Friday, July 16, 2010

"It's the community, stupid."

(NOTE: This is in response to a post on the Theatre Bay Area Facebook page titled "Theatre, Community and Mission." Also, very glad TBA posted this and is actively working to engage its members on this subject.)

Ever hear that phrase, "It's about the work"? I certainly have. In classes mostly but also frequently in a professional context. "It's about the work." It bugs me just to type it. Because it's wrong. Theater is not about the work, inherently. It's about the community.

In fact, creating community is the number one function a theater should fulfill. That's how it started after all, right? All those crazy Greeks getting together for a festival of wine and fake weiners and plays and parties and it was all to foster community, more or less. Audiences got to blow off steam, artists got to perform their work and local businesses benefited from a high volume of drunks making impulse buys trafficking by their merchant stands.

Really, it hasn't changed much at all. I'll use PianoFight and the theater we manage with Combined Artform, Off-Market, as an example. We've engaged audiences with innovative and relatively unique show formats like ShortLived (an audience-judged playwriting competition), the FORKING! series by Daniel Heath (fully scripted plays in which the audience votes on how the plot will proceed) and Throw Rotten Veggies at the Actors Nights (pretty self explanatory). By handing over a certain level of control of the content we produce, audiences unwittingly invest in work to come - everyone who voted for the winning play in ShortLived won't come to see the full-length by that writer, but everyone who voted for that piece is definitely more likely to see it than if it were a random full-length by someone they'd never heard of. We also told everyone it was fine to bring their own beer into a show and people generally like that casualness, and of course, the beer.

PianoFight and Off-Market have managed to engage artists by keeping a low access point to having work produced. For example, renting out Studio 250 at Off-Market is only $250 for a Friday or Saturday night (contact Dan Williams, our Executive Director, at dan@pianofight.com for rental inquires), and Off-Market frequently runs co-productions with artists or companies to lower the cost on their end ("Eat, Pray, Laugh!" - "I Heart Hamas" - "City Solo"). With shows like ShortLived, PianoFight has allowed anyone and everyone to submit scripts which are all read by a 6 person directing team. We've focused entirely on new work by locals and by the good fortune of managing a venue, have had the opportunity to produce TONS of those local artists: all the ShortLived playwrights (112 and counting just for that show); the rotating City Solo performers; comics and musicians in Monday Night ForePlays; groups in from LA and New York and Ireland and Denver; bands from late night rock shows etc. By providing local artists an accessible platform on which they can display their work, they also unwittingly invest in the company/space because if the company disappears, so does that opportunity to perform. Also, we put a few cases of Bud in the backstage fridge which we think actors enjoy.

And that last segment of the community, the physical neighborhood, which i really didn't understand until operating a venue. When you've got a large group of young artists who all spend an inordinate amount of time in a given location for rehearsals and performances etc, they tend to need to do things like eat burritos, drink coffee and blow off steam. What this leads to are things like helping turn a local and, as of three years ago a relatively sleepy dive bar, the Tempest, into a little hot spot; getting "fiscally sponsored" by Sonoma Liquors on 6th street (they cut us a deal on beer cause we buy so much and occasionally give us fitted Giants caps for no apparent reason); buying sodas and waters from Boing's market down the street and getting change for our concessions till from him even when we don't actually buy anything; eating Chicos/Tulan/Cancun/Miss Saigon/Mo's/Latte-Express-7-Flavors-Coffee-Vietnamese-Sandwiches all the freaking time; masturbating at that adult video store - ... er, NOT masturbating at that adult video store ... But also recommending all those businesses to the audience we have built over the years and seeing that audience take us up on our recommendation.

What I've learned is that the trick in all of it is engaging each segment of the community on a meaningful level. That's why the phrase, "It's about the work," is misguided. You can't just develop the art in a vacuum. It must relate to the audience who will see it and the neighborhood from which it comes. Those crazy Greeks weren't writing about the heroic stands of the Persian army under Darius because it would never fly. They wrote plays which mattered to Greeks, with Greek heroes, in a Greek context. So regarding the question, "What is theater's role in community?" The answer is simple. Theater's role in the community is to help create it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

What saying "it's about the work" should mean, is:

"it's about the product"

Which is really just another way of saying:

"It's about the audience"

or at least it should be.

word,

-t

Carl Benson said...

Tore,

Yeah, at a certain point you get into debating semantics. I don't think I explicitly stated it in the post because despite my rigorous California public school education I never learned to write thesis statements in essays, but it's basically this:

The community can be broken into three basic categories: the artists, the audience, and the physical neighborhood in which you perform. All three of these are equally important, and a theater's job is to engage with each on a meaningful level. If one is neglected, it's impossible to create/shape/engage with a vibrant and sustainable community.

What I'm inexpertly trying to say is that in my mind, at it's most basic level, theater is a way to push people to engage with other people, in the same room, at the same time, and have a collective experience. In a broader sense, theater's reason for existing is to foster societal engagement. And I think the only way to do that is place equal importance on the art, audience and location - the community.

Anonymous said...

Totally agree.

I just use/talk about "the work" a lot because of my nerd crush on playwrights.

So I was just seeking to stick up for that phrase a touch.

You douche,

Tore

(And you of course know I say douche as a term of endearment. You douche)

Anonymous said...

I agree with everything "Carl" said (I have to, or he'll stop comping me and giving me beer), except for this: to say it's about community and not about the work is like saying it's all about the chicken and not the egg--or the other way around. You can't separate the two.

But it sure as hell starts with community; or, to put it another way, the work is of the community and for the community. Otherwise, what you have on stage is irrelevant (except maybe to Septuagenarians paying $100 per seat at certain, um, large theaters).

The audience is the community--or a slice of the community, anyway--and the audience is genius. Any playwright worth his/her salt knows his/her audience, writes for that audience and so, by extension, for the community.

I wrote a play called "The Position" (for a local douche-bag theater co. whose name escapes me at the moment....). The play was about the future: anxiety about the future and hope for the future. Specifically, it dealt with joblessness in kind of an extreme setting.

I wrote on this topic 'cause I spent a lot of time around this particular theater, its audience and the community. I thought it would touch a nerve, speak to people and be relevant. (Whether or not it did isn't for me to say; but I will say we had good ticket sales and (mostly) enthusiastic audiences.)

The point is the work came out of the community. The two can't be separated. I think Carl and the ancient Greeks would agree.

Just wanted to give a shout-out for the work 'cause, you know, it is part of the equation.

But when it's ALL about the work, there is a sort of fetishizing that happens. The work gets decoupled from the community and, so, the audience. We've all been to these plays: you pay too much for them and sit through them thinking, "I am bored crapless, but I'm going to endure this because it's supposed to be Art with a capital A." (Don't get me wrong; such plays--the ones by dead white guys, anyway--are part of the canon and I'm glad they're still being produced and I'm glad people are still paying good money to see them. They do, though, present a challenge to directors who have to figure out how to continue to make them relevant.)

Oh, and, Tore: keep up your nerd crush on playwrights, big guy.

(And, yes, douche-bag is a term of endearment.)

-Billy B.

Anonymous said...

(I tried posting my comment, but it was so verbose it got dinged. So I'm posting it in 2 parts.)

I agree with everything "Carl" said (I have to, or he'll stop comping me and giving me beer), except for this: to say it's about community and not about the work is like saying it's all about the chicken and not the egg--or the other way around. You can't separate the two.

But it sure as hell starts with community; or, to put it another way, the work is of the community and for the community. Otherwise, what you have on stage is irrelevant (except maybe to Septuagenarians paying $100 per seat at certain, um, large theaters).

The audience is the community--or a slice of the community, anyway--and the audience is genius. Any playwright worth his/her salt knows his/her audience, writes for that audience and so, by extension, for the community.

I wrote a play called "The Position" (for a local douche-bag theater co. whose name escapes me at the moment....). The play was about the future: anxiety about the future and hope for the future. Specifically, it dealt with joblessness in kind of an extreme setting.

I wrote on this topic 'cause I spent a lot of time around this particular theater, its audience and the community. I thought it would touch a nerve, speak to people and be relevant. (Whether or not it did isn't for me to say; but I will say we had good ticket sales and (mostly) enthusiastic audiences.)

CONTINUED...

Anonymous said...

...CONTINUED

The point is the work came out of the community. The two can't be separated. I think Carl and the ancient Greeks would agree.

Just wanted to give a shout-out for the work 'cause, you know, it is part of the equation.

But when it's ALL about the work, there is a sort of fetishizing that happens. The work gets decoupled from the community and, so, the audience. We've all been to these plays: you pay too much for them and sit through them thinking, "I am bored crapless, but I'm going to endure this because it's supposed to be Art with a capital A." (Don't get me wrong; such plays--the ones by dead white guys, anyway--are part of the canon and I'm glad they're still being produced and I'm glad people are still paying good money to see them. They do, though, present a challenge to directors who have to figure out how to continue to make them relevant.)

Oh, and, Tore: keep up your nerd crush on playwrights, big guy.

(And, yes, douche-bag is a term of endearment.)

-Billy B.

tim said...

How come Bill gets beer? I want beer. Who do you gotta call a douche around here to get a beer?

Carl Benson said...

Thanks for chiming in here guys!

Tore: Thank you?

Bill: Agreed, work is definitely part of the equation. Also, who gave you a free beer!?!?!

Tim: I'll send a memo on that beer situation.

Anonymous said...

You gave me free beer!... All right, it was only once; but it was one of the highlights of my life.

BB