Breaching the Fourth Wall

Many of Broadway’s youngest fans were heartbroken last January when they learned that Rent, the long-running rock opera residing at New York City’s Nederlander Theatre, was scheduled to close on June 1st.  Was the closing date publicized as being earlier than expected simply to spur ticket sales for fans hoping to catch their last glimpse of “Seasons of Love” before the show closed?  Who knows.

Regardless of their intentions, the announcement resulted and in a spike in ticket sales, and (surprise, surprise) producers have extended the run to September 7th.

Don’t’ get me wrong, Rent was a groundbreaking show. But the past tense is critical in this case.  It was groundbreaking in 1995 when it was being developed by a Scarsdale native at the New York Theatre Workshop.   It was even a groundbreaking show when in opened on Broadway in 1996, but twelve years worth of performances, tens of thousands of screaming tweens, and way too many pairs of blue polyester pants later, the show is a cash cow and ready to close.

The closing date announcement may not have been manipulated to increase ticket sales.  Even if it were, I’d have difficulty condemning producers for being good at their job.  But at the same time, Rent’s recent developments only add to my feeling that Broadway is becoming over-commercialized.  Clay Aiken of American Idol fame is now playing Sir Robin in Spamalot, Shrek the musical will be opening later this year, and Disney is spearheading the spread of corporate involvement in New York’s theatre scene.

Broadway is part of show business, and I understand the need to develop shows that are commercially viable, but could producers and audiences alike please remember not to lose sight of the art behind the income?

(3/13 pageflakes) 

Election season is upon us, and although arts are rarely a high priority for candidates when defining their platform.  Even the most significant issues for artists, most notably federal arts funding and unemployment, rarely become a factor in a candidate’s run for office.

Yet despite the limited impact politicians and their policies appear to have on the arts, artists and their work have a rich history of involvement in politics.  At the height of Greek society in Athens, attending plays was mandatory for all citizens and viewing drama was considered essential to maintaining a healthy polis.  In fact, theater was so important to Athenians that annual taxes could be paid in the form of outfitting a war galley or funding the chorus for the annual Dionysian festival.

Attendance is no longer required by the state and producers are lucky if even a fraction of citizens make it to any live performance, let alone one that engages them mentally.  Yet for the few people who do regularly attend live theater, performances are still a testes way to spark conversation amongst an audience and cause them to think critically about their government and society.  Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Jean Anouilh’s version of Antigone, and many other works are written more for their political subtext rather than overt storyline.  Thespians and artists in general take it upon themselves to challenge the public and keep them questioning.

Arts policies are typically an afterthought for politicians running for major national political offices, but the arts remain actively engaged in the political scene.  Any effort to cause a population to think critically about the issues important to them prior to stepping into a voting booth should be encouraged.

One doesn’t get very far in a conversation with a thespian without the course of conversation shifting to the dying art that is theatre.  As much as I love hearing the eulogistic ramblings of an artist who’s been told her medium is no longer financially viable, I can’t help but believe otherwise.

I spent last week in Manhattan, seeing as may shows as possible on a college student budget.  Although I did watch tourist-drawing powerhouses like Rent and Avenue Q, and tried and true revivals like Patti LuPone’s Gypsy, it August: Osage County that restored my faith in American drama and The Great White Way.  A recent transfer to Broadway from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, August follows the dysfunctional falling apart of an Oklahoma family after their patriarch disappears.

One of the few successful collaborative works I’ve seen in a long time, I bordered on giddiness as I witnessed actors superbly acting out Tracy Letts biting script, causing the three and a half hour run time to fly by unbeknownst to audiences. Almost as quotable as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you’ll find yourself torn between outright laughter and cowering from Violet’s drug induced rampages. The set, which called for nine discreet, playable spaces, is beautiful not only for its functionality within the world of the play, but also as a standalone piece of artwork.  The lighting is realistic and yet subtle in its reinforcement of action.

I urge you to go see August if you can make it to New York City by October and discover for yourself that however faint, the pulse of American drama is still beating.  Heavily favored to win this year’s Tony for Best Play, you wont regret the expense of a Broadway ticket.  If you’re a student, don’t forget to flash your ID.  You’ll save a bundle and still get to see full priced quality theatre at the same time.

(2/7 Open Topic) 

I’ve been recently discovering Pageflakes, a customizable website which allows you to keep RSS feeds and widgets in one place.  During my compilation of RSS feeds, I ran across the following useful website.

Live Design is an online magazine which writes about notable events and technology in the live entertainment business.  The latest tools for lighting, audio, automation, staging, pyrotechnics, and rigging are featured and staffing changes at the world’s leading manufacturing and rental companies are included as well.  Designers and engineers are often interviewed about their latest projects and it is a major way universities market their graduate and undergraduate programs to potential students.  Live Design is a useful resource for potential students looking to find a long-term program or professionals who are looking to become certified in specialty or brush up with a master class.

Employment opportunities are listed on the site in addition to educational ones.  To the far right of the main page are several search fields for finding conferences, job openings, shows of interest, and useful online tools for technical theatre folks. Pretty snazzy, eh?

Yet the site’s strength stems from its streamlined and accessible content.  Finding information by subject, popularity, or date is easy and segmented into logical categories.  At the same time, popular or particularly noteworthy articles are posted on the site’s main page, meaning that readers don’t inadvertently miss something newsworthy.

The only setback from the print version of the magazine is the photos. I’m a visua person and love seeing designs and layouts in full page, high resolution spreads. The small images don’t do the original photos or designs justice. Perhaps its publishers need to keep some reason to encourage readers to subscribe to the print magazine as well…

Despite a few nitpicky visual setbacks, Live Design is a site worth bookmarking and keeping tabs on.

Zotero is an online tool which can be used to store bibliographical information about resources found online.  Any researcher’s dream, Zotero can store notes and export bibliographies in any number of formats.  Using Zotero, I created an annotated bibliography on theatrical resources.  One of the entries can be found below:

Wronski, Todd. “Theater in American Higher Education: Respected Discipline or Academic “Poor Cousin”?.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 24.3 (1990): 107-115.

This article examines the place of undergraduate theatre programs and whether or not they are at an equal footing as other academic departments or if they are, as is often complained by theatre academics, the “misunderstood artist” given inferior treatment by university administrations.  Todd Wronski examines the history of theatre as an academic discipline and notes the important distinction between the study of theatre literature and the study of theatre production, which is much newer to the academic scene.  Despite the attitudes of theatre academics that they are treated differently than their cohorts in different disciplines, Wrinski also notes that they achieved equal footing in the 1950s, and that theatre department’s tendency to isolate themselves from “campus politics” is why they feel distanced from institutions.  Theatre administrators and professors must more actively engage in universities as a whole if they are to feel as though they are at equal footing as their associates in other disciplines.

Stage management is ultimately about the clear communication of important information to a wide range of people. One of the ways a stage manager facilitates her job is to assemble a callboard, a bulletin board of pertinent information for anyone involved with the show. It includes the staples like rehearsal schedules and emergency information, but also has useful lists like local restaurants that deliver and the nearest acupuncturist. The stage manager maintains the board throughout rehearsals and the run of the show, always insuring that it is updated and organized. Nothing is more satisfying than stepping away from a beautiful mosaic of brochures, printouts, and pushpins perfectly aligned, knowing no one can ever plead ignorance when al pertinent information is cleanly displayed.

With my history of stage management, it is little surprise that I was swept off my feet when I was introduced to the callboard’s digital sibling, Pageflakes. Finally, a site that allows me to organize my frequently visited websites and resources in one place! My excitement nearly rivaled its level at the release of Sharpie’s silver colored marker.

The additions to my Pageflakes began with RSS feeds, allowing me to view headlines from sites I regularly visit on one page. I began to think about which sites I regularly visit for general theater news, and added the first flake to my page, the theatre section of the New York Times. As someone who grew up living thirty miles outside of the Big Apple, I might be a bit biased about the importance of the publication, but as the home of Ben Brantley’s reviews and any updates about the Great White Way, it is a must read for anyone in the industry. Soon to follow was Playbill.com, made famous by its Broadway programs, which covers theater news on a national scale. Honing in on the technical side of theatre and live events, Live Design quickly became a flake as well. Live Design is the live production standard for news on notable designers, projects, and product releases.

Deviating away from general theater and live entertainment production news, I also found a series of blogs about arts administration, their issues, and how those issues affect productions as whole. Using an anything flake, I quickly created another RSS subheading for arts admin and added Theatre and Entertainment Law, Butts in the Seats, Arts Marketing, and Ghost Light.

My last column of RSS feeds is dedicated to the other primary type of live events in the entertainment visit: concerts. Just as much work for production folks comes from live concerts as from straight theatre, and it is a sector of live entertainment that one would be foolish to ignore. As such, I’ve included three major news sources for live musical acts: Pollstar, the Mix, and Live Music Blog. All three, especially Pollstar, are bibles of information checked by artists, promoters, producers, and venues alike.

Having added RSS feeds of my most frequented sites to one page, I created another page for searches and bookmarks. A search of Pageflakes and blogs is preloaded on this page to search for a number of tags related to live event production. Adding to the convenience of having all of my information in one place, I also uploaded my Diigo bookmarks into its own flake.

As if my own bookmarks weren’t enough, my social bookmarking soul mate’s bookmarks also make an appearance in my Pageflakes. My soul mate is UTTheatre, a production aficionado from Tennessee. Although there are no unique gems among his bookmarks, he’s developed a comprehensive index of online sites related to theatre technology including manufacturers websites, user product reviews, rental houses, and humor. Tapping into UTTheatre’s bookmarks and adding them to my Pageflakes saved me thee effort of compiling these sites myself.

As a fun little addition to the search/bookmarks page, I also added a photo box which features images tagged stage, concert, or performance. Much of live entertainment is about composition and design, and viewing photos of different performances can only help to inspire.

Though RSS feeds, bookmarks, and pageflakes stirred the organizational excitement of the part of me that stage manages, an online tool called Zotero created the same reaction in my inner student. Designed to help keep track of online resources (and generate bibliographies!), it prevents a lot of the backtracking that occur in online research. My final Pageflakes page is dedicated to the resources I found and then tracked using Zotero. My favorite find was an archive of videotaped theatrical productions, called Theatre in Video. Most research materials for theatre either are text-based or in the form of an overpriced ticket. Theatre in Video is a comprehensive online alternative to Lincoln Center’s video archives, which need to be viewed at their facility in New York. On the complete other end of the spectrum, I found full ebook on the implementation of theatrical technology in Shakespearean England. Too cool! On a slightly less optimistic note, the final two articles included on my Pageflake, “Theatre Education” and “Theatre in American Higher Education” both discuss the state of undergraduate theatrical education and what steps administrators need to take in order to improve their programs.

The content of my Pageflakes is about as varied as the ways in which I am involved in live entertainment. These sites are important to the student and the practitioner that I am and hope to continue to be. For the moment, I’ll be content to the step back and admire the ability of an online site to aid me in streamlining the information I view online most frequently, and I don’t doubt that my Pageflakes will see additions in the months to come.

Half the fun of surfing the web and interact with others online is the ability to play detective (or stalker, if taken to the extreme) by piecing together bits of information to form the identity of someone who is otherwise defined only by username.

While exploring the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, one such user became the subject of one of these puzzles. I’d stumbled across UTTheatre while looking through sites on stagecraft and theater production and, after scanning through the topics that he tagged, discovered that his tagging practices lined up beautifully with my interests.

What do I know about UTTheatre directly? Not much. There is little user information directly listed, but I can infer a great deal from which sites he tags. His most popular tag is theatre, followed by entertainment, and stage. Yet what separates him from many of the amateur theatre practitioners online is he is also a well versed in professional theatre demonstrated by his inclusion of more sophisticated tags like LORT (League of Regional Theatres), AEA/Equity (the actors and stage manager’s union), and DMX (a command protocol for theatrical equipment). Though most of his tagging is related to stage production, he has ties to Tennessee, also suggested by the University of Tennessee username, and enjoys sports.

UTTheatre does a lot of tagging (over 300 separate sites!) and is diligent about posting comments for each, although many of his comments do not include much beyond the name of the page. Despite the lack of commenting, his bookmarks make a great index of online resources for major theatrical manufacturers and suppliers as well as general information about what is going on in the industry.

My primary complaint about UTTheatre’s tags is they could be better organized. For all of the well-tagged resources listed, the basic lists and cloud viewing options do not do the content justice. That being said, for virtually every subdivision of technical theatre, UTTheatre has a tag and several sites listed.

Blog readers will not find anything truly out of the ordinary by searching through UTTheatre’s delicious profile, but it is a great launch pad for anyone looking for information on different aspects of live event production that has not already established an extensive database of their own online resources. From the office supply and organization needs of a stage manager to the gadgets and tools of the stagehand, UTTheatre’s page makes a great starting point for anyone interested in staging live events.
Half the fun of surfing the web and interact with others online is the ability to play detective (or stalker, if taken to the extreme) by piecing together bits of information to form the identity of someone who is otherwise defined only by username.

While exploring the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, one such user became the subject of one of these puzzles. I’d stumbled across UTTheatre while looking through sites on stagecraft and theater production and, after scanning through the topics that he tagged, discovered that his tagging practices lined up beautifully with my interests.

What do I know about UTTheatre directly? Not much. There is little user information directly listed, but I can infer a great deal from which sites he tags. His most popular tag is theatre, followed by entertainment, and stage. Yet what separates him from many of the amateur theatre practitioners online is he is also a well versed in professional theatre demonstrated by his inclusion of more sophisticated tags like LORT (League of Regional Theatres), AEA/Equity (the actors and stage manager’s union), and DMX (a command protocol for theatrical equipment). Though most of his tagging is related to stage production, he has ties to Tennessee, also suggested by the University of Tennessee username, and enjoys sports.

UTTheatre does a lot of tagging (over 300 separate sites!) and is diligent about posting comments for each, although many of his comments do not include much beyond the name of the page. Despite the lack of commenting, his bookmarks make a great index of online resources for major theatrical manufacturers and suppliers as well as general information about what is going on in the industry.

My primary complaint about UTTheatre’s tags is they could be better organized. For all of the well-tagged resources listed, the basic lists and cloud viewing options do not do the content justice. That being said, for virtually every subdivision of technical theatre, UTTheatre has a tag and several sites listed.

Blog readers will not find anything truly out of the ordinary by searching through UTTheatre’s delicious profile, but it is a great launch pad for anyone looking for information on different aspects of live event production that has not already established an extensive database of their own online resources. From the office supply and organization needs of a stage manager to the gadgets and tools of the stagehand, UTTheatre’s page makes a great starting point for anyone interested in staging live events.