Lamp Life

I’m sorry, but i still don’t understand why this musical exists. From the moment I saw it was coming I didn’t get it. Having now seen a preview of it I’m even more baffled. Not only is it in no way unique as a story, but the talent is less and they decided to set it in the 1970s’ disco days. Why? The only useful purpose that held was to add some musical numbers of comic relief that had little or nothing to do with the main plot… The goons seducing nuns? The goons dressing ridiculous… why? Isn’t the story about faith and turning a new leaf? So you waste my time with cliché and shtick silliness that is irrelevant to that story?

The characters are also single dimensional, they have little to no arc, and by the time there is a hint of one it’s too late, I stopped caring. Not that I need arc to be happy with a character, but a conventional linear theater piece like this is dead in the water without it.

Oh, and the last song is called mirror ball and EVERY other line is about a mirror ball and THERE IS NO MIRROR BALL. I think that’s indicative. Sure everything else is shiny like a mirror ball… so what? Are we trying to subvert the audience’s expectations here? Cause nothing else does so there isn’t integrity to this assumption.

The set is crowded into the space and it always feels like the actors are about to fall off the stage. The choreography is sort of boring, but it’s hard to tell if this was anyone’s fault or that the actors were trying not to hit each other on the crowded stage.

Ultimately it needs work; there is something to the whole thing that works. The movie was good, not like a great cinematic effort, but funny and good and worth the money I remember spending on it (lest we forget the sequel). If they just did a staged version of that musical it would have been better… even with the changed up songbook with disco songs instead of oldies doo-wop style tunes. But the schlock factor kills it.

I’d say rent the movie for $1.50 and call it a night.

Culture Imperialism is alive and well at the Fowler. That seems a little harsh. It’s not evil or anything, just more of the same western focus on fetishized objects. I went to the opening of the new exhibit at the Fowler museum Saturday Night, The Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World. I just copied and pasted that title into this post and it is even more interesting in the presupposition that there is a consideration of the modern presence of the Tuareg.

The exhibit is in line with an issue of National Geographic. Pretty pictures of the Tuareg, the camel riding, blue turban-wearing semi-nomads of the Sahara, but the focus is on the arts and crafts of the people. It is interesting. I previously knew nothing about the Tuareg beyond the VW connection. They remind me of the Ilkhanids of the Asia continent. I assume that his has a lot to do with the nomadic life style and the cultural concentration of portable and useful tradable goods in the visual arts. Also they are a marginally Muslim culture, so there is that connection as well. But this isn’t at all explored and I think that’s the issue I have with it.

If the Fowler is a anthropological museum should there be a comparative analysis of any kind? I don’t know, I don’t work there and I’m not an anthropologist beyond my attachment to Art history. I felt like I was suppose to look at some nice leatherwork and think about how quaintly adorned these people must be. There was minimal focus on the idea of these Nomads in the modern world. One display contained the recreation of the workshop of a now stationary Nigerian Tuareg family and had video playing on a mid 1980s color TV (oh look, poverty) with rabbit ears showing the artisan at work. There were a couple of videos towards the exit too, which were arranged it what I presume to be something evoking the conventional seating of the Tuareg. For those of us used to the gallery set up of the United States and not sitting on the floor, the TVs were inconveniently out of place in opposition to the display of everything else. And with the blue haired crowd, I can’t imagine they were willing to get down there, like it was an empty gesture. The big connection to the modern world, and what I see as a connection to the patrons I saw, was the entry hallway into the exhibit that focused on the appropriation of Tuareg motifs into Hermes accessories and fashion. They went so far as to put up mirrors in this area, like I was supposed to see in my garments how my clothing was connected. Beyond not really having that connection, I didn’t understand why this was at the front of the exhibition before I’ve seen any items that I’m supposed to understand were appropriated.

Also it felt like it continued throughout the other two galleries. One had an exhibit called Intersections that was all about the thematic intersection of indigenous art and there was no representation, as far as I noticed, of European or American folk art beyond some contemporary Latin American work. The other had an exhibition of silver from the collection. So next to one another were equal sized exhibitions of decorative luxury Eurocentric goods next to the folk art of everywhere else.

Perhaps I am being hypercritical, as I think about the Menil collection and the Witness gallery with its collection of artifacts the responded to western culture and the personal collections of the western artists in the collection show an effort towards declaring reciprocal influence. They too have galleries of antiquities and culturally objects in a similar fashion, but there is a clear bridge between the collections, an idea that they are related, not separate things.

Anyway, the objects are interesting, but the set up does feel like its not for a contemporary audience, a world view, decentralized culture audience. It’s playing to the patrons. I’m sure that is a necessary evil, but it feels insensitive. And when those patrons are rude, rich people like the ones that seemed to very offended by my presence I am reluctant to participate.

This past weekend I went to LDI in Las Vegas. It is a trade show. It is a very large one and it sort of works as the annual social gathering of the lighting business. It switches between Vegas and Orlando. I was sponsored by ETC or Entertainment Theater Control. They flew me out, put me up, fed me, took care of cabs and gave me an all access pass to the show. It was pretty sweet. I had the opportunity to meet many many people who will hopefully be paths to employment. ETC introduced a lot of them. I also lost my phone in a the parking lot to a restaurant while sloppy drunk. I didn’t realize it until I was entirely elsewhere in a cab. I did remember where and I tried to track it down. I didn’t get the message that it had been found until after I bought a new phone. I needed a new one anyway… wanted one… Well anyway this one has Bluetooth. That is only important because it allows me to transfer data to and from my cell and computer. I can back up my entire address book. I’ve been looking forward to that feature for years. I know one could do it before, but this is my first phone to have the ability.

At the show I saw many a thing. Many a LED fixture and more moving lights that I can’t tell apart. I did get extended demos on the boards of interest to me. The EOS and the Congo are the new ones from ETC. The EOS is like a next generation obsession. It’s not an obsession, that’s been engrained, but ultimately it’s like they rebuilt the obsession like Mac rebuilt their OS for version 10. It’s prettier, easier to use, and more fully featured. The Congo I had heard odd things about. It was explained well to me why it exists in the way it does. In the US it seems like a radical departure from ETC gear, but with the market they have in Europe its like old hat. I can see it’s benefit really. I’d be interested in using or programming one myself. The way I see it the EOS is like a spreadsheet and the Congo like a database. In EOS you track information in a chart in a linear way so that each cue relates to the ones around it. The Congo is a table of cue information that you query into an order in response to a show. The syntax is funny, but you’d get over it. You could also use it like a spreadsheet, but it would be a little odd. I also saw the Grand MA, which, come on, opens itself up to Mocking in name, but I’m much more comfortable with the prospect of using it in December for Big Baby.

Anyway, that’s where I was this weekend. I’m back now. I had three production meetings and a design meeting today. I should really step it up. I’m being sort of lazy these days. There is something about calarts that just makes me want to get out, some layer of dealing with something that I’m not quite certain on. I’m not sure if I’m excited about producing silver circus or not, it feels a little rag tag right now. I have already imagined the big baby plot and I just feel like I’m moving along at a pace that’s quite easy. I don’t know who might read this, so I don’t like saying that. The thing is, and I’ve felt this since I got there, is that I’m used to a certain academic setting. At Rice I had Studio, Rigorous Liberal Arts Classes, Producing, Designing and working full time in some level of balance. That seemed overwhelming sometimes, but now that it’s over trying to balance one show at a time between lighting and producing seems pretty easy. But I do like the environment and most days I adore being around, but sometimes, I just don’t know.

LDI had some factor in my feelings of “Why am I spending all this money”. I was offered a job at Roscoe and possibilities elsewhere. I have a strong background to go into Architectural Lighting or Theater Consulting, if not ideal at this point. So maybe I’m just anxious to get out.

Anyway, I’m going to do some actual work now.

I googled myself recently, trying to get my own website (www.toasterlab.com) to show up and I found the following link:

http://the.ricethresher.org/ae/2005/04/15/recklessplaybrowncollege

I don’t know what strikes me as odder, the fact that I was working on a show at Brown, running a Sound Board or that at the time I was doing it I was working full time in Los Angeles and designing the Greenway Court Production of “Permanent Collection”.

I’d really like to know how my name was inserted into the article there… as though I’ve been come some filler name for Theatrical positions at Rice.

Community theatre has long been something that was considered “less than” in the eyes of the professional theater artist. The common idea of community theater is that of a bunch of hobbyists slapping together another standard musical with poor technical work. When I worked at Stages Repertory in Houston there was someone who referred to it as River Oaks Community Theater in conversation as it was in the River Oaks part of town and it wasn’t the Alley. I think that the word community in theater needs to be re-examined.

This past Tuesday evening my fiancée and myself went to see the Culture Clash show at the Taper “Water and Power”. I had been long looking forward to this show, having been a long time fan of Culture Clash since watching their long gone variety sketch show on fox when it led into the Simpsons. Having since veered into the professional theater world and having studied Culture Clash academically I was excited to see their work live. And I really thought it was fantastic.

However It did get me thinking to many a conversation I’ve had about my belief in the death of regional theater. The LORT movement started quite publicly as a way to bring out of New York. It was envisioned as a network of theatres that brought theater out from the east coast and helped to develop new work from local artists as well as testing the waters before things went in the opposite direction.

But, New York isn’t St. Paul and it definitely is not Los Angeles. It is it’s own thing with it’s own culture and a population more than twice that of New Zealand. Los Angeles is also it’s own thing with it’s own culture as well. We have different sensibilities and as someone who spent a lot of time back and forth as a child this is very clear to me.

So if the culture is so different, if we aren’t just on opposite coasts but have opposing cultural paradigms from our outdoor activity to economic base, should our theater be the same? If plays are about people and relationships at some level irregardless of narrative, and we have a different approach to out lives and how we interact with others how can a play from New York have as much resonance here as it would there.

I’m not saying that the pieces won’t work here, sometimes they do and other times they don’t, but it seems to me to be an important thing to point out. For instance, look at this past year’s CTG season. Michael Ritchie’s first season started with Dead End, a long archaic musical that was essentially a remount from a Williamstown production under his helm years back. It was awful. It is about life on the east river in the 1930s. There is little relation to the Los Angeles mind. That specific culture is not as relevant, it becomes a pageant and not a story. The Cherry Orchard was similar, it was actors posturing, it was a show, but it was not relevant.

This isn’t to say it can’t work, but it just it harder. Doing Ibsen or Shakespeare is not hard innately I believe, but making that leap into getting the audience to go along with you is harder because of cultural distance. The Elizabethan English mind is no contemporary Angelino. But it can work given you make that leap.

Back in reference to the CTG season at the Taper, the first thing I was really compelled by this season was this recent production of “Water and Power”. It takes place in Los Angeles and is specific to Los Angeles. And if you want someone to go to the theatre that typically does not then you’re going to need to make it relevant to him or her. Permanent Collection was successful it pulling in a more diverse crowd of new theater goers not because it was good, there was that, but because it had something to do with it’s audience, it wasn’t a vehicle for a star to get their stage cred.

You may be thinking, well most of August Wilson’s work takes place in Pittsburgh and it works in other places. That’s because it’s about the black experience and it’s set in Pittsburgh. It isn’t about Pittsburgh. But The Cherry Orchard is about pre revolutionary Russian land based class wars and the dynamic alteration of the relationships between people that resulted… you have got to find something that brings it back to now. The most successful production to my mind of it was the Williamstown season of 2004 where Ritchie was leaving and a new theater was being built. That clicked, the change in control, the repurposing, loaded memories being physically altered in the name of progress. But when we see it in Los Angeles? It’s about Annette Benning being on stage. Without Walls was about Laurence Fishbourne being on stage, I couldn’t tell you anything about it really except for it’s lukewarm reception.

It is about relevance to your community. This is what I think is the key. How does this respond to ideas and issues of those people around me, ultimately the people coming to see this piece, who buy the tickets? How do I make this relevant to them so that the extra dough they shell out over Snakes on a Plane is worthwhile? They can see movie stars in greater detail on screen. Putting them onstage is novel for a few lines, but then the content needs to be there. And this is hurting smaller theaters.

Here in Los Angeles there must be hundreds of small theater companies enabled by the 99-seat plan. What I’ve noticed about them though is that their programming does not justify their numbers. How many companies a season can do the same play until it’s time to move on? There were 5 productions of “How I learned to Drive” my first full year back since college, and a similar number of productions of The Shape of Things. Why? Part of the problem is that the companies do not talk; they just do what seems edgy enough, but will get people in. But they are all trying to get the CTG subscriber crowd it seems. They don’t offer anything different (most of the time) from the big guys, unless you can qualify that as saying the production quality is not as high. There is no respect for resources; just blowing it all on something that will fill seats with the audience that already goes to the theater. It’s why the majority of the 99 seat audiences are part of the 99 seat productions.

It is my belief that it is a lack of response to the community. They are trying to cast a large net to get in 99 people a night or less. That seems manageable if the taper can sell out a run and it has 300 seats with more shows. A smaller theater, without much parking, without the big advertising dollars for print, radio and mailings, can’t affect this audience effectively, not consistently. What it can do though is become part of its community. These struggling companies turn to the small theatre community when rent goes up and they are threatened with losing their space, or when they need things, but what about the people that live around them? Stages in Houston is in what is now a Historic Landmark that was saved from repurposing to condos by the community of people involved in the theatre. A bigger audience won’t save your space; tickets barely cover production costs if at all. You need the community to have a feeling of necessity that you’re there and to get that you have to give them something specific to them, not a new play from off Broadway for it’s west coast premier, that’s marketing talk for the dissemination of culture from somewhere else.

So why do I feel most engaged by “Water and Power”? Because it’s the first thing I saw that had anything to do with me. Cherry Orchard was a bore. iWitness was about a situation that I can’t imagine being in and I got it very quickly. Without Walls I didn’t bother. The Black Rider I loved but couldn’t see how it would do well in LA. “Water and Power” was about something that I see and interact with everyday and was in tune with my sensibilities more than anything else. It reflected my community of Los Angeles, what has started to be marketed as “The Village of LA”. And is it necessarily the use of Los Angeles as location, I don’t think so, but that framework does allow me to associate with the action. This is as easily accomplished in more abstract no narrative work, it is simply an issue of relevance and “Water and Power” has a very opaque relationship to LA in this use as an example. But if radio is geared towards an audience and advertising is specific, the theatre must be somehow relatable to the local community culture.

Community Theater is important if it reflects the community. In some small Midwestern town it could be about theater hobbyists putting on another West Side Story. It’s people from the community getting together to do something then can get behind. And Los Angeles, or any city /town theater company can learn from this. You must know your audience and play to them and as the we look at the retribalization of society, the implosion of community and the increase of urban density you must become a part of that community or just be another notch on progress’ bed post. If you can’t defend your reason to be in a specific place, no one else can and if your identity doesn’t stem from your surroundings and your desire to do theater (which I maintain as a secular non theistic religion) you are welcoming death into your midst’s.

Tomorrow morning I will be picking up Mr. Richard Foreman at LAX. What to Wear is starting. Rehearsals will begin on the 8th and then it’s off and running for many weeks up until after the semester gets underway.

I’ve been doing the electrician thing for a little while. I was once afraid of heights, but lighting has taken care of that with lifts, ladders and climbing up things to hang focus. I’ve done plenty of climbing up to higher places than OSHA approves without a harness for a few years in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t until last night, when our rental lift wouldn’t charge that I thought about earthquakes in relation to this habit. I’ve spent the last couple of days working at the Cathedral of our Lady of Los Angeles for the Shakespeare Festival of Los Angeles production of TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA in the courtyard and the rig is all trussing. And, we climbed it, cause what are you going to do? It wasn’t particular comfortable, and it took a little longer than we thought it might at first. We got up there and I looked out over the 101 highway and out towards lincoln heights and the Arroyo Seco and I thought, shit, if there were an earthquake we could be in deep shit… or dead. There wasn’t an earthquake AND i refrained from conversing about it until I got down.

In high school my friend Paul and I referred to each other as being super sarcastic. This was when we were so sarcastic, we weren’t being sarcastic.

Recently my fiancee and I discussed the idea that things were becoming post post modern. My preferred example is that when hipsters wear ironic tee shirts or truckers caps it is no longer ironic, but rather because this is what hipster’s wear. People don’t live in lofts because it is an economical alternative to apartments or single family homes anymore, but because it’s a loft and living in a loft is cool. We like open spaces in our homes now, so an extra large studio apartment… ahem…loft, that was converted from an old office building that has been vacant for years, sounds like a good idea. These are examples of post post moderism, things that have gone past being ironic, to just being representative of woever was trying to be funny and ironic before.

In my time at calarts I’ve run into two very good examples of this. First was back in November with the whole Homecoming fiasco. Beyond the slurs, hate language and vandalism of the posters was the inability of most people to get it. We had no intention of having a homecoming as is traditionally thought. The idea stemmed from an idea of super charged unity that traditional homecomings invoke, but beyond that we solely wanted to hang out. But this irony was lost on the student population.

The second example is much more recent. I’ve recently become engaged and since both myself and my now fiancee have been students at CalArts I posted a message about it in a discussion group on MySpace for CalArts students. To attempt at being funny I used the head line “CalArtians buy into Convention”. It was ironic because Marriage is a convention and we at Calarts are also pushed away from conventions. But this was lost on those responding. People either didn’t get it, or were angered by it.

We’re coming into an era of post post moderism where every parody becomes reality over time (The Daily Show and the Colber Report vs. the news media: Steve Colbert speaking at the White Hosue Press core Dinner, Jon Stewart on Crossfire). This time portion of the equation is becoming shorter and shorter.