A grab bag of news
Foundational
Congratulations to all the playwrights in town who were recently named as either Jerome and McKnight fellows! For the winners who were already located in Minnesota, thanks for making us look good. For the winners who were not already in Minnesota but will be moving here to take up a fellowship at the Playwrights' Center, we're looking forward to your witty observations about the winter (seriously, though, buy a new coat). And, for Erik Ehn, who was named a "national resident playwright," I guess you can stay in Rhode Island.
For the rest of us, though, the hunt for sweet foundation money is far from over. The Knight Foundation has announced a sequel to its Arts Challenge for St. Paul. Hopefully, like any sequel, it will be bigger, louder, more expensive and contain more explosions than the original. Even you Minneapolitans (Is that what we call people from Minneapolis? It sounds like an ice cream flavor), are invited to apply. If you can string together 150 words about art, you meet the qualifications to apply.
Equity Fight!
Last week on News and Notes, we looked at the curious conflict over the 99-seat plan for Equity theaters in Los Angeles. That article went to print the day before AEA made its decision. As I suspected, Actor's Equity decided to go against the wishes of the LA actors who overwhelmingly voted against changing the plan.
In response to the vote, though, Equity did tweak the proposed changes a little, adding some grandfather clauses and updating showcase regulations in an attempt at compromise. So, I guess that's it. Everyone can go home now. I'm sure after this, everyone will be placated, and there will be no more angry words and protests.
Oh, who am I kidding… The last time Equity tried to overhaul its waiver situation in LA, it was called the Waiver Wars for a reason. So, welcome, friends, to the opening salvo of Waiver War II.
There were already plenty of passionate articles out there in the ether about how Equity's change was going to curb stomp LA's small theater scene. Now we're going to start seeing plenty of articles about how the actor's union doesn't care about its actors. And we're seeing defenders of the change line up with assurances that the change will help the theater scene in the long run.
It would be nice if this could be settled amicably, but based on the history of battles between LA actors and Equity, I doubt that it will. In the meantime, fire up the grills and spread your blankets out in the park, because the fireworks are just getting started.
The latest prince of Denmark
Out on the internets, I came upon an article about a production of Hamlet at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. I know, another production of Hamlet, but stick with me for a minute. The twist this time is not a LOLcat interpretation or that Hamlet is a rock and roll prince of space or that the entire cast has been replaced with ninjas or even tiny ninja figurines. This time, it's that Hamlet, the ever-conflicted prince of Denmark, is being played by a black woman.
Unfortunately, that article was on Upworthy, which means that there is precious little in the way of actual content contained between its frantic headlines and GIFs, so I dug a little further to try to find out what the deal is. As it turns out, there do not seem to be any record of an black woman playing the part at a professional stage before, so that's pretty cool. However, it doesn't seem like the director put much thought into that aspect of it, and based on the reviews of the show I've seen, it looks like she has some far weirder things she's working out with this production than saying something about race, gender and performance.
I went in hoping to dig up something about the significance of this milestone being crossed, and I can't really find anyone who's come up with anything more than the fact that it's a milestone being crossed. Most of the reviews have focused on the strange stylistic choices the director and designers brought to the table, so maybe the big deal about a black woman playing Hamlet is that it's not really a big deal.
Which is pretty cool. It's a further extension of the line of women playing Hamlet (including this upcoming local one from Theatre Unbound). This is, however, not proof that we now live in a magical post-race, post-gender society. It just means that race and sex in casting are much more complex than we usually think. Thankfully, Michael Feingold's most recent Thinking About Theater entries are about this very subject. I highly recommend reading both parts one and two for a very thoughtful examination of the subject. I apologize to you regular Upworthy readers for the lack of GIFs and exclamation points in the title.
Big and small
Joe Dowling's out taking his final victory lap before finally exiting the Guthrie and the Twin Cities for good. Sure, he says he'll stay in touch, and we'll always be friends; but, Joe, we both know these long-distance things just don't work. We've got a younger, sexier Joe on the way, anyway.
I'm sure Dowling will spend a good deal of the few months he's got left doing interview after interview until the very sight of a microphone and a reporter with a soothing radio voice makes his brain burst with explosive rage, but in the meantime, he seems very happy to answer all your questions.
Unfortunately, a lot of the questions that people are asking him are about that big blue building. It's undoubtedly his lasting legacy for the Guthrie, but the fascination with it has always befuddled me a little. Whenever some arts organization puts together the funds (or convinces its local municipality to cough up the money) to get some new digs, they almost always opt for the "bigger is better" idea. The Clyde Fitch Report ran a an interesting article recently on the political prestige problems that push organizations into bigger and more unsustainable building.
But there's no reason theater needs giant theaters. While trying to read up on that production of Hamlet in Philadelphia, I read an article about a local group there that does "theatre house calls". I thought that was pretty cool as well. Then I recalled Laura Holway's Small Art project, Open Eye Theatre's driveway tour and Off-Leash Area's garage tour, and I was reminded that the Twin Cities is already well ahead of the curve in thinking small.
Discuss amongst yourselves
The audience feedback session. The talkback. The post-show discussion. I know a lot of actors who dread the moment that happens at least once in every run in which they are forced to sit on a stage and interact with an audience as themselves without even a character, an accent or a jaunty hat to hide behind. But these things don't need to be awkward and weird, even if you are. The folks at Minnesota Theater Love have some suggestions for you theater types on how to make a post-show discussion better.
