Do It...Just Do It
As we're all ready to wrap up our first week of the new year, I'm slowly and steadily adding commentary to my Top 50 Films of the Decade list(s) and more slowly and less steadily looking for a new day job.
As you may have noticed, there's been a great deal of discussion going on in the theatrical blogosphere about diversity, quality, bleak survey results, MFA programs and lotteries in the theatre scene and it seems that a consensus and solution is emerging: institutional theatre sucks, self-producing may be the way to go (I’m being horribly reductive here I know, but then again, I’m a horribly reductive person).
I've been a big advocate for self-producing for a while now, but it's always a "preaching to the choir" situation. Those that want to self-produce will do so with or without me or anyone else posting a blog entry about it. Those that don't want to self-produce will never do so, no matter what I or anyone else says.
I'm kind of torn between wanting to write more on the subject and thinking I've already written too much (like I said, preaching to the choir here), but for now I'll just say that self-producing bypasses a lot of the roadblocks many playwrights have to face in getting their work produced and maintaining creative control over their work. Although there are some pitfalls and problems inherent to self-producing, at the end of the day, they’re very small prices to pay.
And hey, to quote Jordi La Forge, you don’t have to take my word for it.
Puttin' up his own silliness,
James "Resourceful Hobo" Comtois
Labels: of interest, theatre
posted by Jamespeak at 12:58 PM
5 Comments:
If you feel shy about writing on WHY you self produce, what about some of the specifics of HOW you self produce?
The indie theatre for dummies book has yet to be written...
Hey, Travis. I've been thinking about doing that for a while now, kind of like Dave Sim's brilliant Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (which Nosedive used as its bible). Perhaps this year is the time to do something like that: offer a nuts and bolts "how to" (or at least, "How Nosedive has been doing it").
Meaning, writing a "how to" for self-producing indie theatre in the way Sim wrote a "how to" for self-producing indie comics. I didn't mean to imply that whatever "how to" natterings I offered on this site would be brilliant.
"Those that want to self-produce will do so with or without me or anyone else posting a blog entry about it. Those that don't want to self-produce will never do so, no matter what I or anyone else says."
I think this is more or less right. The exception is folks new to the New York theatre scene. I'm not sure it's clear to newcomers how low the bar is to begin self producing. When we started Nosedive, we needed Adam and and Dave to show us the practical ropes of indie theatre, but in a way we also need someone's (anyone's) "permission" in order to start producing. This is one reason I've always enjoyed participating in the Field Studies panels Ithaca runs.
Guide To Self Publishing was incredibly useful to us, particularly regarding how to think as a producer. It'd be a great idea for you to take a swinfg at the theatre version of the Guide...
Yeah, I've been self-producing for years now, most often in theatre festivals such as the MITF or Planet Connections, which take a lot of the burden off producers.
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