BLOG: LORT House Down

Tony (Reprise) I swore that I would not talk about the Tonys again. As it turns out, I am a liar. Last week on News and Notes, I spent an entire column complaining petulantly about the Tony Awards. I was not alone in this. It turns out that there are plenty of people like me who aren't all that in to them, either. Thank you, internet, for your continued service in connecting people who share the same irrational hatred. It doesn't help that the Tonys made a weird decision for their broadcast this year that pissed off a lot of people. Apparently, they cut the classic In Memoriam segment from the live broadcast. It was released as a separate video which, according to official spokespeople, allowed them to make the segment longer by freeing it from the shackles of segmented TV time. Of course, this also meant that fewer people overall would see it, especially since the broadcast didn't direct people to the Memoriam video or even acknowledge its existence. (Tony Kushner gave the best quip about this: “Next year maybe they could make the In Memoriam segment even longer by reading it backstage, or in someone’s living room!”) At any rate, if you would like to watch it yourself, you can find the video at YouTube. The Sound and the Fury So, how else are the Tonys pissing people off? Last week, the Tony Awards Administration Committee voted to cut the awards for Sound Design starting next year. I'm sure they thought no one would notice, especially since the Sound Design awards have only existed since 2008. But, like so many things before, the Administration Committee was dead wrong. A lot of people cried foul at this decision. An online petition against the decision racked up thousands of signatures almost immediately. I'm not here to tell you what to think of this. It's easy to say that this is more proof that the Tonys are really just a shallow advertisement for the New York theater industry more concerned with parading around celebrities to drive ticket sales than with actually honoring any sort of real achievement in theater. But I won't say that (except for that previous sentence where I totally did.) At any rate, if you want to get in on the sweet petitioning action, you can find it here. Closeout! Everything Must Go! Let's leave New York behind and pay attention to something that happened on the other side of the continent last week, something with far more interesting and serious ramifications for the rest of us. On June 11, San Jose Repertory Theatre announced without warning that that it was closed. Not that it would be closing in the near future. That it was already closed. In fact, according to the press release, the company had already ceased operations two days before the announcement. This was not wholly unseen. Just prior to the official announcement, rumors were swirling that the 34-year-old company was in big financial trouble. SJ Rep very nearly closed back in 2006 already, before a $2 million bailout from the city temporarily saved it. "So what?" you might ask, sitting here in Minnesota, blissfully unaware. "Why should I care about some theater in some other city closing? Didn't you just go on a tirade last week exhorting us to focus on our own theatre scenes?" Listen, hypothetical person asking a straw man question that I clearly set up in order to tear down, this may not be a big deal to you directly, but it might be a harbinger of things to come. San Jose Rep was a LORT house and a major player in its area. Not to mention that the company was one of the many "farm teams" (as I put it last week), feeding new work into the touring and Broadway circuits. SJ Rep was working on a new musical that was rumored to be Broadway bound, but is now kaput. The entire theater industry of America is currently built on a framework of regional players like this, and one of them just went down in flames. Of course, it's easy to say that this is just a financial issue, but San Jose Rep's financial structure was not all that different from the other big regional and repertory theaters in the country. Any arts administrator worth his salt should be doing a post mortem on SJ Rep, or else they might end up doing one on their own company. You've Got to Want to Change The problems at San Jose Rep were structural and not entirely idiosyncratic to that company. In fact, a lot of them are endemic in the rest of the national theater system. How do we go about changing that? Everyone and their mother has a grand plan, but I stumbled across a couple of interesting ideas that don't require laborious top-down change. Colin Mitchell at L.A.'s Bitter Lemons wrote an opinion piece recently asking theater audiences to stop looking to "support" theater and start looking to "enjoy" theater. Why? As he put it: "By continuously placing theater in a weakened-we-need-your-help-like arena you remove it from the world of entertainment and frame it as if it were something in need of charity and emotional support. As if it simply can’t stand on its own as a piece of entertainment, something to be enjoyed, something that allows for escape from reality, or inspiration or enlightenment or just pure titillation." It's a small change in thinking, but one that can force a sea change in practice at the big theater companies. Imagine theaters that are not dying from lack of support, but are instead thriving because they actually prove entertainment that people willfully pay for? On the business side, Chicago playwright and director Brian Golden penned an essay a few years back exhorting theatre artists to treat their careers as a serious business. That is, instead of dreaming of big breaks and Broadway, they should take the practical steps of demanding better pay and investment in individuals at a local level. Again, this is a small change in thinking, but collectively, it can force a change in the paradigm we have now, where the theater industry is built on the backs of thousands of actors, designers and technicians who earn very little money. But Don't Look So Glum Hey, guys! Don't look so sad. I know that I mostly tell you horrible, dispiriting things about your life's work in the theater, but there are some bright spots. Look at this: Jane Chu was confirmed by the US Senate as the new NEA chair, without the usual stonewalling or grandstanding about killing the NEA that normally accompanies such things. Also, apparently performance art is back, baby! And it's becoming big business. So break out your latex body suit, your giant canvas and your bottles of Hershey's syrup and celebrate! But, if you do insist on looking glum, at least do it correctly. You can start by consulting this acting guide from 1889.