OF Video Posted

The video from our convening around Outrageous Fortune is now on our site.

Outrageous Fortune Photos Published

Visit facebook.com/theatrebayarea. In this photo: Outrageous Fortune authors Todd London (center) and Ben Pesner, with Theatre Development Fund's Victoria Bailey. Photo by Claire Rice for Theatre Bay Area.

Outrageous Fortune Afterthought

The authors of Outrageous Fortune offered up an extraordinary presentation today, and also headed up a very intelligent question and answer session. I was really quite energized by the depth of the discussion.

After the event I was exhausted, mostly from liveblogging, but also from a sense that I usually get after such convenings: I get so overloaded with thoughts and ideas that I get a little discouraged that we can ever solve these big questions. When we start with the economics of being a playwright and end up with conversations about audiences, audience attendance, funding and all these other huge things, where do we start?

On the BART ride home I suddenly remembered an article from a recent issue of Fast Company magazine. If you're like me and get a little discouraged, you may find a bit of hope in the article. Actually, nearly everyone can find some hope in the article.

Here's the article, but I'll summarize. It's about poverty in Vietnam, how so many people and companies have been working on the problem of poverty in rural areas, and how unsolvable the problem seemed to be. When you think of poverty, you think of the lack of clean water, the lack of medical supplies--all these big huge things that seem (and maybe are) unsolvable. But one guy went in and instead of enumerating problems, he looked at success. He found that while many children of impoverished families were malnourished, not all of them were malnourished. So he studied what the successful mothers were doing, what they were feeding their children, and how often. Then he brought all of the mothers in the village together so the mothers of the healthy children could teach the other mothers what kinds of food to prepare and how often to feed the children. Not only did this solve the problem of malnourished children in the village, it solved it for the next several generations because the mothers passed on what they learned to the next generation, who passed it on and on....

I love this example for a couple of reasons: It shows how big problems can be solved if you start small and locally and, even better, the people in the village were empowered to solve the problem themselves--with a little guidance from someone on the outside, but still, the guy didn't prescribe solutions for the mothers. Some of the mothers already had the solutions at their disposal, and they taught the others.

As the authors of Outrageous Fortune pointed out, many things that we're doing in the Bay Area are working. Many theatre people and companies in the Bay Area have the solutions at their fingertips, and those solutions may just be impacting one "family" (company, or group of artists), but if the rest of us could learn what they are, we can adapt them. And maybe the success will spread. And maybe the success will stay with us for the next generation, and the next.

OF: 11 Finale

Opportunities to do self-productions in empty spaces.

Playwright: It's an AD prerogative to accept or reject a play, but sometimes they don't have a good answer for why they do. Which leads me to question of how plays are really selected?

AD: I don't have the time or staff to read plays. I pick people. It's about people. I invest deeply in artists.

It's 2 p.m., have to stop.

Please keep checking our site within the next few days for video and audio. And, I'll post some updates on video/audio progress.

And, I'd love to hear your comments on the liveblogging and what you've read here. Again, this isn't the most accurate snapshot--this subject has a ton of nuances, so if something written here seems totally off base, it may be because typed words can't capture tone of voice, body language, and I couldn't capture every single word.

That said, Theatre Bay Area plans to continue this conversation at our Annual Conference in May, and I'm hoping to publish more in-depth articles in the magazine.

Thanks for reading.....

OF: 10

Convo with audience; authors had to catch a plane.

Books ends with "what shall we do?" What are some things that may help?

Audience:
I was struck by call for authentic conversation. Can TBA and TDF start these conversations?
[TBA's Rebecca Novick asks audience to finish sentence, "I wish..."]
I wish theatres would share audiences more.
I wish that plays didn't have to run for only 6 weeks.
I wish theatre companies would have more robust websites, at least so they have last three years production history with title, playwright and short synopsis.
I wish theatres wouldn't make assumptions about their audience.
I wish theatres would do more audience surveys.
I wish I could find plays by new playwrights in anthologies.
Bigger companies spend a lot of money on productions (carpenters get more money than actors).
I wish big companies would help small companies financially.
I wish we'd go back to when regional theatre was regional theatre. We are too starstruck.
I wish the work I've seen doesn't wither on the vine. (He reads plays that aren't done.)
I wish for a venue to create authentic dialogue.
I wish playwrights wouldn't assume that every play they wrote was worthy of production.
I wish playwrights wouldn't take it personally if companies don't offer feedback on their submission.
[Discussion in room about whether a theatre should acknowledge submission.]
I wish there were more artistic directors who matched playwrights with directors well (many do).
I wish there was a paid position called playwright-in-residence.

Rebecca: What could change? SF is called out in the book as a place where some stuff works.

I would love to hear more about partnerships between small and large theatres (in context of playwrights holding world premieres for large theatres)?
One example: Cal Shakes and Word for Word with Octavio Solis's work. Cal Shakes and Intersection with Naomi Iizuka. Cal Shakes could be fiscal agent. Cal Shakes notes that it's a successful program for them.
Chicago: When Steppenwolf expanded space they created a space called The Garage where smaller companies produced work in Steppenwolf space with Steppenwolf resources.

Can we get funders in the room and talk about their assumptions and the resources we need?

Rebecca: I'm hearing that funders do understand the damage of premiere-itis, and now they are moving their money toward audience.

Funder: It's moving away from creation and toward bringing it to a larger audience. We as funders can fill in gaps between points of view.

Audience suggestion: Funding should start to look beyond nonprofits and should hook up with individual theatre producers because if you look at the golden age of American playwriting, it was the individual producer that championed the playwright (Albee example).

I wish there were a way to make live performance accessible to a wider audience, to people who work all the time, etc., who can't physically get to plays.

More coming...

OF: 9

"Audiences have a different assumption of participation in larger theatres. Can anyone talk about how that happens"
A [from audience, a playwright]: I'm working with a theatre on a new play and we involved the audiences and communities from the beginning over a period of 2 years and 5 workshops. That's a way I felt directly connected to a community that will feel pumped up about seeing this work. It has to start early on, it has to be part of the theatre's mission statement. It has to be laid into the foundation of the theatre. Also developed a work with a smaller theatre that invites audiences very early on in the process. They have suggestions and I took a few notes. It's a way for those theatres to keep a constant dialogue with those audiences. We could learn from the direct participation of American Idol.

"What would it be for a playwright to write to an audience?"
A: Everyone means different things by this. Some ADs say that my job is to learn how to understand my audience. I have a dialogue with them we push each other. Sometimes it's that I live in a working class neighborhood so upper West Side plays don't work. The playwrights say that no one knows their audience unless they try it. If you do know your audience you'd have a hit every time. There's no way to answer this completely. [Different definitions of audiences.]

"When a movie is produced, they market it to *an* audience, not *the* audience. It seems if you did the former, you'd expand audiences."
A: On the subject of marketing & aud devo, it describes a feeling form playwrights that theatres aren't doing it successfully. The theatres know this, have fallen into a bind of subscription season. But playwrights also say that marketing departments doesn't want to hear from them about how to market their play, unless they're a playwright of color. Playwrights haven't been part of the larger conversation about audience development.

Break time, our authors are leaving. Convo continues after break with audience.

OF: 8

Q&A continued

[A comment about the fact that we're talking from a condition of scarcity. Todd says that the scarcity is coming out of years of abundance. Now people are feeling a pinch.]

"Can you talk more about the shrinking of venues for new work versus the importance playwrights place on small theatres."
A: Playwrights talk about small theatres that have impassioned leaders. Playwrights value these companies. Playwrights who are trying to make a living are in the position that they have to work against their interests of leaving these theatres behind. Also, it takes so long for a play to be produced in larger theatre that often the moment is gone. And yet ADs tell them they aren't writing for today's issues. But how can a playwright cast their lot with a smaller theatre that may close, that doesn't pay them? It's very complicated. Maybe partnerships across size will work.
[Blogger note: this is a very nuanced subject. Please listen to audio for full answer as I can't capture every word here, so full meaning may not come through.]

"Did you get a sense of why funders and everyone else cares about world premieres?"
A: Institutional ego, the fetishizing of the new. Being part of the creation of art. Perception that media cares. If you do a production of a new play and it's not successful, you can tell your board that it's because it was a new play. You can't cover up an unsuccessful production of an established play (internal defense mechanism).
Audience member noted that theatres like world premieres because they get a percentage of money/rights from future productions. Panel noted that many theatres stopped doing this. [Convo continues, lively audience convo on subrights, listen to audio.]

More coming....