thinaar's blog

What You've Done, 2005

2012-01-24T08:28:00.001-05:00

Getting ready to go to Houston again, to work on The Frogs at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center and City Council Meeting, at DiverseWorks, reminded me how much I liked working down there before.

Below is a clip of a dress rehearsal for What You've Done, a DiverseWorks and Project Row House co-production, featuring Eleanor Colvin, Autumn Knight and Troy Shulze. The piece was performed in a row house. These three actors did lovely work and helped keep me honest.

(I don't know why there is a long clip of black screen after the credits. Chalk it up to the early days of youtube?)

Illinois

2011-12-09T15:45:00.001-05:00

Jim Strahs

2011-10-06T11:37:00.003-04:00

Jim Strahs died in Vermont on October 1. I was lucky enough to perform in a play he co-wrote with Richard Maxwell, called Cowboys & Indians, and perform with him in an early version of The Florida Project by Tory Vazquez.

Jim Strahs in 1982.

I don’t think I knew Jim very well. I wouldn’t say I did ifsomeone asked. He is among the ten most important writers for me, though. It was in the way he made you keep up with him, the way hegot you to see things that maybe you didn’t want to, at the same time as hecracked you up.

My first interaction with him was at a party in the loft that alot of theater dorks shared, over on Desbrosses street. He leaned over me (notmany people can lean over me) and said, “You’re the guy that married Johanna.”I said I was. “Smart man,” he barked or croaked, and walked away, saying itagain. “Smart man.” (He was right.)

He hadn’t introduced himself so I had noway of knowing he was the guy who wrote NorthAtlantic, which, for me, was like an hour and forty-five minutes of perfecttime.

Maybe that was part of why Jim was such a good match for theWooster Group – the company has a knack for controlling time in their shows.Jim even said that about Ron Vawter when we were talking once at a Cowboys & Indians rehearsal. “Ronny controlledtime,” he said. And of course I had never thought to put it that simply whenI tried to explain to people how Vawter had changed my understanding of what liveperformance could be.

A year or two after Cowboys& Indians, I would run into Jim every so often, at Amalgamated Bank onUnion Square. I was putting pay in the bank, and he was running an errandfor his gig doing payroll, I think for a labor union. He genuinely liked that job, in a non-condescending, almostguileless way. It was solid work; he had benefits; he was getting histeeth fixed.

Those conversations, usually about five minutes each, aboutdoing payroll and writing plays, were moments I looked forward to because therewas never any guesswork—he was always on the level. And he’d probably never haveused that phrase. He’d have been able to put it more meaningfully, withoutdoctoring it up. What I mean is that his incredible tone of voice, combinedwith what he said, and the way he ranged, physically, made everything that camefrom him truer than if anyone else had said it.

I realized the other day that since Jim left New York for Vermont,and largely checked out of the scene, I had kept a mental image of him upthere, which I would wordlessly check in with every so often. Ithought of him going through old notebooks, sitting in a small place, maybedepressed, maybe just quiet, writing when the urge hit him, looking out thewindow a lot, tracking through notebooks from years ago and thinking about whatof it was worth keeping. Because it's how I knew him, I always see him in his long leather coat, doingall these things.

I keep him there because it helps me clear away my ownbullshit, sit down again and just put down some words.

It’s easy to fall into clichés talking about a deadcolleague or friend. It’s probably even easier when it’s someone you think ofas an unconscious mentor. God forbid a kind of artistic role model. To get itout of the way: Jim had so much integrity. There was none of the separationbetween him and his language – the body and the word – that happens soregularly when we try to make a living out of our compulsions or callings. Jimdidn’t bother with that, for all the right reasons.

For people who knew him or had an experience with his writing,the force of it is titanic. If he kept his focus narrow, it was because eachsentence bore the weight of at least a hundred pounds of reckoning.

I am puzzled as to why Jim’s work has not had more reach. Ithink the failing is everyone else’s but his. I keep wondering why therecouldn’t be more room in a larger world for someone like him – someone who’snever going to glad-hand or kowtow, who’s just going to get each moment. Whatdo we say to this silence now?

Occupiers

2011-09-27T10:38:00.000-04:00

Part of what moves me so much about the Occupy Wall Street protests and their offshoots is the earnestness. Part of it is the times we live in seeming to demand direct action, part of it is the commitment to non-violence and to thoughtful communication.

But probably the biggest part of it for me is semantic.

The protest movement has failed in the last 20 years, in part, because it has harnessed a rhetoric made up solely of demands and statements that are factually incorrect, or at least are arguable. NOT IN OUR NAME always rubbed me the wrong way because it wasn't true. Our government did go to war in our name. The soldiers doing the killing and dying were our family members and friends; they were absolutely fighting in our name. The 2000 election was stolen by the right and relinquished by the center in our name. What has been so painful is that our name has been used to perpetrate unspeakable wrongs.

The tenor of that language cut me off because it made the ineffectual nature of the protests that much more palpable. The more people said it was not in their name, the more was done in our names. And so at a certain point, why bother. And that manner of speaking, that kind of poster, leaves no room for wonder or debate, sorrow or hope. It's just a command - you're either in or you're out - and that is not the world I want to make.

When I look at the signs, the blogs and the interviews with Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots, I'm seeing and reading and hearing something else. "We are the 99%." All of a sudden I can decide whether or not I'm part of that percentage! Thanks for the invite! "I can't afford a lobbyist." Neither can I! I keep hearing stories of the way strangers are welcomed at protest sites, that non-violence is championed, and that people in the movement are clear about what they don't know, as much as what they believe.

It's hard to admit that maybe it's just an aesthetic shift that has brought me into this. Maybe I really am that shallow. (Though I know I've been slowly becoming more radicalized anyway). But as someone who is obsessed with the way we talk to each other, as much as what we say, I think what's happening here, how it's happening, speaks to something deeper in the grain of this activism.

Occupy Chicago on non-violence.

Chris Hedges.

Labor Day in Urbana, IL

2011-09-25T16:51:00.003-04:00

I had an awesome experience on Labor Day, here at the Urbana, IL Labor Day Parade. There were the usual floats - unions, candidates, fire trucks, etc. And then a woman of about 60, dressed head-to-toe as a thrift-store Mother Jones came by on foot, waving a flag and talking to people. The family of folks next to us were clearly conservative - they applauded the republican candidates and stood cross-armed at the union floats. And then Mother Jones came by, and stopped in front of them and said "Hi! I'm Mother Jones! I travel around the world speaking on behalf of the poor and the working people! I am here to tell you all about equal rights and justice!" She went on like this for a couple minutes, the whole time her wig was sliding down, she was sweaty, her shawl kept coming off, and I thought, 'fuck, that is so much ballsier than almost anything that calls itself political art right now.' In a way the protesters remind me of that moment, right at the end of Mother Jones' speech, when the family next to us unfolded their arms and smiled.

How does a city evolve?

2011-09-21T16:35:00.004-04:00

I was lucky enough to spend the weekend in Detroit. Amongother activities, I got to hang out and work with some incredible artists who’djust been awarded fellowships from The Kresge Foundation, I had beers with acouple radical priests, one my father-in-law, I drove through the alwaysmystifying cityscape, and I talked to Grace Lee Boggs, an amazing 96 year-old activistand writer who has been inspiring me a lot lately.

One of the through-lines over the weekend was the sense thatDetroit is in the midst of a set of changes, the outcome of which no one canpredict. It was sort of shocking to hear folks who’d been there for 30, 40 oreven 60 years, who’d witnessed many cycles of ill-conceived urban renewal and thwartedhopes for their hometown, tell me that things might work out for the betterthis time. Or they may just continue to collapse.

Detroit is undergoing what Boggs calls a “dual powerstructure.” There are small enclaves that are basically taking on everythingfrom farming to policing to education, as the city becomes less and less ableto provide those services in our declining economy. At the same time there is alot of speculation going on by real estate developers and politicians about thepossibilities of a creativity-led rebound for the city, fed by a combination ofcheap housing, fine architecture, and what locals sometimes refer to “ruin-porn” (thefetishization of decay into an attractive commodity).

Even Boggs, an activist in Detroit for nearly 60 years, aPhD, one of the most forward-thinking writers I have ever read on the subjectof political change, when I asked her what she would imagine for the city goingforward, said, “I have no idea. It is impossible to predict.”

Perhaps what we are witnessing is a tension between Detroitas the city American capital has left behind, and as a city thatis forming the next iteration of whatever a new predicament could become.Meaning, five or ten years from now, perhaps it will again be impoverished andneglected, its population again abandoned bycorporate and government misuse and disorder. Perhaps it will embody a newcommunitarian movement. Perhaps it will be gentrified into a mall-like versionof its former self. Ruin porn with fairtrade lattes.

Maybe all these potentialities will exist there. It will bethe city with the hip gallery district, rehabbed Victorian homes and NimanRanch barbecue, next to the inventive and inclusive projects that DetroitSummer has undertaken, next to the $1,000 homes complete with available farmplot, where you just have to provide your own electrical wires, neighborhoodpatrol, home school and art event.

Like the residents I talked to, I find myself hopeful andharrowed at the same time. It is possible there in a way few cities couldimagine: the footprint of Detroit is the same size as Manhattan, San Franciscoand Boston combined; the population is only 720,000. So there’s a lot of space.

I like to think it’s not too late for an alternative strategy toemerge. I like to think people taking the shortcomings of the existing powerstructure into their own hands could actually amount to a real and profoundchange, person by person, in a city that is struggling and growing andcelebrating itself anew.

Further reading
Bill Wylie-Kellerman
The Boggs Center
Detroit Summer
Invincible

Contemporary National Politics Today

2011-09-08T08:50:00.002-04:00

So, the right are basically two-year-olds throwing tantrums, pulling everything off the shelves, breaking all the dishes and hurting themselves. They are tearing apart the house. The Democrats' response is to stand in alternate between saying "don't do that," and, "Look at us! We're not that mad! We're reasonable!" Meanwhile the kids have gotten ahold of the frying pans and are smashing out the windows, flooding the basement, pissing on the art. Maybe our job is to keep them out of danger, remind them that we love them, and let them spin themselves out until they take a good long nap.

Prose poem?

2011-09-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

I am cleaning out files and folders. I came across this. Is it enough to stand alone as a prose poem? Please answer in the comments below:

****

" She could tell by his breathing what the dream was about. He had told her enough times after waking and she could often remember the particular qualities that signified running, or loving or flight. She had catalogued his subconscious before he fell asleep. And she was keeping it a secret from him – as far as he knew she was asleep beside him. She came from a long line of insomniacs, worriers, night owls, minds that never took vacations. She didn’t love him any less for it; it gave her a certain power over him, about which only she was clued in. This was the beginning of their real intimacy." - November 2009.

Incremental Fiction (Pretending To Wake Up), part 4

2011-08-10T13:30:00.001-04:00

***

One winter, around that time, I am home for a holiday visit, walking around on a cold night, just after last call, and I stop by Curly’s, a diner open until four so drunks can dry up after last call. Curly’s is a place where I don’t expect to see anyone I know, where I go to get warm and avoid everyone.

At first I don’t recognize the bloated guy behind the grill with the apron around his waist and the towel over his shoulder. He’s been kicked out of The Replacements for doing too many drugs, which is like to being kicked out of a school of fish for being too wet. He looks ruined now.

When I realize who it is, I say “Bob Stinson?” and he looks at me a little suspiciously.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

I tell him no but I used to see him play a lot, and I miss him in the band. He smiles and stares at me for a long time, unblinking. A few months later he’ll be dead; so many years of abuse will have made it impossible for his organs to continue functioning.

Before I leave, Bob gives me a napkin with his autograph scrawled on it. “Don’t tell anybody I’m here,” he mumbles. The sky is starting to lighten faintly with that dull gray glow, and I know this means soon I will have to go home and pretend to wake up.

The end.

Incremental Fiction (Pretending To Wake Up), part 3

2011-07-22T23:03:00.000-04:00

We both go to New York for college in '87. James studies history for a semester but drops out so he can “model” and “play bass” full-time, which means just enough to score. Over the next couple years I see him less but I hear stories—he’s back home, in a band called That Darn Cat who all live together in a house on Harriet, where they noodle with feedback and do drugs. Now he’s back in New York. Now he’s gotten his model girlfriend pregnant and they both still use. He seems embarrassed around me, overcompensating with meanness; after awhile I start to let the friendship slide away.

When I go back to Minneapolis on holiday breaks, I walk and walk and walk. Unconsciously, I think I’m looking for the energy that saved me, I’m looking for Goofy’s Upper Deck but it’s closed; The Replacements are on a major label. The scene knows itself and some of the energy has dissipated. I want this place to freeze itself in time so I can come back and taste that desperation and then leave again when it’s convenient. Why is my hometown smoothing out its edges? Why is it growing up?

This is the last time I see James: 1992, we are both twenty-five and he’s a full-fledged junkie. He shows up at my door one evening and takes me to his apartment, a former storefront on Ludlow Street, where the lights have been turned off by Con-Edison and a naked man nods on a naked mattress with blood from a bad puncture drying on his forearm. Half feral, rib-thin cats mewl and nose at empty cans of Friskies. (A few years later I’ll unwittingly walk into the same space, now a clothing store, to buy my wife an $80 sweater for Christmas, made from the salvaged scraps of vintage cashmere.)

James shows me where he’s cut a little piece of plaster out of the wall, behind which he’s hidden anything of value: a picture of his baby girl he doesn’t have visitation rights to; a few dollars; a mix tape I’d made him for our road trip to New Orleans. I’ve given up on him and he’s saving this?

We walk around the city for a few hours and he tells me he is down to a couple bags in the morning and a couple to get to sleep. I don’t know what this means but it doesn’t sound reassuring. He says he doesn’t want to end up one of those guys he’s seen at meetings, telling everyone what a good day it was because he was able to sit down in front of a TV show without wanting to claw out his eyes. He has a junkie’s remarkable ability to slip from coherence to abject superstition in an instant. “Did you know,” he asks me as we stop somewhere for a drink, “that they did a study of addicts and over two-thirds are Scorpios?”

Incremental Fiction, ("Pretending to Wake up"), part 2

2011-07-15T17:39:00.000-04:00

James and I start going to all-ages shows tucked away in sweaty holes by the University, five-band-five-dollar nights of half in-tune guitars and screamed rants distorted through a cheap sound system. The first is headlined by Husker Du, and it is terrifying. Bob Mould screams, red-faced, and grinds away at a Flying-V guitar; he has a paunch, bad skin, big black shorts and boots. Grant Hart looks like a hairy caveman bashing his drums. It sounds like a car accident I want to get killed in. The bands sweat and careen for us and we do the same in response. Our favorite player is Bob Stinson, guitarist for The Replacements, who shows up onstage wearing only an adult diaper or a thrift-store prom dress. He gets so drunk before gigs that a roadie has to help him strap on his guitar. He is equally legendary in Minneapolis for his brilliant solos and his ongoing calamity of a life. What he plays is what I hear when I can’t sleep.

James’s and my friendship expands to include nights at Embers’, the only all-night restaurant within walking distance from our houses, a tinted glass diner populated by post-bar drunks, staffed by a waitress with a wandering eye. We spread our homework on the table to look reputable, drink coffee and talk about bands. When the sky starts to glow, predawn, we sneak back home and pretend to wake up for school.

On the bus one day, James mentions heroin to me. He’s tried it with the motorcycle boys he’s gotten to know, and asks me if I want to do it, too. He says it erases all his desire and anxiety, he says it’s like the feeling after sex. Still antsy all the time, and awkward in my own skin, I’m thinking this sounds like exactly what I need, even if the idea of sticking a needle in my arm is scary, and even if I don't know what sex feels like, though of course I nod my head. I tell him okay, but at the appointed time I chicken out. We don’t discuss it after that.

Incremental Fiction ("Pretending to Wake Up"), part 1

2011-07-08T09:09:00.000-04:00

It’s 1982, I am in seventh grade and I can’t sleep. I’m involuntarily replaying the previous day’s events in my head: schoolmates’ little insults; subtle rebukes by girls I’d like to kiss; what I should have told the math teacher who gave me a C. I’m tossing and turning, fumbling through Minneapolis’s numbing selection of late-night radio in my basement room: Pop, Country, Muzak, Classical, news. At some point during the night, I land for the first time on KFAI, a local station, and a show called Rock of Rages. The reception is spotty, but two songs come through clear enough: “Blue Spark,” by X and “Kids Don’t Follow” by The Replacements. The guitar is fuzzier, the voices are desperate, the beats race. Is it possible that The Replacements actually come from my hometown? Until now I’ve known this city to be a place that is white, still and cold, where no one ever quite approves, where you are always too loud, too quiet, too weird or too normal.

There’s one kid in South Minneapolis, James Frierson, who will hang out with me if everyone else he knows is busy. We ride the bus together up Lake Street to the Hi-Lake Mall, past used car lots and the Scandia Bakery, the bank and American Rug Laundry and Embers’ Grill. When we get there we pace the aisles of Target and play with the walkie-talkies at Radio Shack until the manager tells us to stop.

Already James is so good looking that when he walks to the back of the bus all the women and some of the men turn to watch him pass. Sometimes I rush to sit down first so I can see it happen. He is apple-cheeked, blue-eyed, soft-voiced and big-boned. I am gangly, buck-toothed, uncoordinated. We are a perfect odd couple.

James had come back from spring break a few weeks back, having traded the Izod shirts and khakis we all wore for something else. His t-shirt was ripped, he had a bandana around his neck, he wore tight black jeans and his hair was spiky. “It’s not Preppy anymore,” he informed me with disdain, “It’s Punk now.” He was so sure of this fact, and it was so clear that whatever punk was, I was not it, that I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d ditch me for good, and only hang out with all the other kids who had always known it was punk the whole time.

What is a living wage for an artist?

2010-07-06T14:50:00.001-04:00

I've been having conversations lately about compensation, support for the arts, the value of the arts, and other such subjects. For me it's really helpful to think about how to put real numbers onto what we do. So I've started asking people what it would mean to make a "living wage" as an artist.

Obviously this is dependent on how old you are, whether you're single or have a family, where you live and other variables.

But I'd be so curious to know what that phrase means to you - please write me (aaron@thinaar.com), or leave a comment here to let me know what you think.

Remember - this does not have to be income entirely derived from art-making or art-doing. But what would it cost you, as an artist, to live decently where you live.

IMG_5570

2010-06-26T17:16:00.001-04:00

IMG_5570, originally uploaded by thinaar.

Outsider Art, part of the Enchanted Highway in Western North Dakota.

IMG_5588

2010-06-26T16:30:00.001-04:00

IMG_5588, originally uploaded by thinaar.

Photo from my day-long driving trip through rural North Dakota, in search of ghost towns. Turns out "ghost towns" means something different in North Dakota than in, say, Arizona, where mining towns dried up a hundred years ago and you are basically seeing a graveyard of buildings. In North Dakota the towns die gradually. Most have a few houses still standing; the rest are in slow decline.

Patient Boy process pics, part 2

2010-06-02T14:22:00.000-04:00

Chris Devlin and Sarah Lord in rehearsal for Patient Boy at 14 Wall Street. Part of a new workshop performance I am writing, developed by Mallory Catlett. A lot of drama.

Process pics from Patient Boy

2010-05-29T14:56:00.001-04:00

Working on a new piece-in-progress with Mallory Catlett. Performing it for an invited audience June 14. The performers are Chris Devlin and Sarah Lord.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 10

2010-04-29T07:53:00.002-04:00

After collecting himself almost imperceptibly, without so much as a shiver, Anything Man turned to Liver Lady. He said, “Please sit down. Thanks for joining me.”

“Why thank you,” Liver Lady said. “Thank you very much.”

“What are you drinking,” he asked.

“Diet Doctor Pepper,” she said. “I don’t want anyone taking advantage of me later,” and winked. And giggled.

“Ha ha,” he obliged, and I thought I would weep. For the rest of the evening they chatted, pleasantly, about who knows what. I was so mortified I couldn’t make eye contact with Anything Man, even to listen, even to apologize. I just pretended to have my shift drink at the bar and chat with Greg, stealing glances at them when I could.

Eventually, The Model had picked at her food enough for it to seem like she’d eaten; she paid and left. The chairs were up on the tables, and the lights had been slowly brightened so that Jose could see the floor for mopping. It was time to go home. Kimberly was annoyed that I had hung around so long, reminding me that I wasn’t making tips for the last two hours since I’d agreed she could close up alone, even though I did help her with the salt-shakers.

But I couldn’t leave. Liver Lady and Anything Man stayed on late into the night, talking and moving around their empty drink glasses, pleasantly like old friends, or a new couple just grown into their own comfort together. Like they’d known each other forever.

The restaurant would shutter within a month because of unpaid bills; first the liquor deliveries would stop, and then the fresh fish, and then Sal, the restaurant’s silent partner who always wore a velour tracksuit and Dolce and Gabbana shades, would start lurking at table seven waiting for Philip the owner, who had disappeared.

I never found out what it was or what happened to either Liver Lady or Anything Man, because neither of them ever came back.

But on this night, I want you to picture it: she is wholly unaware of anything around her now, though he will stare out into the quiet street periodically, an inscrutable combination of looks crossing his face. Maybe he is thinking of The Model, long gone, or of me, or of another person, place or thing – the noun inside his heart that no one else could know. Whatever it is, is inflected with the deep sadness that’s caught in the gracious smile of a suitor who’s finally found his perfect match, and who wishes for a moment he could be someone else, somewhere else, some other time. - (c) 2010, all rights reserved.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 9

2010-04-27T10:09:00.000-04:00

"By this time Greg was watching, notebook in hand, from the end of the bar. Kevin had come out of the kitchen and wiped his hands on his apron nervously – he only had a minute before he had to get back to whatever he was cooking. Kimberly poked her head out from behind the wait station. The silence in the restaurant was both golden and torturous. And I couldn’t tell anyone how badly I’d fucked up, that Anything Man had meant his act of romanticism and chivalry for the model. Immediately I also couldn’t decide what was more pathetic – that Anything Man would think to buy a woman so obviously out of his league a drink, or that now he was stuck with Liver Lady at his table.

Kevin got it. He came up behind me and whispered, “You sure he wanted to buy the drink for Liver Lady?” before retreating to the kitchen.

Greg saw it, too. He looked at me, he was making notes in his black book about me this time, about me as the clueless young waiter from the Midwest who thought Anything Man wanted to buy Liver Lady and not The Model-to-Be a drink. He shook his head and went back to the bar.

“You can go now if you want,” Kimberly said, dully, and started popping the tops off salt-shakers in preparation to close.

What they all missed was the grace note because they were too busy being somewhere else. - (C) 2010, all rights reserved

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 8

2010-04-23T10:23:00.001-04:00

I went to the Greg, the Bartender, also a filmmaker, and whispered, “Anything Man is buying Liver Lady a drink!”

“Fuck, man, that is perfect,” he said, and made a note in his notebook. He was making an indie film about a bartender in one of New York’s old, authentic, disappearing neighborhoods, and he was always making notes about interesting things that happened at Nick & Eddie.

“I know,” I said. “Maybe they’ll get married.”

“Fuck that is so perfect!”

“I know,” I said.

“Doesn’t it make you love him?” Greg said.

“It makes me love both of them more than I already did.” I said.

“You’re a freak,” he said, and made another note.

“I’ll keep you posted.”

I went excitedly back to Liver Lady’s table and told her, “the man at the next table would like to buy you a drink.”

“Oh?” she said, brightening visibly.

“He says get whatever you want.”

The model-to-be, oblivious, turned a page in her magazine.

“Oh. Oh!” She said, straightening the quilts of her coat. “I guess I will have a Diet Doctor Pepper, then.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“Yes, that’s it. And tell him thank you,” and she went back to the window.

“Anything Man bought Liver Lady a drink!” I told Kimberly.

“Huh,” she said. “Do you want me to close up tonight, I could use the extra few bucks.”

“Okay,” I said. “Kevin! Liver Lady and Antything Man! A match made in heaven.”

“Awesome,” he said. “Nice work.”

Greg put a little umbrella in the Diet Dr. Pepper, and put it in a small glass – tell her free refills so she doesn’t think I’m trying to rip her off, he said – and I brought it to her. She beamed, epically, innocently, thrillingly. I nodded at Anything Man, as if to say, My Work Is Done Here, It’s All Up To You Now, Tiger, and he nodded back and turned around to look.

And when he did the look on his face made me realize what I’d done.

Liver Lady was straightening herself again, unnecessarily, for nothing would make her completely straightened, no amount of primping could hide that showing slip of soon-to-be-wacked that would always peek out from behind whatever veils of normal she tried to erect. She stood, carefully, with purpose, beaming like the sun and walked over to Anything Man’s table. “Aren’t you a gentleman,” she said. “May I?” And gestured at the table.

Anything Man was still looking in the direction she’d come from, to the table behind Liver Lady’s, at the model, who he’d meant the drink to be for. The model turned another page, still oblivious and sipped her drink. Eventually she signaled Kimberly for her check. Anything Man turned, faced me, and I looked down. He looked down slightly, at a loss, and then something happened. (c)2010, all rights reserved.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 7

2010-04-20T08:11:00.001-04:00

"At 9:30, throwing our evening for a loop, Anything Man came in and sat down, with his usual cheap tweed, and his usual purposefully “enigmatic” smile, along the window, in front of Liver Lady, a few tables up from Model To Be.
By that time, there would be just two of us working the floor. The model was in Kimberly’s section; Kimberly was dour, cute and lazy. Liver and Anything were my terrain.

I was a little preoccupied with keeping Liver Lady happy and so I’d asked her some questions to draw her out, but to no avail.
What have you been up to this week? Not much. How is your niece? Fine. She smiled faintly but her heart wasn’t in it.

When I went to the Anything Man’s table I said, “The usual,” as was our custom, and he said, “Yes.” And I went back to the kitchen to confer with Kevin the chef, who would cook him up something.

When I went back, Anything Man flagged me and I went over.

“I’d like to buy that woman a drink,” he said stiffly, without moving. He was obviously very nervous.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, “That’s very nice.

“Whatever she wants, just, just put it on my bill.”

It made me love him, a little. It made me see that he had a heart I hadn’t given him credit for after all; it made me wish him the best. It warmed my heart that he saw within a moment that he had found someone he could relate to. Perhaps he had a niece also, perhaps they would share stories. Perhaps they would get married and blossom later in life." (c) 2010, all rights reserved.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 6

2010-04-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

"Liver Lady was there at her usual 9PM. When I informed her that we had run out of liver, she didn’t take it well, but she did her best to put on her game face; her game face with wrong-colored lipstick, and her hair about to explode and her quilted too-warm blue, fraying jacket. She got the hangar steak instead, and claimed to enjoy it, but a little of the sparkle had left her eyes and even the purposefully date-friendly lighting of Nick & Eddie couldn’t hide it. She didn’t want to chat. She drank more water than usual. She looked out the window, absently, and worked methodically through her meal. Steak on a hot June Wednesday in New York. Mashed Potatoes. Quilted jacket. So much sadness.

"About 9:15 a young woman came in who looked like she was probably a model. As Nick & Eddie was going through its decline, the neighborhood was becoming fashionable, and models or models-to-be, or aspiring models, or models-cum-actresses were starting to inhabit the walk-up studios and cozy $2,500 one-bedrooms in the area. And this night one of them came in and ordered the smoked trout appetizer, and ate it by herself with a magazine in the back corner, along the window, just a couple tables behind Liver Lady. Their aloneness could not have been more different, like an evolutionary chart of marginal craziness in reverse." - (c) 2010, all rights served.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 5

2010-04-15T07:02:00.002-04:00

"You can picture the city. 1996: there was no Time Out New York; there was no solo show about a restaurant that was so popular they needed a special reservation line; there was no internet, really, to speak of, and no 9-11. Giuliani was in his first term as Mussolini. Neighborhoods in Manhattan had unmarked borders and no-man’s-lands; you were that much younger; the city was angrier but thawing; everyone had big plans they didn’t blog about it because, well, no one had blogs, and no one knew yet that you were supposed to tell everyone about everything all the fucking time, right? It was still a city in which secrets thrived.

"By June, Liver Lady had taken to showing up at 9 or so, because on Wednesdays, business had tapered to the point where, most of the time, we’d have nothing to do but chat with her and listen to her while she ate her liver, extra onions, mashed potatoes instead of rice, and drank her glass of water.

On this one particular Wednesday, while summer started to become impossible, two things happened: we ran out of liver, and Anything Man made an unscheduled appearance. " (c) 2010, all rights reserved

Liver Lady And Anything Man, part 4

2010-04-11T10:08:00.000-04:00

"There was another regular at Nick & Eddie, that last summer it was open, who we called Anything Man, and he came on Tuesdays. At first we had wondered about him but we quickly stopped. Anything Man was just another weeknight eccentric, and not a very interesting one; another lonely character the city used to reveal more regularly. Anything Man seemed to be in his late 50s, was dressed like a professor who never achieved tenure, or like someone trying to keep up the appearance of sanity, or like a lonely old guy who desperately sought out ways to seem interesting. Maybe he worked at the post office or a bank or a drug store.

The first time he came in he said, “I’ll have anything, surprise me.” No dietary restrictions, he said, the world was his oyster. When whoever his waiter was that time pressed him for more specificity he refused to say, but smiled inscrutably instead. So of course after conferring with the manager we gave him the more expensive of our two steak options. He asked for wine that went well with it and we gave him the fancy Australian Cab. He paid in cash, smiled suspiciously and refused to say whether he liked it. He didn’t read during his meal, didn’t unbutton his old tweed sports coat.

Restaurants design their nighttime lighting to soften the edges off dates, to gauze some of your day from your face, to try and make everyone feel a bit like Sigourney or Drew, if not Anthrax. Nick & Eddie made Anything Man seem pretty close to normal, and perhaps even content. But after three or four Tuesdays we realized he was less than normal and also less than interesting. He twitched almost imperceptibly when he answered a question. His smile seemed plastered-on, utterly unspontaneous, exactly the same each time. We put him into our file of evidence that Nick & Eddie clearly had sunk from its former glory. Even if we wanted to be somewhere else, while we were there we wanted it to be a place people wanted to be, where you had to know someone to get a table on a busy night, where the prices were worth it because you were paying for a little bit of glamor.

So each Tuesday he’d get something different. He started in March, I think, and by the time June came around, we were running out of options, reduced to mixing the sides from one entrée with another, despite Kevin the chef’s protests that the tomato-onion salad was specifically designed for the Angus Steak, and the smoked trout appetizer shouldn’t be paired with the chicken shnitzel and spaetzel. We hoped he wouldn’t notice. He never let on if he did." (c) 2010, all rights reserved.

Liver Lady And Anything Man, Part 3

2010-04-09T13:09:00.004-04:00

"The Liver Lady came in on one of those Wednesdays, because she came in every Wednesday, because Wednesday was the day we ran the liver special. The liver was always on the menu, but on Wednesday it was two dollars cheaper than usual and the Liver Lady was thrifty. She told one of the waiters, who then spread it around, that she had millions to give away when she died, to several nieces and nephews, but she didn’t want to waste even a dollar of their inheritance on overpriced food. The problem, she said, was she had fine, uncompromising tastes. That was why she came to Nick and Eddie on Wednesday, like clockwork, and got the liver, because she knew value when she tasted it.

"You can picture her: thin blue quilted coat that she wore in all seasons; eyebrows plucked and painted on with a few stray stubble hairs visible underneath a layer of pancake; blue fake-jewel earrings to match the coat; unruly gray hair that must have taken a long time to look just this side of nuts; bright, blinking eyes and an rusty brownish color of lipstick that can’t have looked good on anyone.

"And she smiled and she chatted. And at first we were all wary of her because we – with our far-reaching ambitions and our desire to just get done and get home to whomever or whatever was waiting on us, or wasn’t – we didn’t like to be disturbed, or to be brought from our real life, which was not at this restaurant, into the present moment, which was. What was important to us was outside these walls. We didn’t say it, we would never have admitted it, but we all wanted at least a little bit to be next year’s Sigourney or Drew or Anthrax dining at whatever edgy overpriced but admittedly well-done place popped up in whatever newly defined neighborhood that had not yet been discovered." (c) 2010, all rights reserved

Liver Lady and Anything Man, Pt. 2

2010-04-06T11:43:00.003-04:00

"Nick & Eddie was a pioneer in a long line of Soho restaurants that served fancy comfort food made with a lot of fuss, at inflated prices. If you know the original Blue Ribbon, this was started by one of those guys, and occupied the corner of Spring and Sullivan Streets for about eight years. Nick & Eddie served “a great burger” and a “solid steak” and “the bartenders knew their way around a martini and didn’t ask you too many questions if you just wanted to nurse your drink alone.” For a long time it was hard to get a table on a Friday night because movie stars and rock bands ate there; models picked at their fried catfish, moving it around on their plates. It was the mid-90s, and to open a restaurant with a $14 burger west of West Broadway was still a bold move – a “just so crazy it might work,” maneuver. New York Magazine covered us extensively. Drew was a regular. Sigourney. The band Anthrax. We easily cleared $250 a night on a Friday, even toward the end, and without having to deliver anything remarkable, service-wise. To be fair, the food was very good, but the great thing about waiting tables at a hot but “off-the-beaten-path” New York restaurant serving trumped up comfort food at trumped up prices was that you didn’t have to be nice or even good to contribute to the vibe.

But by the time I got my job there, the restaurant was past its prime. Blue Ribbon had upped the ante and lines ran out the door there six nights a week, until 4AM, just across the street from where we watched. While Fridays and Saturdays may have still been busy, even then it was no longer impossible to get a table, and our regulars, while still sometimes including Drew and Sigourney and Anthrax, also consisted of the UPS guy named Yuri who delivered our fresh fish every other day and who brought a different lady there each week so that he could act like a big shot with us—by that time in Nick & Eddie’s evolution he kind of was—and gain proximity credits with his dates by pointing out Drew and Sigourney and Anthrax.

Sunday through Thursday nights were straight-up slow. There had grown, since the place opened, a regular clientele of neighborhood people who came in for this or that dish, to chat with the staff, and who were made to feel welcome. They also, as long as there had been enough models and actors and rock bands populating the place, contributed to the vibe. At that time the area west of Soho (it’s now become part of Soho), was still a neighborhood on its own terms, with vestiges of Italian and Portugese populations still opening sawdust strewn butcher shops every morning and giving $10 haircuts and $5 shaves to people on their way home from work. Drew and Sigourney and Anthrax may have made the trip to eat at Nick & Eddie on a Friday night, but on a Wednesday, in July, when the restaurant was closing, usually at 10:30 after serving a few dozen dinners to a few dozen forlorn couples without a lot to say to each other, and single diners with magazines, and old guys who’d rather have been alone anyway, you could still feel like you were in the city the way it was when it was just New York." (c) 2010, all rights reserved.

Patient Boy

2010-04-06T11:41:00.003-04:00

Mallory Catlett and I are working on a piece that involves abandoned malls. Right now it's called Patient Boy

Can anyone tell me how to perform a piece in one?

Like, this one?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lookinthetunk/176615260/in/set-167023/

Liver Lady and Anything Man, Pt. 1

2010-04-03T10:20:00.006-04:00

Here is part of a new essay or monologue I'm working on, about my last restaurant job:

"My most successful blunder as a table-waiter happened on a June Wednesday and involved a woman we called “The Liver Lady.” This was in 1996, not long before the restaurant closed for good. The Liver Lady came in to Nick & Eddie once a week, when we ran a regular liver and onions special, and ordered it cooked a certain way – I think extra onions, or rarer than usual, or mashed potatoes instead of rice. She was truly eccentric, perhaps separated from complete craziness by the half-decent quality of her coat, as well as the effort it was clear she made with her hair. She was a type of which New York seems to accommodate fewer and fewer with each year. The kind of person we all could look inside and see ourselves becoming if a series of things went a series of ways. Or maybe we see ourselves that way now." - (c) 2010, all rights reserved.

Bismark, ND

2010-03-27T08:56:00.002-04:00

Bismark, North Dakota has a city council meeting scheduled on June 22nd. I may attend.

http://www.bismarck.org/

Ozen Yula

2010-02-11T20:33:00.005-05:00

My friend and colleague Ozen Yula is the victim of a smear campaign in Istanbul.

Ozen and I met working with Free Theater Belarus a couple years ago, and I really think his plays are amazing - brutal, hilarious, subtle, and fearless.

His most recent is called Yala Ama Yutma, translated roughly as, "Lick But Don’t Swallow". An Islamic fundamentalist newspaper called Yakit has begun an attack on the production, and the company producing the show is actually in fear for their lives. Supporters of Yakit have been known to assassinate the targets of the paper's ire in the past.

For me, as an artist in a country where we have so much freedom we are often simply ignored, it's important to recognize that not all our cohorts get to express with such impunity. Even if that impunity can feel lonely sometimes.

If you have an interest in knowing more you can download Ozen's press release, or contact me. I am trying to get colleagues here to pursue press coverage for this, since, according to Ozen, the more coverage that comes out in the foreign media, the safer everyone will be.

David Smith's questions for students of art

2010-02-11T12:12:00.004-05:00

While researching for a freelance job, I came across this series of questions posed by David Smith (1906-1965), a sculptor:

Questions to Students

The following series of questions appears in an undated typescript among the David Smith Papers.
It was probably written about 1953-54.

1. Do you make art your life, that which always comes first and occupies every moment, the last problem before sleep and the first awaking vision?

2. Do all the things you like or do amplify and enjoin the progress of art vision and art making?

3. Are you a balanced person with many interests and diversions?

4. Do you seek the culture of many aspects, with the middle-class aspiration of being well-rounded and informed?

5. How do you spend your time? More talking about art than making it? How do you spend your money? On art materials first—or do you start to pinch here?

6. How much of the work day or the work week do you devote to your profession—that which will be your identity for life?

7. Will you be an amateur—a professional—or is it the total life?

8. Do you think the artist has an obligation to anyone but himself?

9. Do you think his contemporary position is unique or traditional?

10. Do you think art can be something it was before? Can you challenge the ancients?

11. Have you examined the echoes of childhood and first learning, which may have once given you the solutions? Are any of these expectancies still operating on your choices?

12. Do you hold with these, or have you recognized them? Have you contradicted them or have you made metaphoric transposition?

13. Do you examine and weigh the art statements of fellow artists, teachers, authorities before they become involved in your own working tenets?

14. Or do the useful ideas place themselves in a working niche of your consciousness and the others go off unheard?

15. Do you think you owe your teachers anything, or Picasso or Matisse or Brancusi or Mondrian or Kandinsky?

16. Do you think you work should be aggressive? Do you think this an attribute? Can it be developed?

17. Do you think your work should hold within tradition?

18. Do you think that your own time and now is the greatest in the history of art, or do you excuse your own lack of full devotion with the half belief that some other time would have been better for you to make art?

19. Do you recognize any points of attainment? Do they change? Is there a final goal?

20. In the secret dreams of attainment have you faced each dream for its value on your own basis, or do you harbor inherited inspirations of the bourgeoisie or those of false history or those of critics?

21. Why do you hesitate--why can you not draw objects as freely as you can write their names and speak words about them?

22. What has caused this mental block? If you can name, dream, recall vision and auras why can’t you draw them? In the conscious set of drawing, who is acting in our unconscious as censor?

23. In the conceptual direction, are you aiming for the successful work? (To define success I mean the culminating point of many efforts.)

24. Do you aim for a style with a recognizable visual vocabulary?

25. Do you polish up the work beyond its bare aesthetic elements?

26. Do you add ingratiating elements beyond the raw aesthetic basis?

27. If you add ingratiating elements, where is the line which keeps the work from being your own?

28. Are you afraid of rawness, for rawness and harshness are basic forms of U.S. nature, and origins are both raw and vulgar at their time of creation?

29. Will you understand and accept yourself as the subject for creative work, or will your effort go toward adapting your expression to verbal philosophies by non-artists?

30. If you could, would you throw over the present values of harmony and tradition?

31. Do you trust your first response, or do you go back and equivocate consciously? Do you believe that the freshness of first response can be developed and sustained as a working habit?

32. Are you saddled with nature propaganda?

33. Are you afraid to exercise vision, seek surprise?

34. When you accept the identification of artist do you acknowledge that you are issuing a world challenge in your own time?

35. Are you afraid to work from your own experience without leaning on the crutches of subject and the rational?

36. Or do you think that you are unworthy or that your life has not been dramatic enough or your understanding not classic enough, or do you think that art comes from Mount Parnassus or France or from an elite level beyond you?

37. Do you assert yourself and work in sizes comparable to your physical size or your aesthetic challenge or imagination?

38. Is that size easel-size or table-size or room-size or a challenge to nature?

39. Do you think museums are your friend and do you think they will be interested in your work?

40. Do you think you will ever make a living from museums?

41. Do you think commercial art, architectural art, religious art offer any solution in the maturing of your concepts?

42. How long will you work before you work with the confidence which says, “What I do is art”?

43. Do you ever feel that you don’t know where to go in your work, that the challenge is beyond immediate solution?

44. Do you think acclaim can help you? Can you trust it, for you know in your secret self how far short of attainment you always are? Can you trust any acclaim any farther than adverse criticism? Should either have any effect upon you as an artist?

In particular, to the painter—
Is there as much art in a drawing as in a watercolor--or as in an oil painting?
Do you think drawing is a complete and valid approach to art vision, or a preliminary only toward a more noble product?

In particular, to the sculptor—
If a drawing is traced, even with the greatest precision, from another drawing, you will perceive that the one is a copy. Although the differences may deviate less than half a hair, recognizable only by perceptual sensitivity, unanimously we rule the work of the intruder’s hand as non-art.
But where is the line of true art—when the sculptor’s process often introduces the hands of a plaster caster, the mold maker, the grinder and the polisher, and the patina applier, all these processes and foreign hands intruding deviations upon what was once the original work?

Basement Tape

2010-02-06T22:47:00.006-05:00

I wrote this in 2005. I'd love for you to read it now.

HOBART is a great little journal.

Edward Behr

2010-01-08T09:25:00.004-05:00

This is from the current issue of "The Art of Eating". It's the best kind of rarefied. I think it applies to live art as much as magazine-making or food.

"Each issue of a magazine should be a performance, complete, not changing but fixed, a quality automatically supplied by ink on paper. We had been planning to offer digital subscriptions, essentially the print magazine in PDF form, and we may do that. But at the same time that life has been growing more digital, Brooklyn hipsters wear full beards and flannel shirts; a few people in Brooklyn, as in, for instance, Paris, keep bees (illegally in the first case) and in a number of US cities they raise chickens. And there is a burgeoning back-to-the-land movement of a new sort, represented by groups such as the Greenhorns. Across the river from Brooklyn in Manhattan, ardent food craftsmen (including some well-tattooed Brooklynites) appear at the marvelous periodic New Amsterdam Market. We at AoE start to think maybe the smartest thing we can do is to forget digital, embrace print, and remain solely a well-crafted object." --Edward Behr

David Byrne - yes please!

2010-01-01T13:50:00.003-05:00

I LIKE THIS:

"I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the canon, the great works and the masterpieces. In my opinion, it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare — to say nothing of opry. In the long term it doesn’t matter if students become writers, artists or musicians — though a few might. It's more important that they are able to understand the process of creation, experimentation and discovery — which can then be applied to anything they do, as those processes, deep down, are all similar. It’s an investment in fluorescence.

So how did things end up like this?"

Ron Vawter

2009-11-23T08:33:00.003-05:00

Here are some of my favorite words about performing, by the late Ron Vawter, in conversation with the current Tim Etchells:

Tim Etchells: What's the pleasure of performing for you?

Ron Vawter: I think it's the concentration of...people on stage - like I'm suspended in this very powerful force-field and I'm sort of riding it like a rodeo. It's exhilarating.

Wait. I know what it's like. It's exactly like surfboarding and you've got this board which is your character or the play that you're doing and you're riding these waves coming at you from the audience and from the play itself. Of course when you surfboard you're extraordinarily sensitive ot the motion of those waves and of course you know I'm a show off, I'm an actor, so, I try to do little tricks - zip into the water, go across the wave and move up on the board, move down on the board. As far as the energy feels that's exactly what it's like. And I've learned how to ride the waves. I've done it a long time you know and I've learned the little tricks of the waves and the back currents and how to stay up. Sometimes I really feel like quite a champion surfboarder...

Tim Etchells: Very much...

Ron Vawter: And sometimes I fall flat on my face in the water. That's the risk of surfboarding.

--From the book Certain Fragments.

Less with more, part 1

2009-10-22T09:06:00.002-04:00

Lately, when I teach workshops, talk to artists and think about my own career as a playwright and performer, I have been using the phrase “Do less with more,” as a counter to the crisis mode that seems embedded in much of the art production I see around me. I’ve been writing about this in other forums – most recently with Collective Arts Think Tank - but I want to start using this blog as a clearinghouse for all of what I mean on the subject.

I’ll be posting about this here roughly once a month. My thoughts are informed by my experience as a playwright, actor, ERS company member, teacher and arts advocate. I absolutely invite your challenges, support, comments, questions and pies. I’m going to talk most about live performance, because that’s where I work, but it can often apply to visual art and film as well.

The Six Frustrations

I started saying Do Less With More out of a few frustrations:

1. The opposite refrain: “Do more with less,” which I hear from artists, administrators, venues, and funders alike, constantly, started to bug me because I don’t see the value in it. Doing more with less has led us to under-resource much of our work. To my eyes, it has led many of us to let down the very fragile and elusive form we work in. American contemporary theater and dance often look shoddy compared to other forms, or those same forms in places with more readily available resources.

2. I’ve heard “do more with less” in boom and bust times, so it can’t just be about the current economy.

3. I think doing more with less has become a convenient excuse not to try and make great work. If we are always doing more with less, we can always fall back on the excuse of not having had enough resources. I want to advocate that we risk big, fail big, and succeed big.

4. I don’t think work was ever made better by doing more with less. Working with fewer resources might help some artists curb some indulgences some of the time. And doing more might help a lazy or under-realized artist in some ways. But the combination of the two seems deadly, at least as a mantra.

5. I think the market is oversaturated. If there are always so many shows going on in NYC at any given time and we’re all desperate to pull in audience, and our houses are half full, maybe we are not meeting demand properly. Maybe we can build demand through anticipation (“wow remember how great that show was two years ago by those guys? I can’t wait to go to the new one!”), maybe we can collaborate on bringing better resources to each other rather than desperately clinging to our own small slices of a pie (traditional support models) that seem to be shrinking.

5. The current funding model doesn’t work. There are too many worthy projects for grantmakers to actually be able to fund all the best. I know this is true because funders tell me it is so. All the best projects do not get funded. This means that you may have a great idea, and you may feel you have to get it into the world on a timeframe that is supported by the annual funding cycle, or perceived cycle that is out there now. The fact is it might take more time to get those funds in place, to really get the work done right, than it seems like it ought to.

In my experience, doing less with more leads to stronger work. That means really taking the time to explore and define a given piece of work until it’s really ready for people to pay money to see it.

I look to examples like The Foundry Theatre (where the work is not produced until it’s deemed ready, even if that’s years later than expected), Soho Rep (which cut it’s season from five to three productions, allowing each to be more realized and recognized) and ERS, which produces a show about every two years, which then continue to tour and bring in income and accolades for as long as five years.

Doing less with more means thinking hard not about how little you could get a piece done for, but what would you do if you had everything you really needed to make it the best it could be, how long would it take to amass all that, and then setting out to do the project on the project’s terms rather than on someone else’s (Equity, LORT, NPN, The Whitney Museum, etc.) idea about what a typical production schedule is.

Of course, there will always be deadlines, financial constraints and time crunches. That’s a given. But why compound them? I want to advocate that we aim higher with our work, and that might take a little longer to accomplish, even a little longer than we might like sometimes.

In future installments: case studies on doing less with more; other fields in which there is a glut of ‘product’ related to demand; when you need to do more with less in a strategic way; knowing what your work really costs to make.

Appointment Audio

2009-10-04T10:10:00.004-04:00

Here is a link to audio from my Appointment piece, performed October 2 at Prelude:

CLICK TO PLAY

Appointment At Prelude

2009-10-03T23:20:00.005-04:00

We did the first-ever installment of Appointment at the Prelude Festival yesterday. Four short pieces, written by me, Brent Green, Sibyl Kempson and Daniel Alexander Jones. A seat-of-the-pants production. Really wonderful performers including Stacey Robinson, Julia Jarcho, Pete Simpson and Anna Foss Wilson (also me and Brent). I can't wait to do more of this.

Highlights for me, performing my own piece:
1. People not being able to distinguish between the intimate conversation in the active hallway at CUNY that started my piece, and the other office activities in said hallway, and me informally chatting with a friend or colleague.

2. The fact that, when given the choice to perform my piece for the next viewer, everyone agreed to do it!

Here is Morgan Jenness performing for David Townsend. And also Stacey Robinson performing "Blondell Is Businessfied" by Daniel Alexander Jones.

Help Me Make An Appointment

2009-09-20T16:31:00.002-04:00

People. I need help paying collaborators on Appointment, the new, ongoing performance project I'm working on.

http://bit.ly/AOoFI

"Appointment" is short, repeatable one-on-one performances in small offices. The first Appointment happens at PRELUDENYC in about two weeks. After that I'm going to Oslo in March to work with students at the TITAN Theater School on Norwegian Appointments. And more are in the works.

If you pledge money to my Kickstarter page, I'll be able to pay artists working with me on this project. Right now those collaborators include Sibyl Kempson, Daniel Alexander Jones, and Brent Green. You heard me. Who wouldn't want an appointment with one of them? At PreludeNYC, we'll be working on appointments that involve a handgun, a description of menstruation, an instructional in getting by at the workplace, and a chance to take my job.

http://bit.ly/AOoFI

I'd love for you help.

Thanks!!

A question for you

2009-08-31T12:11:00.002-04:00

I am soliciting thoughts and ideas.

I am working on a new piece called Appointment,, which will have its first in-progress performance at Prelude next month. It's a series of repeatable performances for one performer and one viewer.

Right now I'm writing and thinking, and here's what I'm hoping I can pull off: I want to ask the viewer a question that is general enough that the viewer feels like he/she is making up a response that is really her/his own. Meaning, it has to not feel like multiple choice.

BUT, I also want to craft what follows their response so that it feels like I just answered you and you alone, that I tailored the piece totally personally in the moment, for you. That the viewer changed the course of the work.

To me this means I either improvise each response on the spot, which would take some practice, and I don't even know if it's possible, or I come up with a range of, say, five responses, which could feel personal enough, memorize them all, and choose the one that seems most appropriate to that viewer.

What do you think I should do?

Can you imagine the kind of question that could provoke a limited, but seemingly free, number of responses?

Please feel free to comment or write me.

Collective Arts Think Tank is live

2009-08-27T10:39:00.001-04:00

Collective Arts Think Tank has unveiled itself!

http://collectiveartsthinktank.blogspot.com/

What does that mean?

A few months ago, a blog exchange among a couple artists, a couple presenters, a journalist, sundry arts professionals and a funder or two, about the state of contemporary live performance, took place on WNYC's Performance Club blog (http://blogs.wnyc.org/culture/performance/).

A few of us were charged up enough by the exchange to get together, and we met to try and come up with some observations, and recommendations to the field. We invited funders, audience members and other artists and arts professionals in; we hashed out our common ground as well as our uncommon ground; and then we wrote up the results.

The group right now includes Lost Notebook's Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, The Chocoate Factory's Brian Rogers and Sheila Lewandowski, The Field's Jennifer Wright Cook, PS 122's Vallejo Gantner and others. Individually and sometimes together, we have served on panels and town meetings. We came together out of a shared set of concerns about what we see as systemic problems facing the field of contemporary live performance. We plan to keep meeting regularly.

What came out of our meetings so far is now up on its very own blog:

http://collectiveartsthinktank.blogspot.com/

Did we find all the answers? Likely we didn't. Did we try to go beyond merely complaining, or wishing we were Europe, or blaming one or another party completely? We did. We think of ourselves as stakeholders, and I'm writing to you because you are a stakeholder, too.

Some of my thinking on these subjects has been informed by my work with Creative Capital's amazing Professional Development Program, some by my work with Elevator Repair Service Theater, and some by my own experience as a theatermaker, fundraiser and panelist since 1993. I hope you'll read, respond, applaud, take-us-to-task, take us out to lunch, and think about this stuff with us.

Our hope is that CATT becomes a fulcrum for ongoing, productive and rigorous conversation about our field, what we can do to make it better, and what already makes it so great.

Best wishes for a righteous, raucus, revelatory new season.

Appointment

2009-08-09T08:18:00.005-04:00

I'm beginning what I hope will be an ongoing collaborative performance project called Appointment this fall. It's a series of repeatable 12-15 performances works, created in collaboration with artists, students and other folks, for one audience member and one performer (mostly).

Appointment will first be presented at the Prelude Festival here in New York, on October 2nd, and then next spring at the TITAN Theater Academy in Oslo, Norway.

If you'd like to follow the progress of Appointment (or be a part of it yourself), please go to the official Appointment Blog Site. It's still in progress - if you have a thought about how it looks, please drop me a line

Harry

2009-08-08T18:16:00.002-04:00

Not posting for a while because I've been consumed with the arrival of Harold Emmett Landsman. Born July 14, at 3:31AM, weighing in at 8 pounds, 7 ounces. We hope to take him to France for his birthday before he's too old not to think all the celebrating's for him.

He is delicious and amazing. Photo by Maury Landsman. Miniature human by Aaron Landsman and Johanna S. Meyer.

Age appropriate

2009-07-06T17:16:00.001-04:00

When you are 28 and you say you're re-evaluating whether or not you should give up, people ignore you.

At 35 people encourage you to keep at it.

At 40 everyone understands where the question is coming from.

American Journalist and Filmmaker in Iran

2009-06-15T11:01:00.007-04:00

My friend James Longley is a documentary filmmaker working in Tehran. I wrote to check in on him today, and he wrote back with an account of what has been happening for him there.

June 14, 3:51 pm

"About three hours ago I was interviewing people on the street in downtown Tehran with my translator, not far from the Ministry of Interior building.

There were some riot police about 100 meters away at the other end of the street.

A couple people spoke to the camera – one young woman was saying that "The riot police are beating people like animals. The situation here is very bad; we need the UN to come and help with a recount of the votes!"

At about that time a plain-clothes security guy started grabbing my arm, and together with several uniformed police they dragged me and my translator off to the Ministry of Interior building.

I fared much better than my translator, whom they punched and kicked in the groin. They ripped off his ID and snatched away both our cameras. A passing police officer sprayed my translator in the face with pepper spray, although he was already being marched along the pavement by three policemen.

Unfortunately my camera was still recording and the battery was dislodged in the hubbub, destroying the video file of the interview.

As we reached the Ministry of Interior building they separated us and dragged my translator by his arms across the floor and down a flight of stairs; he eventually regained his footing on the second two flights of stairs leading downward to the holding cell, where about twenty people who had already been grabbed off the streets were kneeling on the floor in the darkened room with their hands tied behind their backs.

All during this process my translator was being kicked and sworn at. The police told him how they "would put their dicks in his ass" and how "your mother/sister is a whore" and so on. At one point he was beaten with a belt buckle. At another moment, they beat him with a police truncheon across his back, leaving a nasty welt.

My translator kept on insisting that he was an officially authorized translator working with an American journalist – which is perfectly true.

At this time I was above ground, in the entrance to the ministry, yelling over and over at the police to "Bring me my translator!" It was clear that they didn't intend to beat me – although they may have wanted to – because I was a foreigner.

After a few minutes they relented and sent someone off to retrieve my translator from their holding cell, three floors down in the Ministry of Interior building.

They came into the holding cell and shouted "Where is the translator?!" and then, when he identified himself, they beat him again for "not telling them he was a translator."

An English-speaking riot policeman tried to sweet-talk me, saying that in a riot situation anything can happen. I might have taken him more seriously had a riot actually been taking place when we were arrested. He also asked my translator to convince me not to report what had happened.

Eyewitnesses are reporting that fully-credentialed foreign journalists are similarly being detained all over Tehran today. The deputy head of the Ministry of Guidance just told me on the phone that other journalists have also been beaten, and that the official permissions no longer work. Also, foreign journalist visas are not being extended, so all of those people who were allowed in to cover the elections are now being forced out in the messy aftermath.

All in all, it made me really question what I am doing in this country. It has become impossible to work as a journalist without the risk of physical violence from the government."

James asked me to post this photo, as a way for him illustrate that, at the time they were detained, the scene around them was not a riot.

Smackdown bears results

2009-06-09T11:10:00.001-04:00

An artist named Kahlil Almustafa put the advice some of us gave on the Field's Smackdown panel last month to good use. I'm so happy that what we talked about had a direct impact on him and his working partner. See here: An Honest Conversation About Money

TCG Post-show Exchange

2009-06-07T11:11:00.002-04:00

Morgan v P Pecelli and Andy Horwitz (aka "I'd rather watch the fat kid dance" and "Culturebot") have a couple posts up in response to this year's TCG conference.

http://culturebot.org

http://idratherwatchthefatkiddance.blogspot.com/

I was there for several hours, accepting an award given to ERS for innovation in the field.

Taken together, Morgan and Andy's posts, plus my quick window on the conference can perhaps offer a good measure of several field-wide issues:

1. No one knows quite what to do. Many of the ideas trotted out at the conference seemed dated, but not all of them. And there was so much going on that there's no one person who could really take a complete pulse. It's too easy to be cynical, though. And it's clear we're not there yet.

2. Everyone making work is scared of losing what is most important - funding, audience, risk, buildings, staff, etc. This could be for financial reasons, reasons of larger culture irrelevancy, or other.

3. There is still a huge gap between the way those of us making work outside the confines of the regional or off-Broadway and Broadway worlds think of the process and function of the art form, from the way those inside that particular, teeny tiny beltway think about it.

4. But the parties are beginning to recognize the need to come closer together.

It was a real honor for ERS to get an award. Part of our increased visibility comes from the fact that we've been able to work both within and without more mainstream institutions. We're becoming equally at home at NYTW as we are at PS122 or the Collapsable Hole.

My hope is that the company's success navigating these several worlds can be an example that other large theaters can follow when working with ensembles and vice-versa. As I said at the awards ceremony, somewhere in every city there are a bunch of ambitious, scrappy dorks who could use a hand. If you have a theater space and it is part of a more mainstream establishment in that town, offering those dorky scrappy kids some space, a little bit of dough, some outreach, will make both your lives richer. You'll have new audiences and new ideas about the form; they'll have a chance to fall down a little bit without breaking the bank, pick themselves up again, and make the work sing its own song.

Text from the Smackdown

2009-05-24T08:56:00.003-04:00

Here is what I said in my 'prepared' statement at The Field's Smackdown event last week, as a couple people have asked to see it.

**

"It used to be that the arts were, or seemed to be, an exceptional and broken economy. So many people were making so much money out there while we were taking a loss. It must have just been our fault. But now a lot of systems are in disrepair – education, banking, and health care for instance. So what has changed, and what do we do?

Here are two small things: 1. we address the scarcity model; and we submit the work’s real cost and value.

A few months ago I was at an ART-NY fundraising roundtable. When the subject of funding cuts came up, people started saying, “we gotta learn how to do more with less.” I think that every year since 1993, whether the economy was booming, busting or staying just the same, I have heard someone – an artist, development person, funder, presenter – say that. I can almost hear a kind of relief in it, like crisis mode can keep us from having to risk real failure or real transcendance. So I want to advocate doing less with more. Make fewer, more brilliant shows, don’t put them up until they’re ready, and ask for enough to get them done right.

For presenters and funders, this can be tough. You’ve got all these fabulous artists who want your help. You’ve got a staff who needs a salary. You’ve got grantors or legislators or boards asking you to justify everything in terms of artistic excellence, community engagement, access, education, and diversity, all for $3,200 a year. And no one raises an eyebrow when you say you’re “commissionng” a piece for $5,000 that really costs 70 grand. But until we address this then maybe the system’s functioning just as it should: people are making a lot of art, labor costs are incredibly low-- this is what the market has borne.

So, do we want to try and change the game? And if so, how?

For starters we could make budgets that reflect real cost of the work, including the amount we are all subsidizing the field via dayjobs, credit cards trust funds or partners.

I think that freeing up the truth by doing the numbers right ultimately allows us to advocate in a new way. We can stop relying too heavily on a skewed notion of economic impact that arises out of how much we agree to do for how little.

And then we can start being citizens with allies in other fields that are also asked to do more with less, who are also driven by a mission. Teachers, death row lawyers, journalists, rural doctors, etc.

And then we can start addressing creativity as a core human trait, and the articulated imagination as one of the few things that separates us from other species. "

New Economy "Smackdown" is Smackdone

2009-05-14T08:29:00.002-04:00

I was on a panel that was part of The Field's New Economy Smackdown last night. It was fun and smart and too long, but there's a lot to say. An encouraging thing I'm seeing in discussions like this is that they are including many stakeholders at once - from artists to presenters to funders to journalists, and this is really important, so that none of us is working in a vacuum.

Read about it here.

I think one could go to a panel like this ("what is the new economy? what is the new model? what is broken? what can we do?") in the arts about every day this month. I think it's a good thing. The system for funding and presenting the arts has been busted for a long time so it's great we're all getting out and trying to frame it, deal with it, take responsibility for it and so on.

I will say that I kind of lost my shit with a guy in the audience and I wish I hadn't. Having worked in the arts a long time, I have increasingly lost patience with people who wait until the end of what in this case was a fairly constructive event, and then shoot it down for not being what that person thought the event should be (which in this case was not entirely clear).

At the same time, I let it get under my skin more than I should have, and sort of played into a dynamic that was also counter productive. I think we argued about whether we panelists were spiritually or politically engaged enough with the larger economic crisis, but I can't be entirely sure based on what was said.

I know also that as a radical artist I totally aspire to be middle class, because I think earning the bourgeois trappings by doing wacky unsettling cultural work is highly political, especially if you're from a more marginalized demographic.

Thought for the day: how helpful is it for any one person to tell a group of other people what we "should" or "must" do? Yes it's a rhetorical question. Kind of. I ask because I think I respond more to statements about what IS happening, and what are the consequences. "When we do this, this is the result. What does that mean going forward."

Mother's Day Politiku

2009-05-10T21:45:00.002-04:00

My friend Susanna Speier asked me to write some political haikus for mother's day, which have been posted on her Huffington Post blog.

Please enjoy, Mom.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanna-speier/politiku-for-mothers-day_b_201060.html

Interesting conversation about arts funding...

2009-04-11T12:18:00.002-04:00

I couldn't sleep the other night so posted onto Claudia LaRocco's blog conversation about arts funding. To read what went down, go HERE

Hopefully more conversations like this are going to go on. Will keep you posted about that. Thanks to Claudia, and to Morgan Von Prelle Pecelli, who provided the sourdough starter of substance for the whole thing.

Kansas City

2009-04-02T11:49:00.003-04:00

I just spent a weekend teaching in Kansas City. I go a lot of places to do workshops, often for a day or a weekend at a time; I rarely feel like I know a city or an arts community. Even worse, I rarely feel that curious. As much as I don't approve of positing NYC as the center of American art, I do find myself really happy here.

But Kansas City makes me ache for a small, savvy, rocking, open place. The artists there are fantastic, rigorous, adventurous and intrepid. The houses are cheap and big. The food is great. The city supports the arts.

If you are there, and want to know what's happening - mostly it's visual art that predominates, though theater is making a play, too - go to http://www.charlottestreet.org/. David Hughes has his finger on the pulse.

Doing Less With More

2009-03-01T19:59:00.003-05:00

I was at a meeting of fundraising people recently, who work for small or medium-sized theater companies, and we were talking about the impending funding cuts. And people started tossing around that hackneyed non-profit mantra of "We have to learn to do more with less." And I thought (but was too timid to say): How much less can we do more with? It's like asking an anorexic to cut down on carbs.

We should be doing less with more. If there are five hundred theater companies in New York, and everyone is having trouble filling the house, then there are perhaps too many of us trying to do too much with too little already. The supply is not meeting the demand. And the only way to bring audiences back to the theater (besides giving away tickets) in any meaningful sense is to make work that is unforgettable. And that takes time.

The great thing about small companies and organizations is that we don't have to act like institutions. The ones that are trying to do less (fewer shows per year, say) with more (spending enough on them to get them done right), are the ones that really are thriving: ERS, SoHo Rep, NTUSA The Foundry.

At The Red Fox

2009-02-24T08:11:00.002-05:00

This is a clip of Mark and Lorna, a couple who perform six nights a week at the Red Fox Lounge in Winter Park, FL, near Orlando. I happened to be staying at the Best Western where the Red Fox is located, and got to see them. They have been playing there for 18 years, married 37 years. They are purportedly the basis for the SNL skit "The Culps." They are remarkable. Please visit them in real life.

Ben Cameron's speech at ISPA

2009-02-02T09:40:00.003-05:00

I just stumbled onto this speech, and I think it's worth reading. There's a lot here. Take a breath, get a beverage and block out some time:

http://www.ispa.org/ideas/cameron.html

Here are two tidbits:

1. "We may be in the arts looking at the world—watching our audiences shrink, seeing subscribers decline, standing by as organizations teeter and fall—through the lens of scarcity, when the world—especially the young—are playing in a field of abundance."

2. "Theatre practitioners how report growing audience resistance to encountering any idea not instantly recognizable as one’s own, an increasing polarization in our country, for instance, that led members of the audiences at last year’s Tony winning Alliance Theatre to exit en masse, mid-act, climbing over others, when a character said, “If I had time with George Bush, I’d tell him to share his toys and play nice with others.” For so many, the encounter with the other, with difference, with the new lies at the heart of our missions and purpose: what will it mean for us if we lose this appetite as a society and wish only to encounter the familiar, the known, the already embraced?"

"Even The Nostalgia Was Better Back Then"

2009-01-28T10:54:00.003-05:00

Here is a video of excerpts from some monologues I put together a couple years ago. There's going to be a production of this piece in San Diego, directed by Judy Bauerlein, later this year.

Lisbon

2009-01-28T10:42:00.004-05:00

Douglas Coupland

2009-01-28T10:41:00.001-05:00

I thought this op-ed captures something of now.

Instructions for a day alone in Lisbon

2009-01-15T07:22:00.003-05:00

1. Order what you can neither pronounce nor translate. It's likely it will taste good.

2. Listen to how nice everything sounds on the lips and tongue.

3. Saudade.

4. Go to a record store where you like the sounds coming out the door. Maybe in the Bairro Alto. Ask the clerk, in Portugese ("fala ingles?") if they speak English. If so, ask for recommendations of local music, or his/her favorite music. Say you are a musical omnivore; if "omnivore" doesn't register, then say, "I like everything," in either language.

5. Do things earnestly but with a sense of humor, if possible.

6. Enjoy the fact that the Portugese, "No," sounds like the English "Nao."

7. Read whatever book you are carrying, preferably outside. See how long it takes to finish a chapter.

2009 is out the window

2009-01-01T08:44:00.001-05:00

December, Minneapolis, Matthew Bakkom's new studio

2008-12-23T11:39:00.002-05:00

Holiday Gift Recommendations, created by my peoples

2008-12-09T16:11:00.012-05:00

So, here at thinaar's blog, I'm real proud of my friends and family who have come out with published works of literature and music and stuff in 2008. With that in mind I want to link all you holiday purchasers to these special products, written by mine and yours:

Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism
My mother, Julie Landsman's newest book makes white privilege fun and edifying. 40 years of teaching and learning have gone into this book. Proud doesn't start to describe it.

Sea Won't Take Long
My friend and sometime collaborator T. Griffin and Catherine McRae's newest album full of luscious wordplay, low hummed loneliness and sonic textures that make your hair stand quietly on end.

Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground (Alternative Criminology)
Dr. Greg Snyder (Professor Greggy to his friends) has been working on this book about Graffiti writers for a long time and I've gotten to see him evolve into such a fine writer and thinker I know he will rock the academic world for real this time.

The 99 Cent Only Stores Cookbook: Gourmet Recipes at Discount Prices
Christiane Jory came up with the perfect cookbook for our leaner, meaner times. Please welcome her into your kitchen.

Provocative Posts du Jour

2008-11-10T08:31:00.005-05:00

These two posts gave me pause in a good way, for entirely different reasons.

First:

Steven Horwitz

An explanation by an economist as to why certain kinds of regulation were part of what caused the housing market meltdown. Might be helpful to bypass some of the rhetoric, because it's actually an interesting critique. I've had a bit of an obsessive interest in economics lately. (for really great coverage of the subject, please try Planet Money

Then:

A Mouse Bouche

A blog entry from the incredible Hart Sisters about making a whole pig. At home. In New York City. Includes photos.

How To Kill Yourself And Why, Reading at University Settlement

2008-11-09T10:14:00.003-05:00

That's (l to r) Paul Willis, Emily McDonnell, Jim Himelsbach and Tricia Rodley.

We did a reading of a theater piece of mine at University Settlement on Eldridge Street last night. It's called How To Kill Yourself And Why: An Act in Three Plays. I started it five years ago by interviewing a monk named Bernard Audigier, who's part of a little tiny order of monks called The Little Brothers of Jesus.

The play has been kicking my ass. It started as a talk show, then it was a seance, now it's a collection of collages, which so far works best. What can you say about suicide and religious faith that has not been said? Why would you want to watch a performance about those things? (Feel free to write with answers). I've written bits and pieces over the years and nothing has coalesced. Last night I felt like we were onto something - the deadline pressure of the reading, the incredible actors, and the deft helmsmanship of Paul Willis led me to at least be able to tie together the elements into something you could hear.

Mostly it was the panic: people will see this, in a day, I better do something, now.

I'm in residence at the newly revitalized arts program at University Settlement all year, and we will be doing more readings and stuff with this piece.

My subway stop

2008-11-09T10:13:00.002-05:00

Floyd Bennett Field Dance Hottie

2008-10-22T13:06:00.002-04:00

This is Johanna S. Meyer, aka my better half, after losing a brief battle with an airplane. She was fighting the plane while rehearsing for Dancing in the Streets' Dance Charette program at Floyd Bennett Field.

Studio 360 Story about me and Free Theater of Belarus

2008-10-14T19:28:00.006-04:00

A few months ago I went to Minsk to work with Free Theater of Belarus. This is the radio story that aired this week on the NPR show Studio 360 about the trip and the group.

Princess Kay of the Milky Way, 2008

2008-08-24T16:35:00.002-04:00

I grew up in Minnesota, which hosts the nation's second largest state fair, behind Texas. Each year there is a beauty and talent contest featuring young women from each county in the state. The finalists have their likenesses carved in 90 pound blocks of butter. In front of the whole Dairy building. In previous years the women have been in shoulderless dresses for the entire time they are carved, and often they have been visibly trying not to shiver so the carver can get a clear enough bead on their beauty. This year the Princess got a nice coat.

Full moon, Lake Superior, Lusten, MN

2008-08-21T13:05:00.001-04:00

Union Street Bridge

2008-08-02T12:54:00.002-04:00

Tell Everyone

2008-07-31T23:51:00.000-04:00

Please go see the movie Tell No One, at your local theater.

Artists and gentrification

2008-07-27T08:13:00.004-04:00

I just came back from the Creative Capital annual retreat, where I taught a workshop in professional development for their new grantees. Someone asked me to write down what I said there about the Creative Economy - a great discussion came up about it at our workshop - and so I'll give it a whirl here.

There's been tons of research done to prove that the arts - specifically the non-profit arts that - have a profoundly positive economic impact on cities. Arts activity in a neighborhood makes that neighborhood more appealing to non-arts people for a variety of reasons (safety and hip cache being two), those non-arts people move to the neighborhood, property values go up, and then all of a sudden your roads are being paved more regularly, there's better produce at the grocery store, and you've got some kid with a nose ring pulling Fair Trade capuccinos at your beck and call at the spot on the corner that used to be one of the many chicken places. The Salsa/Merengue jukebox has been replaced by obscure Elliot Smith and De La Soul recordings, the tattoos are different, and there's wifi.

The downside of course is that some or many of the people who were living there before the artists moved in are no longer able to live there because prices have risen too much. Very often those original residence were poorer, often they were of color. Eventually the artists who are renting apartments are also not able to afford to stay. Forward to next neighborhood and repeat.

This is not a new story but I think it might be time for a deeper awareness of the cycle. Gentrification is A) not entirely bad, B) partly brought on by artists, and C) part of what seems to me to be an inevitable cycle in many cities. The question is how to interact with that cycle in the most constructive ways.

A) It's generally good to have safer neighborhoods with more services and better food available. Does it have to come at the cost of the original residents' ability to stay?

B) Artists sometimes see ourselves strictly as victims of gentrification - that we make a neighborhood appealing to yuppies and their dough forces us to find the next not-yet-cool neighborhood. But a lot of artists forget that there were people here before us, that our relationship to the neighborhood impacts the security of their housing, and that we often have choices we don't recognize, both about the work we do and about where we live.

C) It's also important to just say that cities change. Their economies grow or shrink, new populations move in, people in government, business and every other strata make decisions; more importantly, individuals are constantly making choices about what to buy, where to live and how to get ahead, which causes an ongoing ebb and flow to the city that no one of us controls. Saying this change is "good" or "bad" leaps past the fact that the change is inevitable and relatively uncontrollaboe by any one of us.

So: The more we as artists take responsibility for our role - not to beat ourselves up about it, nor champion ourselves - the better neighbors we can be, the better citizens.

I am working with the brilliant Esther Robinson on a project she has begun called ArtHome, which is a first time homebuying program for artists, modeled after similar programs around the country for low-income residents. ArtHome is predicated on the idea that the funding structure for the arts is broken, that artists need to investigate new ways to create stability for themselves long-term, and that artists who buy their homes are often able to create that stability more easily. In addition, those artists often become more integrated into their neighborhoods, and can help shape the path the neighborhood takes, rather than simply feeling at the whim of forces completely beyond our control.

For further reading:

ArtHome

Also Google for yourself: Jane Jacobs
and buy her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Any discussion of city economies needs to start here.

And Richard Florida - The Rise of the Creative Class - a problematic but influential tome on just this subject.

I should also say that I don't own my house, yet, that I have been part of the gentrification process in the East Village, Carroll Gardens, Williamsburg, and now Prospect Lefferts.

New Temp Service For Writers

2008-07-15T12:40:00.003-04:00

I'd like to propose a new kind of temp service for spoiled, lazy writers like myself. The way it would work is that, once the fun part of the creative process was over - the part where you get to feel the thrill of filling a blank page, say, or the joy of writing the last word of a first draft - you'd have this temp service that would finish the job for you. So you'd give the temp service whatever you'd done, and then some notes like, "need character development for Tom in act 1, please fix," or "not enough dramatic tension in second half," or, "need more jokes that are funny." And the temp service would come back to you in a few days with what you meant to write the first time.

2008-07-13T16:28:00.003-04:00

I am always amazed at how tricky it is to write a play, or a performance text, or even to know what it is before it's in front of people.

The other day I got actors and a director in a room to work on a script I've had kicking around called How To Kill Yourself and Why. I workshopped part of it at the UCSB theater lab a couple summers ago, but that time was mostly spent working on how to approach acting in one of my shows. So this time we worked, I took the last three days to write more and edit, and then we're back tomorrow to try out the changes. I am thinking of building this developmental process into everything I do. We'll do some kind of invited reading later this summer.

2008-07-08T08:58:00.004-04:00

A couple of weekends ago, ERS went up to the Orchard Project in Hunter, NY to brainstorm a bit about what kind of new show we might make. There was swimming and also poker, but we did do some work, as evinced above.

Hello and Welcome

2008-07-08T08:56:00.002-04:00

This is where I'm going to post a few things periodically about the work I'm doing, the people I'm knowing, the places I'm going, and so on. Please come back real soon.