What does pro-am theatre look like?

The always restless American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage has launched an online journal of provocations, HowlRound. Here is Meiyin Wang on "The Theatre of the Future":

Theater will be performed by audiences—as in Rotozaza’s Etiquette—where two participants sit across from each other at a café table, listening to instructions over headphones, moving around objects and participating in the enactment of a narrative. Or, as in Gob Squad’s Kitchen, where the collective attempt to recreate Andy Warhol’s underground movies, where by the end, the four performers are replaced by four audience members on stage, participating in this quirky meditation of the unknowability of the past and optimism for the future.

And furthermore:

I quote Ben Cameron, from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, who spoke so beautifully at Under The Radar this January—who compared the religious reformation in the 15^th century and our current Arts Reformation—“which is dramatically shaped by new technologies and a massive redistribution of knowledge. With the means for cultural and artistic production and distribution having been democratized. There is a term, pro-am, amateurs who are doing work professionally—a group expanding our aesthetic vocabulary, even as they assault our traditional notions of cultural authority and undermine the assumed ability of traditional arts organizations to set the cultural agenda.”
 
With increasing interactivity and participation from audiences who are no longer satisfied to be on just the receiving end, content changes. Form changes. Authorship changes.

First of all, let me say I’m just in awe of your use of language.

Talkback: a play about talkbacks by Liz Duffy Adams, "In Which the Great Majority of the Talkback Dialogue Has Been Collected Verbatim Over the Years, about Various Plays by Various People."

T-Rex as playwright

I am pretty sure one of my students actually wrote this play.* 


*NOT ONE OF MY CURRENT STUDENTS OF COURSE! YOU ARE ALL TOO SMART FOR THAT.

My kind of gimmick (and title): Panic! Euphoria! Blackout

When you buy a ticket to Talking Band's upcoming show, Panic! Euphoria! Blackout, you become a shareholder of the performance you're attending. The more people who buy a ticket to that performance, the greater the dividend. So do your part and reap the rewards.

This is how it works:
 

Purchase a ticket online at www.here.org or call 212.352.3101. 

You will receive an email confirming your purchase and you can then track the current value of your shares. Bring your reservation confirmation to the theatre where you will receive your stock certificate and cash dividend.

My Kind of Theatre = Marina Abramović: "The Artist is Present"

From the series of photos being generated as MoMA visitors sit in silent meditation facing Marina Abramović. The pilgrim above is reported to be the eight-year-old daughter of Björk and Matthew Barney.

Celebrities from the photo stream (and more about the work)

Complete photo stream

A Radio Play

Many of us spend part of each day in an acoustic world of our own choice, thanks to our little white earbuds. Doesn't it seem that this era would have produced at some kind of rebirth for radio drama? Yes, we have podcasts, and the narrative nonfiction of This American Life is among the most used. But I expected some enterprising theatre person to discover a way to move radio plays back on to the platter of American experience. They never left the BBC, where you can still hear, on any given day, a new play written for the ear.

There are voices out there, calling to us. Karinne Keithley's basement tapes of the mole cabal. Or Hotel Savant's The Archery Contest. One of the most inspiring pieces of theatre for me is actually a concert piece, Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together. (Worth seeking out: the unhistrionic version by California Ear Unit.) And then there is that rare animal, the richly imagined concept album yearning to be staged (or filmed?) — for example God in Three Persons by The Residents, or the new work at hand.

The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is the 22nd album by Sparks, who are almost certainly the most interesting pop band old enough to be your fathers. While it may overstay its welcome a bit, it's the kind of new radio play I imagined this age would bring: not designed for the family sitting around the radio, but an intimate headphone drama for the inside of the listener's skull. In 2010, is the internal monologue the ideal storytelling medium?

My Kind of Theatre = a play with a putting green in the lobby

Starting half an hour before every show, Talking Band will be hosting a variety of activities in the extraordinary 3LD lobby space, to prepare you for the adventure to come.

Attendees can get in a couple of holes on our putting green, enjoy a rousing shuffleboard match, or challenge others to a game of darts. You'll also be able to peruse our art gallery, and bid on original art inspired by ocean journeys. 

Talking Band's New Islands Archipelago at 3LD

The American Theatre as a Shuttered Organic Grocery

Theater really reminds me of an organic food store that just closed in my neighborhood. When I first moved here, I thought, "Wow, there's an organic food store here. This is a great neighborhood." But I never shopped there because everything was so expensive. They are liquidating now and everything is 50% off and I went to buy some things. I went to a counter with all these boxes that were covered in dust and when all was said and done, I still thought that it was too expensive. I think theater is similar. Who wouldn't want a theater to open up in their neighborhood? But, can a community afford to sustain these theaters under the current models? The answer is clearly -- no. Too often, we are in the business of catering to wealthy people, while leaving everyone else sitting in front of the tvs with their microwave dinners. What are we left with? Over-priced, dusty boxes of well-intentioned food.

I Interview Playwrights Part 151: Kenneth Lin