and playwrights 2009

Got my copy on Wednesday.

It's the tenth edition of the collection Martin Denton puts together each year.

Nice to see some friends in there like Lenora Champagne, Tim Collins and Chris Harcum along with eight other writers. Krapp, 39 is in the book, now playing Off-Broadway, and the amazing Conversation Storm by Rick Burkhardt.

Worth your time and money.

Saw today that Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, died out in Glendale, CA.

Man. Nobody did it better than Lux.

more for the pod people

Just back from an early morning podcast with Martin and Rochelle Denton at nytheatre.com. It was "Ask a Director" time with me and Jim Simpson, Barry Edelstein and Cat Parker.

Martin kept referring to us as a "distinguished" group. That word always makes me itch a little bit because, let's face it, "distinguished" is a nice way of saying "old".

The old MFA question came up, of course. Those who've been reading this blog know my take on this: don't waste your time and tens of thousands of dollars, get out there and fail in public. It's harsh, but those experiences are lessons you will never forget, not classes you will sleep through.

And on a deeper level, studying directing or acting or playwriting in an academic environment seems to reinforce some dangerous assumptions.

In a class, you are working for the approval of one person, your teacher, right? You want to get that A. So then you go out into the world and you start working for someone else's approval, a lead critic, say.

In a classroom environment, there's always the unspoken understanding that there is a right answer, a right way and a wrong way. So you get loaded up with all of this received wisdom and unthinking tradition and are subtly or not so subtly discouraged from working from an initial, original impulse.

Where else is anything interesting, innovative or worthwhile going to come from except an initial, original impulse?

I'm all for technique and knowing the history and I know there are smart, dedicated, honest people working in academia, but my experience has been that most of them are working consciously or otherwise against their situation, swimming upstream against a very strong current.

Anyway.

Been over this, I suppose.

Good weekend to all, stay warm out there.

the more things change

Just read that 71 years ago today, Our Town opened on Broadway.

Guess what's opening Off-Broadway this spring?

In the year 2079, look for the definitive Off-Off Broadway production.

I love a classic as much as the next gent, but...

In the words of St. Antonin:

"We steadfastly refuse to regard theatre as a museum for masterpieces, however fine and human they may be... We will always maintain that any work is worthless if it does not belong to a certain localized state of mind, chosen not because of its virtues or defects but purely because of its relativity. We do not want art or beauty. What we are looking for are ENGAGED emotions. "

And he was writing back in 1929.

snowed in

Woke up to a fresh foot of snow out here in the mountains. Have to dig our way out and get back to Rat City for a LIT meeting tonight. Meetings all week, god help me.

Just said no to a little directing gig with some friends. Would have been fun, but I'm trying to spend this year writing, get some stuff out of my head and on to the page.

That's the plan, anyway.

Everyone won the MMMQ yesterday. Ann wins because that's the way I heard the story too, Rosie wins because of the Rose Exception and the mysterious Kirt wins because he sounds very sure of himself and that counts for an awful lot around here.

Now where's that shovel?

an old pro

Friday morning Nancy got an email from Mark Mitton, world-renowned magician, saying that he was playing in the Winter Lights Festival that night in a little church in Milford, PA.

Milford is about twenty miles from the cabin in the woods, so we wrapped ourselves up against the cold, piled into car 220 and drove into town.

And there was Mark, up on the altar, facing down about a hundred screaming kids and their grinning parents.

Mark does huge corporate gigs, teaches magic at international conferences and here he is pulling cards out of thin air and astounding the good people of Milford.

It's a strange life, a life on the road. We did it for a few years, we've settled down lately, but sometimes it's the only way to keep working.

Wouldn't be Monday without a quiz, so let's turn to Apocryphal Beginnings.

The story goes that the Violent Femmes were playing on the street in Minneapolis in front of the stadium downtown. The lead singer of which huge band allegedly heard them and on the spot booked them to open for said huge band that night?

Was it

1. The Pretenders

2. R.E.M.

3. Prince and the Revolution

4. MC5

5. Porter Wagoner and the Wagoneers?

Winners get to add it up, losers can just kiss off into the air.

fatboy lives

Heard last night that Samuel French wants to publish an acting edition of Fatboy.

Which means that high school drama guilds across the land will soon be shouting "Motherfuck!" in unison and learning how to pull top hats out of their collective ass.

It's all about the kids, finally.

save the date

This is something we should all be at:


Public Forum on Small Theatres

NYC COMMUNITY BOARDS 1, 3, 4 and 5 Present:

A PUBLIC FORUM ON THE STATE OF SMALL THEATER IN NYC

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17TH AT 6:30 P.M.

at

THE PLAYERS CLUB
16 Gramercy Park South


Manhattan Community Boards One, Three, Four and Five are coming together for an unprecedented joint Public Forum on Small Theaters. Small theaters are an important part of the sustainability and resilience of small businesses and local economies; small theaters are an economic engine because they encourage residents to spend in their own communities and draw additional audiences from around the City and beyond for early evening activities. On a macro level, small theaters serve as the Research & Development arm of the commercial entertainment industries, locating new talent and acting as incubators for bold new ideas and risk taking. Unfortunately, many of the smaller theaters that bring so much life to our neighborhoods are closing their doors or in danger of closing. The problem is acute. The economic climate, along with the rising cost of real estate are making it difficult for smaller theaters to retain their spaces for performances, rehearsals and offices. With the closing of the Zipper Theater last week in CB4, almost 30 percent of Midtown performance venues have been demolished recently, along with 25 percent of West Village Theaters. In the Nineties, the most of the Lower East Side's theaters were repurposed for bars (e.g. Pianos) or displaced and laid vacant and demolished by speculation (e.g. Present Company and Collective Unconscious). The Community Boards realize that when the theaters leave, the cultural richness and attractiveness of their neighborhoods will diminish, and opportunities for local artists go away. The goals of the Public Forum on Small Theaters are (1) to clearly explain the depth and urgency of the issues facing smaller theaters; (2) to offer potential solutions based on expert opinion from communities outside of New York where there have been successes, and from experts in New York; and (3) to gather community support to advocate for changes that will help the theaters and ensure their survival.

For further information: david@workshoptheater.org


DIRECTIONS:

Please Note:
East 20th Street between Park Avenue South and Third Avenue has been
renamed Gramercy Park South.

Subway
to Union Square, walk up Park Avenue South to East 20th Street and
turn right

to 23rd Street, walk down Park Avenue South to East 20th Street and
turn left

to Broadway and 23rd Street, walk on 23rd Street to Park Avenue, walk down Park Avenue to East 20th Street and turn left

The Truth shall be revealed

Heard from Greg K. that Dramatists Play Service is publishing The Truth About Santa.

Let the candy cane of the Apocalypse be loosed throughout the land.

Struggling through a mid-winter writer's drought here at the Museum, had to bail on a thing Matt Oberg put together. He needed ten minutes, I had none.

Gilles Deleuze has this to offer:

"How else can one write but of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other. Only in this manner are we resolved to write. To satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until tomorrow - or rather, to make it impossible."

And the blank screen stares back, unblinking.

random Tuesday

Back in Rat City and the work is piling up.

Having a little trouble keeping my head straight so far this year.

Too much travel, too many projects, too few hours in the day.

Going to clean up this desk and stop my belly-aching now.

Ann and Steve get a Pepsi for knowing The Suicidal Tendencies and Rose gets an apology for the vicious slur associating her with any national socialist water sports activity.

monday, monday

Hilarious weekend in the woods with Ambrose and Mary. Me and Spitfire are still camped out here, waiting for some furniture to be delivered, sipping coffee and staring at the squirrels.

Still very strange to me to be a homeowner after so many years of near-vagrancy. I keep expecting the Good Citizens Committee to come around and expose me as the wastrel poet vagabond I actually am and demand the keys. I wave to the neighbors but can't really meet their eyes yet.

I'm just out here passing.

Busy week ahead so let's get the quiz out of the way.

The I-Pod was shuffling along Saturday night and up popped the great L.A. punk rock classic "Institutionalized".

Who just wanted a Pepsi?

1. X

2. Suicidal Tendencies

3. The Young and the Worthless

4. Black Flag

or

5. Rose Howard and the Nazi Surfers?

Losers get the padded cell, winners get the aforementioned cola.

west coast love

I heard last night that Fatboy was nominated for six L.A. Weekly Theater Awards including best direction and best ensemble.

Congrats to Ian, Matt and the whole needtheater crew.

Holed up in the mountain hideaway for the weekend, keeping an eye peeled for bears.

Stay safe out there.

the ohio gets six months

So the Ohio Theater has at least six more months. I've spent so much time within those walls, watching or creating work that it has grown to be a home. Thinking all morning about it, made me reach back into the vault.

Wrote this about seven years ago:



ON BUILDING A THEATER

When the event of theater begins, does the place of the event become a theater? We believe, reflexively and grandly, that all the world is a stage and the adventurous directors among us see performance sites everywhere. Brook, traveling the world, carried only a carpet, unrolling it to create a stage. But did the desert become a theater? There is a critical difference between a stage and a theater, of course. There are stages in restaurants, every bar has a stage, but they remain, stubbornly, bars. We speak of someone always being “on”, but never of someone constantly “in”. Theaters, it seems, are like churches or schools. You can celebrate a sacrament or learn from a master anywhere, but when you’re getting married on a beach at Waikiki or in a hot air balloon over Kansas, no one asks directions to the church.

Building an actual theater, a building or room expressly designed or modified for theatre to happen within, is an illuminating and humbling experience. In the winter of 1994 we converted a 2000 sq/ft loft on the fourth floor of what used to be a theatrical curtain factory in Hells Kitchen into a rehearsal/performance/office space. In the summer of 1998 we turned a 7500 sq/ft auto garage on the Lower East Side into the Theatorium. The steps of conversion were the same.

First, you survey the site. With no instruments and ideally alone, you roam the space. At first you move seemingly at random, stopping to stare at a detail in the ceiling or the wall, moving on. This must be what it feels like to douse for water with a wooden stick. What you are looking for is not clear, but you are clearly looking. Examining, testing the room for its pressure points, its natural orientation. Many images flood through you at this time and project themselves onto the empty space. These are all invariably grainy reproductions of previous theaters you have worked in or know and they should all be examined carefully and then dismissed. Every space has its own unique and underlying structure, balance and harmony. It is your job to recognize and manifest them.

The second stage is cleaning. Unlike surveying, this is best done with as many people as possible and in marathon sessions. The people who clean the space should be the people who will work in it. The sessions should start early, break for communal meals eaten in the space, and then continue until you are exhausted or alone. Take note of those who stay the longest. These are the people who will work the hardest in the theater that you are building. Cleaning is not only purifying the space, it is the establishment of your relationship to the space and whatever ghosts may inhabit it. You are saying “To the best of my powers I will keep the dirt, grime and cobwebs of the world out of this space. I will guard against clutter and neglect. There will be nothing unintentional or random here.” This is an agreement with the space which you must be constantly aware of and which you will constantly break. It is a vow to be continually renewed.

The third step is the placement of the stage. This is enjoyable and momentous, but not truly significant. Once the stage area of the space is designated, you will find yourself and others naturally orienting around it. The building of a stage is a group effort requiring coordination, strength, precision and constant adjustment. Once a physical stage is built or an area of the floor is painted and demarcated as a stage it begins to feel that you have built a theater. In truth you have only built a stage. The significant step, the step that alters the room utterly and creates a theater where before there was a room, is the placement of the audience area. It is only when the risers or a row of chairs or cushions have been placed in opposition to the stage that a theater begins to exist.

One night after we had spent the day building the stage and the risers in the Theatorium, I was alone, sweeping up as I had a dozen times before. Sweeping has always been an enjoyable, meditative task for me, so I was dreaming away, mechanically brushing the broom against the concrete floor when I felt a mild electric current pass through my arms and chest. I looked up from the floor, startled, to discover I had stepped between the stage and the risers. With this realization the current grew strong and steady, not oscillating, not seeming to come from any one direction, but somehow contained or pressurized between the stage and the house. I was no longer sweeping up an auto garage. I was sweeping up a theater. I looked to the left to the risers we had built hours before. They were ancient, watching, awake. I looked to the right at the stage we had finished that morning. It was ageless, open and waiting. And I felt, viscerally, actually, on my skin, how the theater exists not in either place, stage or audience, but only and completely in the place where they meet, the place where I stood holding a broom. The feeling lasted all of twenty seconds and as I turned back and forth from the risers to the stage, the lights seemed slightly brighter and my vision seemed slightly sharper and I became exquisitely aware of my own breath and my body’s position in the room. The current grew less and gradually faded down to the slightest buzz, slight enough so that I could no longer tell if I were creating it or if it were still actually there, like listening to the twin tines of a tuning fork when you can no longer see them vibrate. Ever since that night I have felt that slight buzz when I have stepped between the audience and the stage of that theater, which is one of the reasons that theater will always be a special, sacred space for me.

After the stage and the risers are placed, you begin the process of concealing the space with curtains and black paint. This is an interesting phase because you are hiding things in order to reveal others. Dressing rooms and lobbies and supply closets and offices are constructed. If you have any money, this is when you purchase and install the lights and the grids and the sound system. For me this always felt strange and extraneous, like strapping klieg lights and an outboard motor to a wooden canoe you have carved from a tree trunk. Others enjoy this stage greatly, it is simply a matter of taste.

The final stage in building a theater occurs on the opening night of your first production. It does not matter what the show is or how, in your estimation, it goes off. The essential thing is that at least one stranger comes in off the street, glances around, sits and grows quiet as the performance begins. When the performance is over and they rise and leave, you have built a theater. Again, it does not matter what, if anything, they say to you about the performance or even if they stayed awake through most of it. Their presence is the essential thing. When they have left and the actors appear from out of the back and the designers begin to adjust and the director begins to talk, leave the theater if you can and stand outside in the world, breathing in the night air. Then turn and walk into your theater. Find a broom and start sweeping.

yesterday

I was mainlining MSNBC yesterday, eyes glued to what everyone else was watching.

After about four hours I got a little tired of every talking head telling me I was watching History and muted Chris and Keith and the rest of the crew. I knew what I was watching, didn't need a bunch of hyped-up tour guides babbling at me while I was just trying to enjoy the view.

Of all the images yesterday, it wasn't until the helicopter lifted off and the Idiot and Laura were actually gone that it really hit me.

We survived.

We are damaged and bone-deep screwed in ways we don't even understand or know about yet, sure, but the country survived eight years of systematic attack.

Dick Cheney, completing his Dr. Strangelove transformation right on time, is out of power. The military tribunals in Guantanamo are suspended.

First steps, baby steps, but any step away from the abyss is a good one.

Gob knows what the next four years will bring, but the New Crazies won't be answering that midnight phone call and that lets me sleep a little easier.

shiver me timbers

Great day working down in Philly. Typing this in the offices of Melanie Stewart Dance, right downtown.

Temperature falling outside and already plenty cold enough for me.

O Lord.

More tomorrow unless we got frostbite.

on the road again

Heading down to Philadelphia this afternoon for a four day intensive with Melanie Stewart Dance. Working on a live dance competition piece for Live Arts.

Good fun.

Thanks to all who came and saw The Event. That thing has a life somewhere, have to figure out where, when and how.

All right.

Off to the Chinatown bus.

RIP Tom O'Horgan

The man responsible for Hair, Lenny and Jesus Christ Superstar is dead in Florida at 84.

Those were his uptown hits, but he worked forever downtown, mostly at La Mama and he's quoted as saying his Broadway success was "an aberration of some sort."

Makes me think about success and how you can't aim for two targets if you expect to hit either.

If you put up a challenging, subversive, formally innovative work of art you should just be happy you got away with it and be grateful to whomever shows up. If a wider, more mainstream audience connects with it, that's gravy. Delicious, career-sustaining gravy, perhaps, but still just gravy.

Ann has got the Vulcan mindmeld working again, I was going for Johnny over Edgar with the MMMQ.

Mostly I just wanted to type the words "American albino bluesmen".

Got to do it again, look at that.

last chance, kids

Tonight at 8:00, 27 Barrow Street, 63 minutes of high-stakes hilarity.

Philip Fisher saw it on Saturday and writing for the British Theater Guide says, among other nice things:

"With Matt Oberg on top form and a script that provokes thought throughout and long after the final curtain but is also generously endowed with laughs, The Event is a real delight."

So come on down.

We ran out to the woods last night, driving back in for the show this afternoon, but right now I'm looking out the window at an ice-encased winter wonderland, every branch of every tree dazzling in the sun.

Beautiful.

Our MMMQ tests your knowledge of American albino bluesmen.

Who is arguably the greatest American albino bluesman to ever come out of Beaumont, Texas?

Is it:

1. Edgar Winter

2. Johnny Winter

3. Boz Scaggs

4. Billy Ocean

or

5. Elvis Aron Presley?

Losers look like Frankenstein, winners get a free ride.

big weekend

Not only can you check out The Event at Barrow Street Theatre, but the wunderkinds over at Stolen Chair Theater are opening their latest at the Connelly tonight, Theater is Dead and So Are You.

These are the folks behind Kill Me Like You Mean It and Kinderspiel, two of the best things I've seen in NYC in recent years.

Here's the blurb:

Theatre is Dead and So Are You is an irreverent funeral for the stage. A
ragtag bunch of variety hacks are laying their sometimes beloved MC to rest,
performing his funeral live, travelling from city to city, until such time as his
body is too decomposed to make the proceedings pleasant. Their "eulogies" are
performed à la classic variety, with slapstick, melodrama, song & dance, and
feats of illusion and mentalism, each taking its own deadly turn as they celebrate
the life and death of their dearly departed dead dead dead friend. Even in their
joyous performance, a spectre looms as each knows they've all been exposed to
the fatal disease that killed their MC: Life. Watch these seasoned has-beens kill
theatre, live before your very eyes.

Catch it if you can and I'll see you at Barrow Street.

The Event @ Barrow Street Theater

We're wasting no time here at the Museum.

Got in late last night after a two-hour delay out of St. Louis, sitting on the runway, remembering back to the days when flying was kind of fun, before you had to get undressed to get through security and they charged you if you brought luggage along on your trip.

Just rehearsing my cranky old man routine so I'll be ready when the time comes.

Here's today's plug:

Come on down to the Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street in the West Village and see Matt Oberg in The Event, a little thing I wrote and directed. We play Sat, Jan. 10 @ 5:00, Sun, Jan 11 @ 3:00 and Mon, Jan 12 @ 8:00. It's part of Fortnight, an annual festival BST puts together. You can go on www.smarttix.com and see the whole line-up.

First day back in the office and I'm already about two days behind.

Good to be busy when you consider the alternative.

travel day

Packing it up and flying home.

We hit the ground running tomorrow, The Event is up at Barrow Street Theater this weekend. If you haven't seen it yet, make an effort, it's a beautiful thing that I'm quite proud of.

Let's start this year, already.

glazed and bleary

St. Louis is coated in a half-inch of ice this morning, that beautiful freezing rain the city is famous for during the winter months.

The birthday girl and I are dazed and blinking, unused to so many days off as we are.

Back to Rat City tomorrow, hustle and bustle to follow.

Ann hedged her bets right, it was Tempted that we swayed to back in the day. Backstory there is that we were both engaged to other people when we met.

Oh, it was steamy.

Thanks all for the birthday wishes, I have passed them on to the Natal Queen.

Happy Nan Day

I write to you from the Middle of the West, Mound City, land of fried ravioli, in the shadow of the Arch, St. Louis, Missouri.

Here with family until the 7th.

Today commences the annual week-long celebration marking the birth of Nancy Eileen Walsh aka Spitfire McGee aka Ms. Scrappy Jack.

Bring forth the clam dip and let us rejoice.

In honor of Herself, the first MMMQ of 2009 asks:

What was the young and love-struck John and Nancy's song back in 1988 when first they pitched woo back and forth under the merciless Dallas, TX sun?

Was it:

1. Tempted, by Squeeze

2. Medicine Show, by Big Audio Dynamite

3. Downstream, by the Rainmakers

4. Two out of Three Ain't Bad, by Meatloaf

or

5. On Eagle's Wings, by John Ashcroft and the New Crazies

Take a guess and welcome to the brand new year.

school's out

Snow is falling on Rat City and all is right with the world.

Happy holidays, all.

See you in 2009.

cleaning up the desk

The Museum officially shuts down for the holidays on Saturday at 9:15 PM when the final curtain falls on The Truth About Santa.

After that, it's skedaddling time.

A hell of a year, with mothers-in-law dying and wives bursting into flame and all of the daily doubts and defeats that come with working in the theater in America in the 21st century.

A hard year.

But looking across my desk I see the headshots of some of the beautiful, brave actors I was able to work with this year; I see the fourth and fifth drafts of The Event and Captain Overlord's Folly; I see a huge stack of the by-laws of The League of Independent Theater and I see messages I have to return from friends across the country and overseas and the day seems a lot easier suddenly, the job not quite so hard.

We're getting somewhere, you and me.

Day by day, year by year, show by show and argument by argument we're building an American theater.

Even though some days it feels like we're just flailing about and trying to stay afloat, when you look back a bit, you can see something taking shape.

Thanks all, for reading, commenting, seeing the shows, writing the shows, saying the lines, running the boards and being part of it this year.

On to 2009.

come see Santa

Five more chances, tickets are starting to get scarce.

www.smarttix.com

I'm to the wall today, more tomorrow.

basic principles

I'm wading through all of these end-of-the-year reports here at the Museum.

Same basic results you always see: people aren't going to see straight plays, arts funding is declining, theaters are closing, etc.

I can get lost in the minutia and I can get paralyzed by the stats, but once I get up from my desk I'm going to trudge my ass over to the Kraine theater and get ready for another show.

I've written before that theater is not a business, it's a vice. It may be helpful in some circumstances to speak of it as a business, but it's very dangerous and short-sighted to think about it that way.

Some other basic truths I'm going to try to stay mindful of this year:

A theater is not a corporation.

Art is not a product.

An annual budget is not an accurate measurement of a theater company's health.

Money comes third, if at all, in the list of Things You Need To Get Something Done. First is the good idea, second is a group of people to help, third is money for resources or just the resources themselves.

All right.

Sometimes it's good to put it down in black and white. Helps clear away some of the clutter.

Everyone and my sister got the MMMQ, you sexy things, you. It was Hot Chocolate indeed believing in miracles back in the 70s and through the miracle of time travel, Rose's All Star Jug Band was playing along in the background.

Going to need to ratchet it up again next week. Childhood nicknames of 19th century Italian altos anyone?

rear view mirror

I'm doing a lot of looking back these days, quietly amazed and very grateful to still be doing what I do after 18 years in the Big Dirty.

We never had much of a plan, just tried to stay interested and interesting and chase whatever seemed fun at the moment.

16 years ago we started Present Company, 11 years ago was the birth of the Fringe Festival, 6 years ago we launched Clancy Productions.

I'm feeling the end of another phase and the beginning of something else these days.

Maybe spend more time this year at the writer's desk and less time in the rehearsal hall.

Don't know.

I'll just keep walking down the road, I guess, and try to keep my eyes open.

We're looking way back for this morning's MMMQ.

Found another great CD awhile back: Big Hits of the 70s. It's all there: Right Back Where We Started From, Hot Child in the City, Hooked on a Feeling. 70s AM radio gold, my friends, including my personal favorite, You Sexy Thing.

So who believes in miracles and wants to know where you're from?

You Sexy Thing was recorded by:

1. A Taste Of Honey

2. Hot Chocolate

3. Blue Swede

4. Sugarloaf

or

5. The Rose Howard All-Star Jug Band featuring Rose "Vorn" Howard?

come on, ben

I know I shouldn't care.

Reading a Brantley or Isherwood essay in the Times is like putting on Fox News, you know you're going to get a warped, freeze-dried, corporation-centric view that's just going to make you angry if you've got the energy or drive you to despair if you're already down.

Brantley offers some holiday gift suggestions today, something to get the dear reader's "sensitive young cousin" who wishes to be "Theater-fluent".

I'll politely decline to address the fey theater-fag slur, nasty as that is, and point to the central problem with the article:

The people who run the theater in this country believe it stopped in 1970.

Brantley recommends Moss Hart's autobiography, William Goldman's account of the 1969 Broadway season, Peter Hall's diaries from the 70s and a collection of Tynan's reviews orginally published in 1961. And a boxed set of Sondheim CDs.

I own all of the above and am glad I do.

But come on, Ben.

How about recommending Mamet's essays, David Savran's Breaking the Rules, any of the ten Plays and Playwright's collection put out by The New York Theatre Experience?

How about Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre?

How about something from the 21st century?

It shouldn't piss me off, I know, this is the cultural equivalent of Bush-bashing, I'm just winding myself up, I know.

But, goddamn.

We're not going to find the future of this artform in Peter Hall's diaries. We're not even going to find it in Judith Malina's diaries.

It's this condescending, closed-casket cant that reinforces the idea that our role is to be cultural custodians, dusting off the old masterpieces and keeping the public at a respectful distance, rather than reckless creative agents, grabbing the public any way we can and dragging them in.

Come on.

All right, I'm done.

Enjoy the weekend. And take your sensitive young cousin to a storefront theater and see a new American play.

They still make those, you know.

Feingold and faith

This is Feingold, writing in the Voice about eight years ago, an essay titled "Your Future, My Past":

...the theater has a future, in our geography as well as in our souls. Technology built the big retail chains that have taken over so much real estate, and technology, via the Internet, is slowly weeding them out of it. Soon the realtors will be eager to welcome us back into their vacant, spacious storefronts. At the same time, millions of desk-locked, glazed-eyed Web workers will be flooding the streets, desperate for unplugged, un-downloaded human experience. We had better be ready for them. We had better know our history, our mission, our tradition, our means for reaching audiences, and our justification for addressing them. We must be ready to speak as the theater has always spoken, to any and all comers. What stories we tell, and how we tell them, will be the meaning of the next millennium, long after the DVD drives and MP3 players have ceased to work.

And I'm reminded again that having faith means not only believing the impossible will occur, but believing it's the only possible thing that can occur.

We're going to get this city back, one arts center at a time.

another bunker overrun

The Ohio Theater, a place I'd rank as New York's premiere 99 seat house, is in deep trouble.

The building's owners are selling and the space where I built Fatboy and Captain Overlord's Folly, the place that has hosted Clubbed Thumb, the Ice Factory, Pig Iron and the Riot Group, Les Freres Corbusier, WOW International, Inverse and hundreds of other Off-Off and international companies will be re-fitted to sell shoes or coats or some other fine retail merchandise.

We need a sane arts space policy in this city.

We need to honor the history and contributions of Off-Off or independent theater and we need to do that concretely, by preserving the theaters and providing stability and continuity to the theater owners and operators.

Off-Off is a 60 year old sector; a national treasure recognized globally as an innovative engine driving American theater forward. It's where so much of it begins, where so many get their start.

If you keep closing laboratories, where does the research get done?

If you sell the farmland, where do you get your produce?

If you dam the river's source, what happens downstream?

This is a matter of common sense, civic pride and cultural preservation.

And it's only a matter of time before another fortress falls.

love from above

Great Times review for Truth About Santa today.

Pull quotes out the ying-yang, praise Gob.

It says I staged it with gusto, actually used brio, but what the hell, they can always run a correction.

So, besides some League of Independent Theater business, the rest of the year is just champagne, hookers and cigars for your scrappy correspondent.

And some caroling, of course.

All hail the Lampshade Queen. It was Keith Moon, clad all in ginger, holding a pint of ginger lager, according to Pete Townsend, who drove the original Who drummer from the stage and took his rightful seat with the immortals.

Sorry, Rosie. Should have gone with the Monkees tip and picked up the Sweet Rosie Exception.

get LIT

Working out of the Pocono office for the next few days. Snow on the ground, squirrels leaping from bare branch to bare branch, bright blue sky above.

Opened The Truth About Santa to enthusiastic, appreciative crowds, now waiting for the critics to send their holiday greetings.

And on Sunday morning a group of us officially launched the League of Independent Theater at Barrow Street Theater with our first Members Meeting. About fifty folks showed up bright and early and we started charting strategy and setting priorities for 2009. Very energizing and encouraging to sit with smart, committed people for a couple of hours and walk out with a sense of possibility and even faith that we can change things if we keep working.

If you haven't joined yet, you can download the application at www.litny.org.

Here's something I handed out to the members:

A NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR


I’ve spent the last 18 years working in Off-Off or independent theaters in New York City. I’ve helped build two of them and have performed, rehearsed, produced and presented in hundreds more. I’ve seen generations of actors, writers, directors, designers, technicians, administrators and small companies struggle, triumph, fail, go broke and then start up again. I’ve sat in meetings with funders and consultants whose criteria and advice bear no relationship with the working reality of our sector of independent theater. I’ve bit my tongue almost off when talking with mainstream journalists and Off-
Broadway producers all professing bewilderment at where the next generation of artists can be found.

And nothing, essentially, has changed in this cultural and economic territory since I started working here.

Rents are too high.

Audiences are too small.

Runs are too short.

Resources are scarce.

Recognition and respect are hard-fought and fleeting.

This is why I’ve worked to create the League of Independent Theater and why I’ve volunteered to be its’ first Executive Director. Not because of any unique gifts or insights I can provide to this organization, but because I’m unwilling to accept that the conditions we work in cannot be improved if we only, finally, join together and work as a unified force.

There have been efforts like this begun and abandoned over the almost 20 years I’ve been around and I’ve heard some natural cynicism about another effort to “re-invent the wheel”.

And my answer is: the wheel may be fine, but the road the wheel is rolling on leads to a brick wall.

LIT is an opportunity for us to begin to chart a new road, a road that leads to economic sustainability, civic support, institutional stability and greater recognition and respect for our members. With the same tenacity, creativity and urgency we bring to our productions, we can, by working together, create an economically and creatively viable environment for independent theater in New York City.

I look forward to working with all of you on this great endeavor.

John Clancy
Executive Director

Yep. That boat is in the water, time to start rowing.

And here's our MMMQ, for those of you still reading:

Which rock and roll drummer/demigod barged his way into the pantheon by publicly heckling the band's original drummer, driving him from the stage and then picking up the sticks to finish the gig?

Was the ginger-clad gent:

1. Keith Moon

2. Ringo Starr

3. John Bonham

4. Charlie Watts

or

5. Micky Dolenz

Winners go on a three-year world tour, losers watch the cricket match with Pete Best.

o yes

The show is open, the sun is shining and there is peace throughout the land.

A beautiful, messy, hilarious triumph, well done and thanks to all.

Our last weekend is already selling very well, so come early if you want to know the truth. You'll never look at the fat man in the red suit the same way again.

Now gearing up for the first League of Independent Theater members meeting, this Sunday at Barrow Street Theater. Printing up bylaws, drafting surveys, all that. It's a members only meeting, so if you haven't joined yet, just go to www.litny.org and you can download an application and bring it with you on Sunday.

Sunday is my last official duty of 2008, heading out to the mountains on Monday.

Happy weekend to all.

all hands on deck

If you're reading this, you're online, so it's just a quick click and a jump to
www.smarttix.com and Bob's your uncle, you've got a ticket to tonight's showing of The Truth About Santa, penned by the inimitable Greg Kotis, starring his whole family and a special appearance by Bella the English bull dog.

We've got a gentleman from a certain paper that starts with a "T" and ends with an "imes" coming tonight and a nice raucous crowd never hurt a comedy.

So bring yourself, bring a co-worker, bring friends and lovers, hell, bring Uncle Bob, he could use a night out.

8:00, Kraine Theater, 85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd.

Calling all cars.

over the falls

First audience for The Truth About Santa tonight.

It's always a strange time right before you open a show. You've been working weeks, sometimes months building a thing, worrying about this exchange or that moment, trying different takes and bits, obsessing the details, all of you sitting in a small room together, collectively dreaming up a show.

And then you invite some people in and the whole thing happens in a sudden rush and blur and there you are standing on the other side of the thing.

It's like spending a month studying a river and then one day just jumping in and swimming to the other side.

it's official

We've been in a recession for a year, according to the Official Doomsayer Bureau down there in Washington.

I have a hard time getting personally worked up at the news, it's the old Dylan line from Like a Rolling Stone:

"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose."


What I keep thinking about are all those empty and shuttered big box stores around the city and how we get theater companies in there.

In hard times, people cut back the money they give to the arts, but in the theater we usually take that money and use it to rent space to rehearse and perform.

So, cut out the middle step and just give us the space.

Easy like pie.

Ann guesses correctly, keeping the streak alive. It's the St. Cleve Chronicle that heralds the work of "Little Milton", the ostensible writer of Thick as a Brick. Rose also wins for bravely revealing her love of the Shropshire Strumpet.

All day in the theater again today, technical rehearsals for The Truth About Santa. Coming together nicely.

Cold, sunny day in Rat City. Good day to sit all day in a dark room shouting at musical elves.

words words words

Got to make this snappy as well as scrappy this morning. Going into an all-day technical rehearsal for The Truth About Santa and been up since dawn getting ready for the big League of Independent Theater members meeting on Sunday.

Expect to see most of you at both, don't break old Scrappy's heart.

Great long week-end, feel ready to make this last mad dash to the end of the year.

Our MMMQ goes back to the day, 1972, when concept albums ruled the airwaves and Jethro Tull put out their monumental Thick as a Brick. Really don't mind if you sit this one out, but what newspaper's front page was on the front of the album? Was it:

1. The Shropshire Trumpet

2. The Manchester Guardian

3. The St. Cleve Chronicle

4. The Liverpool Intelligencer

or

5. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch?