The Annoyance Factor

SOME WOMEN

2010-04-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

SOME WOMEN by Corey Madden

Some women who are gay or straight or single or divorced or married or widowed/ and 18 or 22 or 26 or 35 or 53 or 64 or 70 and wives and mothers and girlfriends and aunts and sisters and lovers or just friends/ who may also be volunteers or good citizens or innocent bystanders or perfect strangers/ who work part-time or full time or stay at home or telecommute or free lance or are tenured or unionized/ teachers or lawyers or maids or accountants or seamstresses or nannies or business owners or artists or bakers or manicurists/ whose fathers and mothers were Jewish or Catholic or Buddhist or born again or Muslim or agnostic/ and are also Asian, Armenian, African, Indian, Anglo, Latino, or biracial and/or transnational/ who have lived in this country for five, ten, fifteen or thirty or ninety or two hundred or more years/ who are registered or not as Democratic or Republican or Green or Socialist or Libertarian/ or none of the above /are so busy/ on the weekends, before work, during lunch, after work, after dinner and late into the night/ with their to do lists and errands to the post office, the bank, the library, the soccer field, the book store, the doctors, the vet/, and then to Walmart or Target or Costco or Smart N Final to get the plunger, the bath matt, the envelopes, the sleeping bag/ with just a quick stop at Mobil or Arco or Shell for gas and maybe gum sugarfree or not or mints or diet something/ or Starbucks for a coffee, vanilla, hazelnut, half-caf, mocha frappucino or cappuccino/ or Yum Yum for a cake or raised or filled doughnut with or without sprinkles/ or Inn and Out for a single or double or animal style burger with cheese or not and fries and a coke or a shake/ but then right on to Ralphs or Vons or Safeway or Fresh N Easy or Albertsons or Stop N Shop/ to pick up milk and eggs, meat and vegetables, pasta and sauce, beer and wine, ice cream and chocolate syrup, and just one of thirteen varieties of dill pickles/ and then next door to Walgreens or Rite Aid or Reeds for multi-vitamins, greeting cards, lip-balm, condoms, K-Y jelly, People, Cosmo or the Star, for syringes, alcohol swabs, cough drops, Kleenex, antidepressants and a cane with a rubber tip/ then pick up the children, drop off fed ex, deliver flowers, rescue animals, check on neighbors, feed the homeless, plant trees, wire funds, refinance loans, file for bankruptcy, or divorce or a restraining order/ while still needing to wrap that birthday anniversary wedding shower gift/ or install new locks, or research burial plots or headstones or hospice or colon or breast or lung or liver cancer or make that hair, nail, doctor dentist’s appointment/ and don’t forget to subscribe, renew, contribute, donate/ as soon as they can just put away the groceries, take out the garbage, recycle the empties, water the plants, pick up the toys, clear off the counter/ and cook dinner for themselves, their husband and one, two, three or more children or step children or foster children or for their partner or their boyfriend or a hot date or a roommate or their mother in law or best friend or brother/ who is visiting from France or El Paso or El Salvador or Alabama and who may be living downstairs or upstairs or next door or down the street and is recovering from a break up, an addiction, a bad fall or was recently released from prison or the army or navy or marines and just needs to get back on his feet / and don’t forget clear the table, load the dishwasher, sweep the crumbs, feed the dogs and the cats, pay the bills, return that call or do the emails/ play with the children, check their homework or give them baths or read to them or tuck them in or sew a button on or lay out clothes or pack lunches/ or write the list for the next day/ or go out again to spend an hour or more or less playing softball, soccer, tennis, or swimming or walking or spinning or doing yoga or pilates/ and maybe swing by to shop the sales for socks, pants, shirts, towels, sheets, couches, cookware or solar panels/ before they have a moment to catch the news or put up their feet, have a glass of wine, get back to their second novel, poem, play, needlepoint, or thesis/ or even get in bed and watch tv or movies or read about houses or fashion or heaven or hell or recipes or composting/ or have sex/ or not/ or even have time to consider the magnitude of their responsibilities.

SOUTHLAND ARTISTS CAN'T GET NO RESPECT IN THEIR HOMETOWN

2009-12-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

Charles McNulty, Chief Theatre Critic, Los Angeles Times

Dear Charles,

I was grateful to see your article about LA theatre, and in particular your plug for larger budget theaters to more actively support local directors; and may I add: local designers, choreographers, composers and playwrights.

As a long time member of the theatre community I think it's time to do something more: sound an alarm about the state of Southern California's professional theater community.

Having been fortunate to have a long-term artistic post at one of LA's biggest resident theaters and now having been an active free-lance writer/director for the last two years, I'm seeing all too clearly the enormous chasm between the two worlds.

It's nearly impossible for independent theatre artists in Southern California, no matter the degree of success, to sustain themselves here without self-subsidy from teaching, commercial work or other "day jobs". We live in arguably the largest and most robust economic region in the country, and yet the number of independent,working professionals making most of their income from Southland theatre is miniscule. And the number of resident artistic positions (compared to producing positions) has dwindled to almost none. Our region is as large as New York, larger than Chicago, and yet we have precious few artists living and working here who earn their living from local theatre or who garner national respect. Maybe even worse, we have lost countless talent to commercial film and television and to New York.

Why?

The fault, dear Brutus, lies…in ourselves. I know this from being on the inside of large theatres, and now, on the outside. Southland artists can’t get no respect! Or more pointedly, they get the respect only when they make it somewhere else.

By not taking the lead and hiring local artists consistently and robustly, Southland theatres are short-circuiting the long-term potential of the regions’ artistic community. They are leaving local artists out of national creative conversations and opportunities. When they do hire them and use them on less prestigious projects, revivals etc., they stymie their aspirations.

Fewer opportunities results in higher expectations per opportunity, results in a greater likelihood that an artist will fail to meet expectations. This is a self-fulfilling pattern. Even with the robust resident artist programs like those I worked in at the Taper, it took a decade or more for resident directors like Chay Yew, Lisa Peterson, and myself to reach the main stages and garner the respect of the press, as well as the leadership of the theatre.

Today, I’m not aware that there are programs supporting Southland young or mid career artists at any of the larger theatres. I’m all too aware that there are almost no positions like the one I held for two decades at any theatres along the South Coast. Without these positions in place, there is absolutely no chance that a home-grown artist will become a nationally respected one.

Lately, it seems we’ve become inured to this reality. And that’s no good for Southland theatre. And while your article serves an important purpose, much more needs to be done to effect real change.

With an almost complete dependence (in the areas of press and promotion, as well as grants and opening night speeches) on the promise that a production will eventually have an association with New York, we're losing a chance to define a specific West Coast aesthetic, one that could resonate well beyond our time and place, for this generation.

One of the reasons I left CTG in 2007 was to pursue this notion. I am a Southern California artist, with a specific set of interests and aesthetic ideas bred from 25 years of living here. Sadly, I've found that this focus is barely on the radar of most large theatres in the area. Imagine if Los Angeles’ museums and curators ignored California artists, or if the music world ignored the pop and new music visionaries who come up regularly through the clubs and concert spaces of the West Coast?

We all know fantastic playwrights, directors, designers, choreographers and composers who can't get theatre work in Los Angeles, or not enough to stay in theatre here. They end up working in film and television, teaching or leaving town. Privately, you see how angry they feel about being ignored by Los Angeles theatre; but after years and years of being undervalued they do what anyone would: turn their energies elsewhere. Not surprisingly, they are almost always a huge success in other arenas.

Then there are the amazing die hard artist/producers like John Rivera, Tim Dang, Jessica Kubzansky and Michael Michetti and many others who run (and subsidize) their own smaller theatres, who have proven themselves artistically, and still are more or less ignored by larger theatres. And how many others are in line behind them who can't progress? All this because the system simply doesn't value local artists in the same way it does those from New York? Now add color and gender, mix liberally, and you get a sense of the desperation one feels standing outside the doors of the institutions meant to support our community.

What would happen if hospitals didn’t serve local doctors as well as their patients? Or schools didn’t serve local teachers as well as their students? Instead they contracted with professionals from out of town to heal and teach? What would happen to the local community when doctors and teachers couldn't support themselves here? This is the equivalent of what is happening in our field.

In a short sighted strategy to retain audiences theatres stamp " bound for" or "straight from" New York on a show, leaving the contributions and accomplishments of every local artist out of the equation. This only serves to further dis-empower local talent. Of course this phenomenom is not just happening in Southern California, but pointedly and most urgently for my colleagues, it is by far the worst in our home-town.

I don’t blame anyone working on the problem today. The leaders, the boards, etc are trying to SURVIVE. I applaud their efforts. I remember how hard the work to survive can be.

For almost a generation the whole theatre community has suffered from a retrograde national arts policy, the taboo against supporting independent artists and the obsession for commercial transfers. Out of this, we’ve created a monster over which artists and leadership seem to have almost no control.

Limiting the power of artists in favor of institutions shifted the relationship from our being free agents with grants to spend into our becoming glorified servants of institutions, funders and audiences.

Unlike painters whose value is held in the materiality of their paintings and whose audience and patron are one and the same elite individuals, theatre artists’ value and power is held in trust and, some would say, check by the institutions. Virtually no theatre artist has the means of production in her own hands, and as times have become more difficult, the commercial artist has gained power in the non-profit theatre, while the cutting edge artist (arguably who the non-profits were founded to serve) has lost the leverage to make a deal.

A form of artistic begging's become a regular activity. Wage and fee deflation weren’t far behind. Self-subsidy is now an accepted fact. Try paying for your children's education on a free-lance theatre artists' salary. And thus, by default we've sacrificed ourselves to get by; in a system that we allowed to be subverted. Now with dwindling audiences and difficult fund raising (on top of a world wide recession), the mandate of large theaters is simply "SURVIVE" at any cost. That cost is the health of the artist.

Like a scene on the Titanic, there’s a string quartet playing, while thousands of souls fall overboard.

Now: Imagine the power Southland theaters have to transform the artistic community locally if they consistently support West Coast theatre artists in the way that Chicago has cultivated it own?

As a model, Southland theatres should take a look at the progress
made in the last two decades in raising the global status of local visual artists
and by association Southland conservatories, museum and leadership.

This takes guts. This takes time. This takes a stomach for failure...all of which is very hard for any artistic director to pull off unless the critical, philanthropic and civic community stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

What we need desperately is a regional dialogue about the balance between artists’ needs and institutional needs. We need a conversation about what constitutes a healthy theatre local community. Most urgently, we need to debate how local, state and national support from individuals, boards, foundations and government can create a sustainable arts environment for all.

Eat Local. Art Local.

Corey Madden

Writer/Director

Welcome to The Annoyance Factor

2009-12-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Annoyance Factor-

A composer I know and love uses this term as a way of determining whether a specific choice he's making should stay or go in a new piece of music. He asks "Is this choice annoying enough to remove now or do I find it interesting enough to keep it, knowing it will form the basis of the work to come?"

The crucial choice between whether something is just too annoying or just annoying enough, felt like a provocative prompt for a very personal blog about the struggles and rewards of an artistic life in America today.