To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Hey, gang. For the longest time, I've been dead-set against using Twitter. At first, it was quasi-ideological: I always saw the extremely short limit of characters helping to degrade our already rapidly-degrading attention spans, and I'm still not wild about how the hashtags, retweetings, shitty punctuation & spelling, various acronyms and other codings make tweets borderline impossible to follow.

Also, the arguments I've heard about Twitter being a strong and effective marketing tool have been dubious at best. Yes, a playwright or director can have several thousand followers. But in reality, how many of those followers equates to actually physically present audience members? It's easy to "follow" someone online: it's free and can be done from the convenience of, well, wherever you damn well please. It's another thing entirely to actually go out and pay money to see a play created by whomever you're following.

(It's also not like I have a great deal of information to "tweet" about on a regular basis. How many times can I post, "Having some Cheerios. Cats keep interfering. #cattens# #breakfast#?")

But let's be honest: this site hasn't been the source for long-form essays for a long while. My feelings toward blogging have become much, much more ambivalent of late (well, duh). Maybe updates on what's going on in my creative life is better in the short-form/news stream format.

Plus, although the jury's still open as to how much Twitter can help with self-promotion, it certainly can't hurt. So although I still haven't yet reversed my position on Twitter, I'm at least much more open to it than before.

This is my long roundabout way of saying I'm thinking about setting up my own Twitter account, but am still very much on the fence and still have more than a few reservations.

So, fuck it. I'll ask you. For those of you still out there reading this, what are your thoughts? Do you have a Twitter account? Do you recommend it or no? For theatre-makers, have you noticed it helping with drawing in audience members or not? What are the advantages? Any disadvantages? What do you think?

Lemme know.

Updating folks on the dull
minutae of my dull life,

James "Online Luddite" Comtois

Short Version of Long Tale

Sorry about the dearth of posting of late, folks. I've been absolutely swamped with a number of disparate things (from work, to my personal life, to fundraising for Nosedive to prepping for The Little One). I'm actually hoping to write some entries on each of these elements at some point in the not-too-distant future.

In fact, Nosedive's working on a rather ambitious undertaking (well, ambitious for Nosedive, anyway), something that may merit a Guide to Self-Producing entry in the not-too-distant future (although I think I have to wait to see the results of said undertaking, and report on it either way, success or failure).

The short version is that we're involved in our largest fundraising effort to-date to finance our most expensive show to-date* (and bear in mind I mean, like, $12 grand...many of our peers stage shows four to five times that) as a means of enabling Nosedive to sustain itself and grow over the next few years.

Suffice it to say, we realized that we can't keep funding the shows the way we have been before. That is to say, we usually use the remaining "profit" from the previous show (about 1% of the next show's budget), collect a couple donations (about 10% of the budget), then scramble to pay for the rest (89%) ourselves based on which producer has money in their account at any given moment something is due (oh yes, we're professionals here at Nosedive Central; professionals who plan ahead).

We were fortunate to do our ninth season as a co-production with the Brick, which enabled us to produce two shows without having to put in a dime of our own money into either production. That was the upside. The downside was that we didn't really create enough of a reserve capital (since we split ticket sales with the Brick 50-50) to pay for the next show.

So, we've been working on a new(ish) finance/business plan that will enable Nosedive to continue without relying on the whims of its producers' employment statuses and income levels. If this works (even a little bit), perhaps we can continue to put out work we can be proud of and be just a little more financially solvent and independent.

We shall see. As always, we shall see.

That was the short version. I hope to write about the long version in the not-too-distant future.

Waggling his weenis at oncoming cars,

James "Business Exec" Comtois

*Little Nosedive fun-fact: our most expensive show until now was The Adventures of Nervous-Boy, which was about $9,500. And oddly enough, it was profitable.

An Outsider Looking In On Chicago Theatre

UPDATE: Jamie DesRocher has recently written an excellent entry on her blog about working in the Chicago theatre scene that you should check out here. It gets into a lot of what a couple people in the comments section here have touched upon.

As previously threatened, I wanted to offer my scattershot first impressions of what I noticed about the theatre scene in Chicago.

Now I need to make a few things very, very clear. First off, here's what I really know about the Chicago theatre-scene: fuck all. I spent four days there, saw a grand total of three plays, and talked to a little over a dozen people in the theatre scene there. These are simply first impressions* from a guy who was there for a very short period of time, saw a very small number of shows and spoke very briefly to a very small number of people.

So, for all the Chicago theatre-makers reading this, if I grossly - or even slightly - misrepresent the scene in this entry...

(Which I absolutely will be. When you're writing in broad generalizations, even on a subject on which you're an expert, there will be some distorting of facts and figures. When you're doing as I'm doing, which is writing on a subject on which I'm a complete novice, there will be some major botching of facts and figures.)

...feel free to correct me and/or expand on what I'm blathering about here. Just bear in mind that you're correcting someone who freely admits he doesn't know what he's talking about, so try not to be a dick about it.

My immediate impression was, like I wrote earlier, Chicago seems to be the land of milk and fucking honey for DIY indie theatre. Rent for space is significantly cheaper in Chicago than it is in New York. I won't divulge numbers, but a few were given my way by some folks there, and holy balls, producing theatre in Chicago can be done very, very cheaply.

I could be wrong, but I got the impression that it's less expensive and much faster and easier to put on plays in Chicago than New York (not that Nosedive has had any problems in this regard, but then again, we've been around for [Good Lord] nearly 10 years).

I also got a very garage-bandy vibe from the folks I talked to in the Windy City. The idea of turning this into a day job is not a priority. It's about putting on a show, not necessarily about creating a career. (This in particular is pure speculation on my part; career-minded Chicago theatre-makers are welcome to correct me on this.)

Frankly, I found this element of the scene to be the most refreshing and exciting. That feeling of wanting the show to provide a major source of income, expand or move on (to Off-Broadway for many, Broadway for some) pervades the entire New York scene, even if you don't have any of those ambitions. I didn't get that talking to folks in Chicago.

The shoptalk didn't revolve around getting an "in" with a major Equity house. It was about having ideas, and finding ways to put those ideas on the stage in front of an audience.

This may also have to do with the fact that there seems to be a clear delineation between Equity and non-Equity theatres in the Windy City.

Which isn't to say that it's all garage band, DIY-style. I saw a show in a big Off-Broadway style theatre (the Goodman) with a clearly large budget. But here's the thing: the tickets were only $18. And hell, Bob Fisher (someone entrenched in the DIY camp) clearly knew the director of the show at the Goodman quite well (okay, so much for that "clear delineation").

Also, the Chicago theatre community seems much smaller and closer-knit than the one in New York. Although it's not a case where everyone knows everyone else on the scene, it's pretty close. There seemed to be only two degrees of separation (tops) from other companies or people.

Chicago also has the same potential for getting audiences for theatre as New York (and despite some recent complaints scattered throughout the NYC scene, I think the audience for NYC theatre is doing just fine: of the nearly 50 plays I've seen so far this year, almost all of them enjoyed full to sold-out houses when I was in attendance). And hey, maybe I wasn't there long enough to hear them, but I also found it refreshing to not hear anyone complaining about not being able to get audiences, so that was pretty cool.

And yeah, this is one last thing that I could be very wrong about (and this could be due to only being there a short while, as opposed to New York, where I've lived for 10 years), but the fear and self-loathing talk among the theatre-makers I met was practically nonexistent (whereas it can get pretty pandemic in New York). Again, these conversations may be going on a lot in Chicago, and the folks I met preferred to put on their game face around me.

Anyway, those were some things I noticed off the top of my head while I was there.

In short, I dug what I saw of the scene.

And really, the above caveat aside, any Chicago theatre-makers reading this feel free to chime in with your thoughts, experiences, divergences and enhancements from my (myopic) assessment.

Buying tons of novelty junk at the O'Hare gift shop,

James "Fascinated Tourist" Comtois

*Although I did see a play when I first - and last - visited Chicago, that was nine years ago and just one play, so I think it's safe to say that my experience this weekend represents my first impressions of the Chicago theatre scene.

And For Those That Aren't My Facebook Friend or Reading My GChat Statuses...

...Nosedive just became incorporated!

That's right. We're now officially Nosedive Productions, Inc.

We're on our way to being a fully independent 501(c)3 company.

And it only took us nine and a half years!

Slow learners,

James "Artistic DERRRRector" Comtois

Sean Williams on Glee Club, Endings and Instant Gratification

Sean Williams has written a very compelling and thought-provoking post on Blue Coyote's show, Glee Club, and gets into a rumination on the indie theatre scene, and that pervasive, "What Happens Next?" feeling that invariably happens once you open and close a show.

Sean writes:

"[If] we make a play and every blogger shows up, and all the online reviews are great, and the actual print media comes, and the New York Times says it's great... then, what? It's a little easier to put on the next show? You can walk in to an agent's office with some hot papers, they sign you and then... what? You're writing a spec script for Grey's Anatomy, a show you've never even seen, in a medium you care nothing about, where there's a lot of money but where you do nothing but pine for the days you were writing off-off shows and cast your friends?

I mentioned in a blog post recently that our community is freaking me out with how good everyone's work is, but it wasn't until I saw the play yesterday that I kinda understood why. Glee Club sold out the performance I was at, and if there's any justice in the world the next show will sell out too, and then the run will end. And then what? It's a terrifying question, and it's one that every one of us asks ourselves three or four times a year. Of course that's what we're all writing about. The incredible horror of the fruition of our work.

I told Matt that I was hit by just how small the stakes were for the characters in Glee Club. I don't mean that in a disparaging way: it's what makes Glee Club all the more tragic (and simultaneously hilarious). The characters spend the bulk of the play convincing another character to do something really, really horrible for such a small and petty reason. (I'm reminded of the old joke about professors and academia: "The in-fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so small.")

Sean's post also resonates with me, especially when I think about the incredibly limited run Nosedive's show Infectious Opportunity has (I can't speak for Matt, Kyle & Co., but I'm guessing they may be having similar thoughts, as the run of Glee Club is also so short). These shows go up to the Great Production in the Sky much, much sooner than usual, so that question of, "Now What?" is much, much more pervasive.

Usually when we close a show, the answer to "Now What?" is, "We have preproduction meetings for the next show." For Infectious, I think the answer to that question is, "We remount in late 2010 or early 2011."

Why? Not for money. Or getting an agent. Or a TV writing gig.

I simply want more people to see it.

Anyway, read the whole thing here. Then buy your damn tickets to see Glee Club. I've seen it twice now.

Then when you're done seeing Glee Club, get your tickets for Infectious Opportunity. You'll like them both.

Wanting to know what happens next,

James "Now What?" Comtois

Preparing and Adapting

We here at Nosedive Central are finalizing our plans for staging Infectious Opportunity this spring and will most likely be sending out all the information on the show sometime in March. In the meantime, we're gearing up for our Soul Samurai night on Thursday, February 19. Tickets for that are actually going very, very fast, so anyone in the New York area that wants to see Vampire Cowboys' latest (which writer Qui Nguyen himself has said it's the best thing he's ever written) and drink heavily with the Cowboys and Nosedivians, send me an email very, very soon.

It's very interesting that Laura brings this up now that we here at Nosedive Central are working on a new business model. And by "new business model," I mean, "a business model at all."

Since we first formed the company back in late 1999, early 2000, we've produced in a "spend first, ask questions later," way. We put stuff on our credit cards, get loans, and sign contracts for spaces and worry later about how we're going to complete payments on the space. For many of us, getting the work staged was too important to worry about pesky little details about cash flow or revenue.

We really can't produce that way anymore.

It's not just because our entire economic infrastructure is collapsing, or that being in debt in your 30s isn't quite as hip or adventurous as it is when you're in your early-20s. Those are huge factors, of course, but mainly, we can't stage shows that way anymore simply because with many producers' job security (mine included) now being a joke, we simply can't start each production at "zero," pour what little money we don't have into the show, then pray that box office returns will at least get us paid partially back. (Little inside baseball fun-fact: that plan sure didn't work on Colorful World.)

Plus, with the rents of theatres going up substantially, the cost of staging a show, even on the cheap, has gone up considerably since we started (our first play, Monkeys, cost a grand total of $2,400 to produce).

I'm very glad to see everyone in Nosedive is on the same page about this and are setting things in place to make sure the company can stay afloat.

I know, I know, a theatre company now talking about how to be fiscally responsible. Will wonders never cease? (Though, to be fair, it took us nine freakin' years to start.) Will these new money saving and fundraising techniques work? Who knows? At least we'll be moving in the right direction.

Pinching pennies,

James "Cheap Bastard" Comtois

Laura Axelrod on Where We Stand

Here's a bit of required reading from Mrs. Laura Axelrod.
In her brilliant blog entry, she writes:

"Our generation has created celebrities out of people who have no talent. We have funded our lifestyles with imaginary money. We watch scripted reality t.v. shows.

"Our way of life is a lie.

"We are bankrupt, and our system reflects it. A healthy society would not accept these lies. A healthy society does not need to be shielded from the truth. A healthy society would be allowed to see the coffins of its dead soldiers."

Read the whole thing here.

Entertaining himself to death,

James "Fuck VH1" Comtois

Sunday July 8 gathering - AEA Showcase Reform

From the Coalition for Code Reform...

Sunday, July 8, 6pm-8pm

A community gathering in support of

AEA Showcase Reform

Classic Stage Company

136 E. 13th Street (between 3rd/4th avenues)

Join the conversation and help build a stronger, more united Off-Off community.

Stop by for 5 minutes or an hour

Learn about the ART/NY White Paper on AEA Showcase Reform

Meet Off-Off-Broadway organizations united in support of code reform

Sign the petition (if you haven't yet done so at www.nyc99.org)

Show that the broad and diverse membership of the Off Off Broadway community -- actors, producers, directors, designers -- welcomes a new approach to code reform, one that sidesteps the culture of complaint to articulate points of mutual benefit for actors and producers.

An Off-Off-Broadway that gains the flexibility to operate at its full potential will be the foundation of a theater community at large that is artistically and economically healthy.

Learn more at www.nyc99.org.

From the Lil' Sistois…

So in case you didn't notice the update on the "Nosedive Central" blogline, the Blonde Comtois, Becky, has started her own blog. Her recent post made me laugh and sigh. I didn’t see the play in question, but she fumed about it to me last night.

She writes:

“Aside from being a dismally bad show, what I found the hardest to swallow was information I found in the program. The number of people who are financially backing this company is astonishing. Several people had given them donations of or higher than $20,000. Hundreds of people have given them hundreds of dollars. To make this show?! And more shows like it?! How can this be? In the last year I have seen brilliant companies struggling with little resources, and trying desperately to grab some attention away from Broadway and Off-Broadway productions like this. I can’t imagine that this is what people want to see.”

I do understand her frustration, as I'm sure many of you theatre-makers out there do.

Don't you ever wonder when you see a big professionally-made piece of horse manure how on earth it got made and, more to the point, how on earth it got so many large donations? I mean, several people had to sign off on the idea at multiple levels and tiers (a smaller version of the Hollywood system, where you need several "green lights" from several departments before going ahead with the project). Also, when you look at the donors list, you can't help but think, "Whaaaaat?! Many people donated upwards of $20,000 for this?" (Again, I haven't seen the play she saw, but I've seen others that have given me the same reaction.)

Anyway, I do understand her frustration.

Wanting a grant,

James “Or Just a Sandwich” Comtois

Very Late To The Game

A lot has been happening in the theatre world, with discussions about Rabbit Hole winning the Pulitzer, discussions about writing violence and the emergence of Theatre Forte, a super-neat concept/site. I've unfortunately been too swamped to chime in, which is a shame (because it's always so fun to muddy the waters with my incoherent two cents on any matters).

Even though I'm late in the game, there may be some overlap in my readership (i.e., some of you out there who read Jamespeak but don't read the other theatre blogs), so I will direct you to Mark "Mr. Excitement" Armstrong's blog for some required reading.

Mr. Nelson sums up (I think) several huge problems with the mentality of the theatre world/theatre industry. He explains one of the main reasons why I self-produce with my own company: staging my own work enables me to say exactly what I want to say, exactly the way I want to say it, while keeping those little developer/workshopper/"helper" demons at bay.

(And before you accuse me of selling out the folks at Nosedive Central, read Mr. Nelson's speech first. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about.)

I may go back to this subject in greater detail (read: rant for several thousand words on the subject). But for now, I just want you to go to the link. Read it. Then read it again.

Then tell everyone you know even remotely involved in theatre to read it. And read it again.

Tilting at windmills,

James "Fuck Workshops" Comtois

Blog Reviewing

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UPDATE: Here are links to Isaac's and MattJ's posts on the subject, which features the Time Out quote I obliquely refer to.

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Well, our opening night for Suburban Peepshow is finally behind us and I for one am happy with the results and am looking forward to the rest of the run. This also means I can spend some time (since the reviews aren't yet out) to actually write about something other than the damn play (yes, even I get sick of my blatant plugging, but in all fairness, what else do you think is on my mind?).

There's been a weird discussion going on within the theatre blogosphere and Time Out New York about bloggers getting free tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows on the understanding that we write about said show. I don't presume to speak for any other blog or blogger (for obvious reasons that I will get into in a moment) but I figured I'd explain my policy for this page and getting the swag from plays.

First, for those of you who don't know how "bloggers nights" started, Isaac Butler saw Roundabout's production of Greg Kotis's play Pig Farm and thought it was really good and worth getting audiences. Charles Isherwood gave it a scathing review in the New York Times, which Isaac thought was unfair to a show that he thought deserved attention. So, through the management of Roundabout, he arranged for several New York bloggers (myself included) to see the show for free under the condition that we write about it on our blogs. We were not obligated - explicitly or implicitly - to write positive things. In fact, I had no contact with anyone from the production's publicity or management team. Isaac said we could write whatever we wanted about the show, only asking us to post by a certain date.

So we did. Some liked it, some didn't and some were in between.

Since then, other bloggers nights have been organized with varying degrees of success. The big overarching idea behind bloggers nights and blogger reviews is to offer an alternative critical outlet to plays beside the monolith of the Times. It wasn't (and isn't, I don't think) an attempt to overhaul or undermine the reviewing system: just another option for companies to get their work reviewed and discussed.

The subject of ethics in getting free tickets and writing about a show (or refusing to write about it) has now come up. (Most of this has come up in various comment threads in blogs and in private email threads so apologies for having no electronic links to reference. Just...trust me; it's come up.) There's been some flack about bloggers getting free tickets to see a show because that makes us part of the PR marketing machine or some such nonsense and questions of whether or not it's right to accept free tickets to a show if you don't blog about it.

Again, I'm only writing about my personal viewpoints on the matter and my policy. I don't presume to speak for any other blog or blogger, nor am I trying to convince any other blogger to change their attitudes. My blog is my own and I can do whatever the hell I want with it. Other bloggers can do whatever the hell they want with their blogs. It is, after all, their damn blog.

I like the idea of writing reviews. I don't think I'm particularly good at it, simply because it's a new series of skills I'm just now learning to develop. I flatter myself into believing that I'm starting to get good at it (and will continue to improve with experience and time). The ability to review a work honestly and fairly is a skill I don't mind having. Some bloggers have an aversion to it and find reviewing to be a conflict of interest. I don't. I have yet to be convinced that I'll be pegged not as a playwright but as a critic (or why that would be so awful) or that I'll hurt my playwriting career.

(One of the true perks of being a self-producing playwright is that you don't have to worry about being obsequious - or hell, even polite - to potential bosses/companies/producers to get your work produced. I'm not trying to get an "in" with any Off-Broadway house).

My policy for Jamespeak is very simple: if a company gives me free tickets to see their show, I will review it. Period.

For people who think that I'm somehow a tool of the PR machine who's being "bought" by that free ticket, I'm sorry, I don't know how else to put this, but you're a moron who doesn't know what he's talking about. Getting the ticket for free in no way shapes my opinion of the show: it only gets me to actually see it (if I'm expected to write about a show, pay the $70 to see it and not get paid, then guess what? I ain't seeing the show).

(It should be noted that most PR reps for theatre companies worth a damn are professional enough to keep schmoozing with the reviewer to a bare minimum. The ones I've been involved with have been polite and accommodating, but in no way have tried to act like my "buddy." They help me confirm my ticket, make sure I get a press packet, say hello, and leave me alone. That's how they often work and - more to the point - that's how they should work.)

As for giving bloggers free tickets to see my show (which I have offered for the opening weekend of Suburban Peepshow), I understand certain bloggers find reviewing to be a conflict of interest (especially since many of them know me quite well, which prevents the above parenthetical relationship between the press rep [me] and reviewer). Again, I have no interest or intention of making them believe otherwise (it's their blog). I obviously want them to write about my show and, more to the point, I want them to write positive things about it. However, I also want Katharine McPhee to dump her boyfriend, move to New York and fall in love with me.

I won't be disappointed or angry if neither scenario happens.

It is important for bloggers to consider ethics in reviewing and getting free tickets to do so. So far, I've seen no major stumbling blocks. Then again, this is a very new experiment. Since I can't-and won't-speak for anybody else, I'll just try to adhere to my policy of reviewing any show I'm specifically given free tickets to, because, hell, I'd like to write about stuff on this site besides plugs for my own damn show.

Anyway, those are my five cents on the subject. Feel free to comment or email me to give your five cents on the subject and have a good weekend, folks. I hope to see some of you this weekend at the Red Room.

Just part of the machine,

James "Useless PR Tool" Comtois

Banding Together

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UPDATE: Isaac Butler has posted his response over at Parabasis. From what it seems like, a director's experience with such a show is very different than a writer's or performer's. Check it out.

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I just realized that my previous post was my 200th on this site. Shouldn’t there be any fanfare or something?

[insert sound of kazoo here]

Okay, there we go!

Ahem.

***

As an addendum to my previous post, in addition to keeping costs down, presenting nights of one-acts from various writers with various directors and cast members can be another way for small theatre companies to not only stay afloat but also develop audiences.

The Blue Coyote Theatre Company's recent Standards of Decency Project is a good example of this: an evening of nine one-act plays centered around a central theme. The show had at least 39 people involved in it (perhaps more).

Seriously, folks. Thirty-nine.

If each person involved in the evening of one-acts could bring in six to a dozen people (friends and well-wishers) to the run (something very doable), we're talking 234 to 468 audience members (just from friends and personal well-wishers alone).

Since the theatre showing The Standards of Decency Project, the Access, seats 64, we're talking three to seven nights of the run being completely sold out from the get-go (and from what I've heard, that certainly was the case with the show's attendance). Added to that, each writer/actor/director involved received a wider audience than they would be normally used to.

Homer Frizzell, Joe Ganem, Jason Green and Mac Rogers experienced a similar situation with their short-run of F a few years back, which had a large number of enthusiastic cast members involved that resulted in standing-room-only crowds (and the implicit cross-pollination, giving each person involved several new audience members for their work).

(I've had similar experiences with my participation in Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company's REVAMPED shows and Friday Night Fight Club's "Circo Pelear," managing to rope a few friends into seeing it, but still having the show sell out, since the large number of participants did the same.)

Now, this is different than theatre companies jointly producing a work, or multiple companies putting up multiple shows in a festival setting. From what I've seen and heard (and experienced with Nosedive's Off-Night Series we did back in May of 2005), that often brings the opposite results: drained energy, inflated budgets, diminished audiences and a large number of theatre artists ready to kill one another.

In tough times, presenting multiple acts from multiple theatre artists under one roof may be a good way to develop audience bases and give the region a sense that there is indeed a theatre "scene."

You could do worse, in my view.

Far, far worse.

Throwing tired ideas to the crowd,

James "Pseudo-Innovative" Comtois

Dr. Hall's Prognosis

Don R. Hall, "An Angry White Guy In Chicago," posts some hard truths about the business of producing theatre. In it, he writes:

Anyone with a fucking brain can see that the art of live theater is hurting - bleeding profusely from the colon and spleen, arthritically climbing those stage door steps for one more performance to an empty house. The 'business' is kicking the crap out of the 'show.'

Emphasis his.

Despite the gloom and doom, he does offer some suggestions for mitigating the bleeding (he cites options within the realms of real estate, marketing and education).

Check it out.

The sad, hard fact of life is that theatre has - and always will have - a limited audience. I've mentioned this many, many times in Jamespeak, but I do think it bears repeating.

One reason for this is distribution. Anyone anywhere over the world has access to a television show or movie. If you miss it when it airs or screens, there are reruns, the Internet, TiVo and DVDs (renting an episode of The Wire is no less an experience than watching said episode on HBO and with the MPAA continuing to gut and neuter the film industry, it's sometimes a better experience to rent a disc of a film rather than see it in its theatrical release). Although plays can be read and remounted, you can only see a certain production for a finite period of time and if you happen to be in the region it's being staged (Dorothy Lemoult and I recently lamented that we're unable to see one another's work, since we're on opposite ends of the continent).

A play being shown in a 200-seat house running five shows a week for six weeks can only receive an audience of 6,000 people. There are more people in the tri-state area watching an episode of Access Hollywood in one night.

Another reason for this is due to the entrenched hegemony that electronic media has over the culture (with no signs of slowing down) and the surplus of options for spending one's free time. As Mac Rogers pointed out in our online dialogue last year, we're writing for an "overserved" market (i.e., people who see their lives reflected in many forms of media, theatre included).

I'm not bringing this up to be despairing. I just think we have to be very realistic when considering our options for marketing and audience development. The relative number of people in the population that regularly goes to see theatre as an option for spending their free time is quite small and always will be.

One thing Mr. Hall doesn't bring up (again, this may tread into the realm of the excruciatingly obvious but when I hear about Off-off-Broadway theatre companies getting into $30,000 - $70,000 in debt after one show I guess bears repeating) is that theatre companies should try to stage within their means, and I mean Well. Within. Their means.

I think one of the reasons why Nosedive has lasted for as long as it has is that it's never staged a show to date that's hit - or even come close to hitting - the $10,000 budget mark. We've never had to, even with rents for theatre spaces in the Rotten Apple skyrocketing every few months. (Let's face it: since we don't received grants, Nosedive Productions is pretty gosh darned penny-pinching.) As a result, although we're not "making money" by any stretch of the imagination, we're not encumbered by debt.

This is a big advantage that theatre has over film: you don't have to take out a second mortgage on your home to stage a play the way you often would to make a movie.

When staging an Off-off show (i.e., a show that doesn't have an open-ended run), you simply know what the cap to your income is going to be. Your house has x number of seats and you are performing for y nights and charging $15 - $18. X times y times 15 or 18 (depending on the ticket price) equals N, which is the most income you can hope for. Except you're not going to get N from ticket sales. Considering you can't realistically expect to sell out each night (you're going to have to offer some comp tickets here and there), it would serve you well to make your budget substantially lower than N.

This may mitigate the debt your company acquires and alleviate the "Sky Is Falling" syndrome. At the very least, you know just how much money you're going to lose at any given point in the run and won't wind up being $70,000 in debt.

You could also do well - hell, we all could do well - in reading and considering Mr. Hall's suggestions.

Ruthless penny-pincher,

James "Scrooge" Comtois

Trends, Industry and Despair

This will be a kinda/sorta response to both Mac’s recent blog post and George Hunka’s blog posts (here and here).

I think it’s basically mandatory that every playwright goes through a recurring phase where they think, “Why the FUCK are we doing this?” Mac calls it “gazing into the abyss.” I know it well.

I don’t have anything specific to say in response to these postings, any more than I have much to say about Larry Kramer lamenting that theatre is dead, simply because I am very detached from the theatre industry. Personally, I think Mr. Kramer’s anger at the industry and medium of theatre (because his play closed damn near overnight) treads a little too close to the “Whiny Little Bitch” persuasion, but I understand his frustration.

The truth is that the reasons why some plays become successful and why some plays fail are completely unknown. One year, plays with small casts are in, the next, huge ensembles are what are sought. Sometimes audiences (and I mean in large quantities) want musicals, sometimes straight dramas. We never know what it’s going to be and we never will.

Obviously, institutional theatres have to second-guess and follow these trends, simply because their motives aren’t creating art, but making money (I’m not saying this is bad, this is just the driving force of companies and corporations). Since producers and businessmen can’t create, they can only follow trends and join the bandwagon (hence the onslaught of ironic and “edgy” musicals: “Urinetown:” “Menopause: The Musical;” “Musical: The Musical;” “Jonestown: The Musical”). A few years ago staged adaptations of films were the trend on Broadway (“The Full Monty,” “The Producers,” “The Graduate”). In a year or two, something else will take that place (and we won’t know what that something is ‘til we get there).

Basically, if I think too much on this and believe that this is what the medium is capable of I’d be in that nihilistic despair.

My only advice to all of us is: “Chill, baby. Just go with the flow.” ‘Cause really, if we don’t, we’ll get aneurisms.

When Nosedive produces one of my plays, I’m always praying that it won’t coincide with an up-and-coming trend and therefore bury us within the flotsam-and-jetsam (which would have happened if “Never Stop Rocking,” our aborted rock opera with puppets, got made, since it would have theoretically been scheduled to open just months before the premiere of the show “Crank Yankers” and the musical “Avenue Q”). But then again, I just can’t worry about that shit (one of the shows mentioned above, “Jonestown,” was actually written by a friend & colleague of mine YEARS before “Urinetown” opened—I absolutely wish the play the best but I do fear it’s shown up on the scene just in time to catch the death-rattle of this ironic musical trend).

People are interested in going to the theatre, just maybe not in mass droves. So what? Mr. Kramer’s play did not succeed this time around because there isn’t enough large-volume interest right now in tragic AIDS plays. Again: so what? Why do we have to adopt Hollywood’s blockbuster mentality to a much smaller, more intimate and (frankly) weirder medium?

If I sound like I’m harping on Larry Kramer, I don’t mean to be. What bothers me (and I mean it both pisses me off and breaks my heart) is reading him say that he never wants to write another play again. I feel bad that a seasoned and talented playwright, in the twilight of his career, is going to be wrapping things up on such a sour note, but I also think, “Well, boo-hoo, bitch. This shit happens. You of all people should know this by now.”

The nice thing about theatre is that it is relatively cheap to make. Sure, we always lament about budgets and not getting enough money for our productions, but when you compare the cost of making the lowest budget of low-budget plays versus the cost of making the lowest budget of low-budget films, you see the huge chasm in between the two (even the lowest budgeted indie films I’ve seen cost twice as much as our most expensive play). Retrenching, regrouping and reassessing is not the worst thing in the world if you stage a play and it fails.

Another nice thing about theatre is that you can stage plays relatively fast. A play can be written, rehearsed and staged in well under a year.

(Also another nice thing is that, if that play sucks or bombs, it can be quickly and easily forgotten.)

Mac wrote in his SlowLearner blog: “Somehow we're not saying things that make people want to stick around and listen.” That’s really the problem, isn’t it? And, this may sound harsh, but if we continue to write/produce plays that aren’t speaking to people, we deserve to have dwindling audiences. Despair never solves anything. Blaming audiences isn’t going to help, either.

And I believe an almost unforgivable sin for playwrights is to try to follow the bandwagon of whatever trend is happening. It makes sense for businessmen to do that (they can’t write, so all they can do is see what worked last month and replicate it). It makes no sense for actual creators to do that (and if they do and the play fails, well, no sympathy for self-inflicted injuries).

At the same time, trying to guess what will speak to audiences won’t work either, since (as I wrote before) it is a complete and utter mystery as to what shows will speak to people and what shows won’t.

If this sounds like the most frustrating thing in the world…well, it is. That’s why most of us playwrights dip into despair more than just a few times.

Right now I do have hope for the medium of theatre, just not necessarily the industry. When I see shows like “True West” (Broadway), “Bug” (Off-Broadway) or anything by Tom X. Chao (Off-off Broadway), I have to admit: theatre’s got some game.

But then again, you’re talking to a guy who has never made money from his playwriting, never had a play of his staged at the Public and never had an attractive middle-aged British Lady of Affluence want to act as his patroness. And I’m super-broke.

Shit. Now I’m back in despair.

Fuck this theatre shit,

James “I’m Happy” Comtois

July 17, 2004