The space quest continues

Bash!

Hey there, Playlist lovers! Remember last year when the benevolent overlords at Minnesota Playlist threw a big party to celebrate the theater community (and, not coincidentally, the launch of the new and improved Minnesota Playlist website you are currently perusing)? Well, it was such a fine time that the powers that be here have decreed that it shall happen again.

Mark your calendars for January 9, 2016. Playlist will be throwing its second Winter Bash at Bedlam Lowertown, and you can come down and help ring in the new year in style. There will be a band. There will be a DJ. I don't know who yet, but suffice it to say that you will dance your collective asses off. (And, please, keep your asses clearly marked so that they can be returned to you at the end of the night).

Keep watching the site for a more official announcement to come soon. In the meantime, you'll have to party on your own schedule.

Correction

Last week on News and Notes we discussed a couple of strange casting decisions that drew the ire of the playwrights whose work was being done. This included the casting of a white man to play Martin Luther King, Jr., a decision that should have made even the most clueless believer in our supposed "post-racial society" go "huh?"

Previously, I said, "To be fair, the director of the show actually cast both a white man and a black man to play king, who each performed the show on different nights, but I guess the black actor must have missed the photo shoot or something." I have to make a correction to that statement. As it turns out, I was being too fair. He didn't just miss the photo shoot: all of the performances ended up being done by the white guy.

But, let's not blow this out of proportion. It's just one eight-performance run of a show at a university. That doesn't speak to the status of the rest of the industry, right? Just look at what's supposed to be the pinnacle of theater in America: Broadway. Onstage New York is having a banner year for diversity. So, everything's cool here, right?

But who makes your words?

Except… (there's always an "except", isn't there) That's only true onstage. Behind the scenes, Broadway is still strangely homogeneous. White men still dominate the ranks of designers, directors, technicians and playwrights. Recent efforts to diversify the whole American landscape of theater  have been particularly focused on playwrights. This is probably due to the fact that the internet is driven by words, and playwrights do dabble in words. If the internet was a series of blocking notes or costume measurements, it might be a different story.

Regardless, playwrights have been out there, loud and proud, banging on doors and demanding their revolution. And it looks like it may be forming. The recently-declared Jubilee is really about diversifying playwriting.  The LA Times' Charles McNulty recently bandied about the idea that we are actually entering a revolutionary moment for new playwrights. Perhaps in response to the Kilroys list, TCG is out trumpeting the 80+ of its member theaters that have already gender parity in their playwright choices.

So, that's good. Now if we could just solve the systemic problems in getting new plays to market…

Nimbus interruptus

Last week, I received a message from Nimbus Theatre (who run the one theater space conveniently located in my neck of the woods) that made me a little sad. It reads, in part:

"It's been five years, and our lease is up for renewal. The landlords want to raise the rent. A lot. More than double. So it's time to move. It's time for something new."

It's true. Nimbus is moving. To where? We don't know yet. How long until they open again? All they can say is "Big things are coming in 2016." In the interim, the Twin Cities will be short one more small theater space.

Don't wait

As we've talked about before, there is a bit of a squeeze going on in the Twin Cities when it comes to small theater space. Gremlin Theatre closed the doors on its St. Paul Midway space 2013 and has yet to land in new digs. The Theatre Space Project was squeezed out of its downtown St. Paul space, the Lowry Lab, in 2013. They had plans to move to a new building, which seem to have fallen through. The Cedar-Riverside People's Center Theater quietly closed up shop sometime this year without so much as a press release. And, as soon as the pin is pulled on new development at Franklin and Lyndale in Minneapolis' Wedge neighborhood, the Theatre Garage will go offline for an extended period of time. In that time, only one new official small theater—Phoenix Theater—has come online.

Since it opened in 2010, the Nimbus space has been packed with small theater companies who will now be scattering around the city, placing more pressure on the shrinking infrastructure of affordable small houses. Thankfully, Nimbus says it will be returning with an even larger, improved space.

What happens until then? Companies will innovate, and will land in smaller, more unconventional spaces. I just went to Savage Umbrella's new rehearsal space in St. Paul to see a production of Equus, and my own company's rehearsal space recently played host to someone else's new devised piece. Neither of these spaces were originally intended to be performance venues, but the inquiries keep coming.

But companies are willing to go even more unconventional. We already have a small cadre of companies like Mixed Precipitation and Ten Thousand Things that eschew any kind of traditionally "theatrical" kinds of spaces. And there are Off-Leash Area's penchant for performing in garages is one model. Squeezing performance into your living room with Small Art is another.

We live in interesting times, friends. I look forward to seeing what you all do when you can't find a theater, but you still have a burning desire to perform.

(But, please, make sure that you're getting the proper licensing if it applies. I can say from experience that getting a cease and desist order from the city is a panic-inducing moment that you really don't want in your life.)

Sources

Hey! Did you ever want to see an infographic about the source material for Broadway musicals over the past five decades? My, what a strangely specific desire. Well, here it is, you weirdo. Now you get to look at the growth in jukebox musicals and despair.