theaterboy®

Race-Baiting! Political Opportunism! Child Exploitation!

OK, so it's actually just another attempt at guerilla theater-marketing: Charter Theatre honcho Keith Bridges stars (alongside actor-playwright Chris Stezin) in a 7-minute drama about why Charter won't be staging Richard Washer's Quartet, originally announced for the new-play specialists' January-February slot.

Watch (agog) as Bridges explains his emergency back-up plan to his 3-year-old daughter Rosie: "Sweetie, papa has a brilliant idea. He's going to save his theater company by inviting Barack Obama to come see his next play, called Am I Black Enough Yet? Isn't that brilliant?"

Viz:

Choice moment: an "outtake," toward the end, where Bridges tries to get wee Rosie to pimp the Charter website. She's so over it that she won't even wave bye-bye when he finally gives up.

Backstory: Charter lost one of the cast members for Quartet — a play that was already "a tough sell," according to Stezin. (It's not a comedy. It's "a low-key, thoughtful piece," and its musically-inspired structure is anything but orthodox.)

"Bad mojo started to pile up," Stezin says, and with every theater in town having trouble putting butts in seats, a postponement seemed the best thing for Quartet. And as the company's leadership talked about replacements, they realized that Am I Black Enough Yet?, a 2007 hit, "wasn't just our best selling show last season — but our best-selling show ever," Stezin says.

And so, a revival. And, coming down the pipe: More episodes of Charter's serialized YouTube drama. And with any luck, a newly elected special guest and his family in the good seats.

"You can always dream," Stezin says. "We'd love to get the attention of somebody on the Obama campaign."

Theaterboy Stirs, Shakes Off 18 Months of Torpor

So: As you may have heard, things at Theaterboy's chief theater-writing outlet are kinda whack these days.

The odd thing is that the paper's fiscal crisis might actually be creating some opportunities.  It's too early to know whether we'll ever be able to get back to writing full-length reviews of everything -- or even most things.

But we have been asked to think about how we might cover theater on the paper's Web site -- starting with posts on the main blog, City Desk, and eventually maybe aggregating those posts on the theater page.

What kind of posts? Well, some of what Theaterboy used to do here, from backstage stories to funny things we heard in the lobby to on-the-scene bits (filed from the aisle, maybe) on something odd that happened just before intermission.

Also reviewlets, format TBD. (Maybe the First Impressions kinda thing Tboy used to do here; maybe something else.)

Which means? Well, if Tboy is going to be doing that kinda stuff, he's pretty sure he'll cross-post at least some of it here. And there will be things that don't rise to the level of CP-audience ready -- but that might be of interest to the people who probably don't come to this blog anymore.

We'll see ...

Because Tboy's Not Dead, Only Resting ...

... he will sometimes emerge from his cave to share delightful artifacts like this, which was brought to his attention by Luke Burbank, Matt Martinez and the team at NPR's Bryant Park Project:

Gilbert Mead, 1930-2007

From Linda Levy Grossman at the Helen Hayes organization:

Gilbert Dunbar Mead, age 76, philanthropist and retired research scientist, died May 29, 2007 at Washington Home and Hospice of complications following a stroke.  Mr. Mead and his wife Jaylee are noted arts philanthropists, whose recent commitment to Arena Stage marks the largest individual gift ever given to a regional theatre.

Not Is the New Blog

Short and sweet: This is goodbye. At least for a while.

Longer, but still not bitter:

I'm a little burned out.  And so are many of you, I'm guessing, at least if the general reluctance to post in the comments here is any indication.

I'm burned out on blogging in general.  (I don't read most of the blogs I used to; apparently a day job will do that to you.)

I'm burned out on blogging about y'all in particular. (Not that you're not intensely interesting.)

I'm even a tiny bit burned out on theater -- or at least burned out on thinking about it 24/7 -- so I'm going to focus the energy and enthusiasm I do have on the reviews.  As long as the City Paper keeps printing them, anyway.

This may turn out to be only a hiatus -- who knows?  If you're really curious, sign up for the e-mail version. That way you'll get anything I post in the future, without having to remember to check back here.

In the short run, if you're desperately in need of a Theaterboy fix, you can join him for a panel discussion he'll be moderating on May 23rd. It's about Hamlet, god help us, but the Shakespeare Theatre's Michael Kahn and Synetic's Paata Tsikurishvili and Studio's Joy Zinoman are supposed to be participating, so maybe it won't be a complete snooze. I think it's gonna be at the Portrait Gallery, though that may still be in flux.

Meanwhile: Thanks, all of you.  It's been fun. Fun when you got engaged, fun when you got enraged, fun when you confessed in the lobby of the Zinoplex how much you enjoyed Theaterboy and his less-than-reverent approach to Washington theater.

I've been proud of Theaterboy, mischief or no: I was proud when thousands of people from all across the U.S. clicked through from Jim Romenesko's Poynter.org blog to read about L'Affaire Olszewski, and proud when Tboy was the first to confirm first-hand that the Source was in danger of becoming a pool hall. I was proud when I was able to get Wendy Goldberg on the phone on a weekend to talk about the O'Neill scandal that wasn't, quite, and proud when Dramatists Guild president John Weidman called Tboy back in a hurry to parse his evolving reaction to the changing story of Hedy Weiss and that Chicago new-works showcase.

But I was never prouder than when one actor who'd been out of circulation for a while (and who drew a nice notice in the Washington Post when he returned to the D.C. stage recently) wrote that Theaterboy and the fun we've had here was one small part of why he decided to get back in the game. Because behind the snark, behind the teasing, Theaterboy has always been about loving theater -- and I'm guessing that came through for the actor in question.

So again, to all of you, thanks: Thanks for participating, for disagreeing, for ranting and rallying and remembering.

On that note, it seems to me appropriate to sign off by drawing your attention to a message Melinda Whiteman left in the comments this past Friday.  I'm moved, and honored, that she'd come back here to share what she's feeling now, and I wouldn't want those feelings to go unremarked:

Dear Friends and Thespians,

It's been a little over a year since my husband, Bart Whiteman, passed on. Passed on is an ambiguous expression, isn't it? I will say that most days, I feel Bart is so much a part of my life. The days go by, during what has been a most difficult year, and like cream rising to the top, my feelings and memory of Bart are like gold. I loved him very much, for a very long time. I miss him. I miss his humour, his advice, his intelligence...hard to find these days, and his heart.

I miss our mutual love of theatre. In fact, I have many boxes of Source works that one your might be interested in archiving for The Source. Please let me know. You can reach me at: [email protected]

I truly hope The Source is well and strong in its continued innovations, reincarnations, and dedication to quality theatre in Washington, D.C. I wish all well. The excitement of theater and it's importance as a tool for understanding and expression should never be underestimated.

Sometimes, driving in my car, I'll be thinking of Bart, and feeling that he is not here with me; he is at the Source, with a notebook & pencil. In my mind, Bart was a beautiful man; he worked harder than most. Arrogant and stubborn, with a heart of gold, a keen intellect, and great giver to anyone in need. Enigmatic, complex, loving. Funny.

Thank you to theatreboy, for letting me check in once in a while with my thoughts...I really miss Bart.

Melinda Whiteman

Surfacing.

So, I've been busy.  Sorry about that. 

Actually, I've been both busy and exhausted.  The freelance life is a thing full of uncertainties, but one thing that was always sure in my version of it was that the alarm clock never went off before 10 o'clock.  Tboy is by no stretch of the imagination a morning person, so you can imagine his joy at the prospect of a 6:30 wake-up call every day.

But it's been two weeks now -- two weeks plus three unbelievable breaking-news days -- and I thought I'd check back in.

I don't know, to be honest, if I'm gonna have the time and energy to keep Theaterboy going.  Without the coffeeshop-camping I'd gotten used to, there's not really much space in my day for thinking about theater.  Even the reviews are proving to be tough; I've gotten used to having time to order my thoughts, and now there's just not any.  But things will get easier, I expect, as I settle into a routine at NPR.

And I'm settling: I've gotten accustomed enough to the basic job parameters that I was able to bang out the Fresh Air pages pretty quickly today. 

Which was good, because first thing this morning, at an editor's request, I spent a half-hour or so reading the two short plays allegedly written by the Virginia Tech gunman and pulling together an eight-paragraph story on what was in them -- only to learn that higher-ups had decided that we didn't want to go there after all. (The WashPo did go there, if you must know, and in some detail. We wound up simply adding a link at the bottom of this story to the AOL blog that first attributed the playlets to Seung-hui Cho.)

Later in the day, I got a last-minute request to add a few extra audio snippets to the Yahoo-gets-sued story, which I managed to do in time for Robert Siegel to make a reference to them on the air, hooray. (That's called a back-announce, by the way. Look how much Tboy is learning!)

But it was a close thing, because right about the time that request came in, so did the AP news alert telling us that Kitty Carlisle Hart had died.  The Arts desk scrambled, and the ever-helpful Jaya Prasad at Olney got me a photo of Miss Carlisle in performance out there, so that page has a lovely shot of her from her D.C.-area gig last year -- in addition to that extraordinary Eisenstaedt portrait of her with Moss Hart in Times Square.

And that was my day.  How was yourn?

Also in the last two weeks, since some of y'all have asked what exactly my new job entails, I've made this lovely page for one of Mr. Mondello's stories (took me half a damn day to track down that Cinerama graphic), this lovely page for an Alfred Molina interview (note the two, count 'em two, video clips), and this lovely page about a multimedia production of Tristan and Isolde. (Look, Ma: audio, video and photo extras!) And many more pages, of course, but those are a few of the fun ones.

Basically what I do is:  I track down photos, edit 'em, pick the video and audio extras, if any, find both internal links to previous NPR stories and external links to related Web content, make sure the story is properly tagged and categorized. Oh, and, let's not forget, I edit the text, starting usually from the radio script and finding ways either to write around or incorporate the quotes and sounds the reporter uses.  Sometimes that's easy -- but if the reporter, in her voice-over, refers to a sound or a quip or something else from an "actuality," as they're called, it can be quite difficult. You have to find a way to make something the reader can't hear a part of the text story. It's a minor art, and I'm still working on it.

p.s. - You may be wondering why NPR is rendering the Virginia Tech gunman's name as Seung-hui Cho when other outlets are calling him Cho Seung-Hui. If I'm correctly remembering the e-mail explaining the choice, it's because we learned that he himself used the Americanized structure, with the family name "Cho" coming last rather than first, on various official documents.

This is how much I'm glad you're all here.

{{  --------------------------------- this much ------------------------------------ }}

Thank you, everyone who sent such kind notes after Wednesday's post.  My friend's death has made this week such a strange thing: A period of up, energized excitement -- about the new job at NPR, which has been a string of challenges and a lot of fun as I meet new people and figure out how things work -- punctuated by a series of disassociative moments.

Friends gathered, as people do when someone dies--to talk, to tell fond stories and funny stories and stories of mischief and misbehavior, and to listen and to weep. People brought food. Two astonishingly kind people helped take charge of logistics: The funeral is Monday, in the Midwestern state where my friend's family is waiting, devastated.

When I went over to his house Wednesday night, his partner pointed out the most bizarre thing. My friend's cellphone has AOL's mobile IM client on it. And the phone's on the charger at their house.

So every time any of us fire up the iChat, there he is -- present, unaccountably and inaccurately present.

His voice is still there, too, on the outgoing message of his answering machine.

Huh: Technology makes even death more complicated.

There are no words.

I had a phone call today that still, six hours later, feels like a hallucination: One of my oldest friends in D.C. is dead. Suddenly, senselessly.

I sent him an e-mail last night. I don't even know how to think of him as gone.

Today's Random Observation

If, for your road-tripping diversion, you build a smart playlist in iTunes, using the text string "Blue" as a filtering criteria in song titles and naming said playlist "Life in Blue," you wind up listening to a disproportionate amount of Johnny Cash on your way back to D.C. from North Carolina.

That is all.

Dispatch from Humana: Third Eye Blind

In which bliss happens -- in a gay bar -- risks are taken, and a corsage is made of condoms.

Monday, March 26, 1:48 p.m.

My third eye just imploded. I am definitely in some zone of bliss. I just saw Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle.

New Paradise Laboratories is a group from Philly that's been working together for ten years and for two years on this piece. Actors Theatre commissioned playwright Alice Tuan to work with director Whit MacLaughlin and his company on Batch, which is the second in a series on rites of passage and follows Prom, a piece they developed with Minneapolis Children's Theatre.

Batch is performed at The Connection, a gay bar in Louisville. The stage is a raised platform with seats on three sides and four video screens placed on the back wall and behind the seats. It's in a back room, so you walk through the empty drag-show spaces and past bars, between pillars and down a hallway: it's a little eerie. Coming into the back room, you can buy a drink at the bar and find a seat either down on the floor around the stage or at tables which are a few steps higher.

On the screens there's a man walking, looking at you. His image moves from one screen to the next as he circles the space. Hypnotic music is playing. There are two chairs on the platform, which looks somehow like a boxing ring. Gradually, a woman in a red dress rises from a trapdoor and stands on the platform, turning slowly as she watches the audience. One hand is behind her back with her fingers crossed, the other hand is delicately active. She smiles, or not. It's an extension of the moment of being observed and observing back, stretched to a fascinating abstraction.

One by one, rising smoothly (how do they do that??) through the trapdoor, come her five friends, all in red dresses. Except three of them are men. There's a video camera on a small tripod, which films the action onstage, so you are always watching both the live action and what's happening on the screens. The friends start planning a bachelorette party for the bride-to-be, Betsy Competitive. There's bickering, suggestions for themes (pirates?), and an ugly moment when the maid of honor (the biggest, hairiest guy) realizes she's been demoted.

There's movement. Glorious, precise, trust-filled, risky hurling of bodies in a precarious space that took my breath away. It exhilarated me, and made me so sad: The current trend of cost-cutting, ever-shorter rehearsal time means that many actors are lucky if we have three weeks before tech, so we will rarely experience this kind of rigor and consequent richness of expression. These actors clearly love their work: It's impossibly demanding, and they achieve the impossible. Their articulation is so precise: It's as if they are aware of the molecules in the air that are displaced as they move toward and away from each other.

There's language, too, brilliantly veering from the most banal, dumb stuff we all say when we're choosing a stripper for a pre-wedding blowout, to heightened poetry that captures the stuttering of the mind when that stripper shows up and a line is crossed.

There's fabulousness in every sense of the word: myths explored onscreen and onstage, the american taboo of sexuality sliced, diced and cuisinarted, and I didn't even get to the penises. There's one that squirts, several that get ripped off, and a real one that's tenderly shielded onstage while its image is projected on all four screens. Gender-bending to the nth degree, the actors all have boobies and packages and fluidly switch back and forth between the bridal party and the groomsmen.

The Twizzler outfit did not disappoint, neither did Madame Pompadour in her teal thong, nor a blow job involving a microphone. The condom corsage was a stroke of genius. And the goat-hide-chaps-wearing, sparring-partner-helmeted and -gloved satyr gently rubbing his/her horn up and down the bride's particulars floored me: a beautifully articulated vision of myth, porn and intimacy.

Did I mention it's funny? Funny in that "Oh my God I can't believe they just did that but I'm SO glad they did" kind of way. These guys paint a picture of sex, friendship, intimacy and ritual in America that made me laugh, squirm from the truthfulness of their performance, and hope that maybe, just maybe, if theatre artists are doing work like this, we will some day live in a country that isn't fractured by denial. Where a penis apron can be worn with pride.

This show runs here through April 1st. They will remount it in Philadelphia in September, for two weeks. Don't miss it. And someone has to bring it to DC.

Peter Marks does a drive-by ...

... at the tail end of his Meet John Doe review, which Tboy is reading at a coffeeshop near his folks' cabin in Rutherfordton, N.C. (It's pronounced Ruffton, because we're lazy down here. And yes, Tboy is still on vacation, so don't expect much more this week.)

Still: Tboy couldn't help but giggle at this graf:

Ford's, too, deserves applause for taking a chance on this material. Some other major companies in town seem content these days to feast on well-cooked chestnuts.

Goodness. Wonder which "major company" Peter could have in mind?

Tboy is on vacation

There were nephews to be visited. And what with the new job coming up next week, Tboy figured he'd better visit while the visiting was good.

Now he's been in Augusta, Ga.--yes, he has visited the scene of the shopping-mall drive-through--for three days, and he's remembering why he usually sets that amount of time as the upper limit.  He's upstairs in the spare bedroom at his sister's house, because downstairs:

1. Nephew the Youngest is shrieking. No particular reason. Just shrieking.
2. Nephew the Eldest, who is nominally brushing his teeth, is in fact pretending to brush his teeth while in actuality conducting experiments having to do with determining precisely what mixture of toothpaste and spittle is required to produce an 18-inch string of drool.
3. Nephew the Worst is scratching his behind with one hand while exploring the region of his private parts with the other.

Tboy dearly loves his nephews. But: While he knows he's not exactly a high-risk candidate, he intends to have himself sterilized as soon as the new NPR health bennies kick in.

Dispatch from Humana: Of home, family, and p*nis aprons

This one, too, got buried. It's from last Friday. Tboya culpa.

Friday, March 16

Just back from a whirlwind visit home, where I bought an obscene amount of groceries to demonstrate my love for Michael, Henry and Vivian, went ice-skating with them, ran errands, returned Mary Resing's cell phone that she left in my car in Looahvul while she was dramaturging dark play,  and arranged summer camps for my children which include gymnastics, art, a Shakespeare camp, horseback riding and (the highlight of my son's summer) a week at Target, Skeet and Clay Pigeon Shooting and 3D Archery Camp. Michael is doing a heroic job of single parenting in my absence. More than that, he is enjoying it, and gives me his blessing to fly away and dive into this wonderful experience. I babysat for him Monday and Tuesday, when he had rehearsals for a reading at First Amendment that Paul Tacaks (sp?) is directing. Henry and Vivian are doing very well, in their own explosively bi-polar, boundary stretching ways. It was interesting being home for three days. I figured out what is so exhilarating/exhausting about being with children: they experience in 24 hours the range and depth of emotion that I do in a month. And I'm an out there, passionate person! But my daughter can put any Shakespearean actress to shame before 7am. Never mind "Out, damned spot!" Try "I don't like these socks!"

Back in Looahvul, my dark play cast is as fine a group of individuals as one could hope to be stranded on the banks of the Ohio river with. Given the repertory nature of the schedule, we have between two and four days off between performances, which means we get together and do a line-through or a walk-through before we do the show again, just to make sure all the pieces are still there. It's a very rhythmic production with a small margin for error: if you are off by a split second, you've spoilt the elegance. The audience might not know, but you feel awful. So far I think we've had great shows, full of energy, moving in the right direction, remaining faithful to the (brilliant) direction of Señor Garces. Sh*t happens, though. Liz Morton's parents came to see her last night: she carefully picked seats that would keep them shielded from her (brief) nudity, only to have them spotlit in the audience by an errant, erratically mobile light that somehow selected random targets throughout the show, instead of shining where it ought to.

We stay up way too late and drink way too much and talk about everything. I hear the poker game went till 6am. There's talk of a double-cast bowl-off next week, and Josh Lefkowitz is going to do his one-man show for us. BYOB.

I saw previews of Strike/Slip and The As-If Body Loop, both interesting plays with really good actors. They share the same theatre, but use the space in a completely different way. Strike/Slip is a "Crash"-like, episodic exploration of relationships with the central theme of the unexpected movement of tectonic plates. The space is wide open, with islands of set pieces that slide in and out of view; the actors stay onstage the whole time, in the wings but visible when they're not in a scene. Body Loop has an attic suspended from the grid, twenty feet up, with a spiral staircase (not a good thing for those of us with a sick fascination with heights), and traps that bring set pieces up to the stage as the scene shifts; it posits the theory that we have a collective responsibility to bear the pain of this world, using Lamed Vavniks (look it up), alternative healing and football to make its point. I haven't seen Sherry Kramer's play yet, but hope to next week, as well as Batch, which performs at a gay nightclub. They have some fun costumes which I saw when I had fittings in the costume shop: headpieces and bustiers made with Twizzlers and a penis apron (apron with appendage attached, not a tiny frilly accessory for a dick) chief among them. This weekend is a big college student weekend, also my Mom and the Rorschach crew will be here.

Once again, it's late, and I must say good night. Just another exhausting day off in Looahvul. I think I may be in heaven.

-- Jen

Wooo-ho ... nah, nevermind.

Marvin Hamlisch will salute you all at the Helen Hayes to-do.

Wait a minute while Tboy contains himself.

P.S. - Tboy finds it amusing that Derek Jacobi is a footnote in a Marvin Hamlisch press release. That is all.

More on the young critics' program

So several of you sent me suggestions for the D.C.-Belfast young critics program, for which thanks.  But today's news is that I've had guidance from one of the coordinators about how writers should apply.  So take a minute and read this, willya?

1). If you sent me a résumé, I've already forwarded it. Still, it couldn't hurt for you to apply directly, with a cover note expressing your interest and explaining why you want to take part in the exchange. See below.

2). If you didn't send me a CV, don't.  Send it instead to Sioned Hughes, whose address is Sioned.Hughes (at) visitingarts.org.uk, with a cover note as described above. Deadline is March 23.

3). Eligibility is limited to arts writers based in the D.C. area. See below. Contact Sioned for more information. But here's the basic overview. Enjoy:

"This programme will be run in partnership with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and will occur as part of the Rediscovering Northern Ireland Festival in Washington DC. The Young Critics Programme provides an opportunity for young writers from Northern Ireland to connect with their counterparts in Washington DC.

"Designed on the basis that a community of critical writers makes an essential contribution to democratic societies and a flourishing arts scene, the Young Critics Programme aims to create links between different cultures as well as contributing to the appreciation and development of arts criticism.

"During the programme, time will be spent in both Belfast and Washington DC, with the 6 participants attending a writing workshop, visiting galleries and attending a variety of performances.  They will write reviews, discuss their work together, and explore the role of the art critic.  Established arts critics will tutor the workshop.

[snip]

"The week in Washington DC will build on the work done in Northern Ireland, with a similar programme of reviewing a variety of work, with the benefit of critic mentors from Washington DC. The dates for the programme are May 5 – 19, 2007, with everyone arriving in Washington on May 12th.

"There will be 3 participants from Northern Ireland and 3 from Washington DC.  ...  I would expect the candidates to have a demonstrable interest in the arts and to have already started their journalistic career in some capacity."