Less with more, part 1

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

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

CLICK TO PLAY

Appointment At Prelude

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

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

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

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.