On Being a Multi-Disciplinary Artist

" I began to think of myself as a product for sale as opposed to an artist with a unique voice. 

- David F. Chapman, Specialization and Its Discontents

David Chapman wrote an essay for HowlRound back in 2011 about his experiences venturing into solo performance. He had been trying to establish himself as a director in New York for years and was reluctant to identify himself publicly as a multi-disciplinary artist, thinking it would somehow diminish his momentum as a director.

It is a great essay exploring why many artists settle into a single interpretive role in the theatre and how exhilarating and perhaps uncomfortable it can be to take control of your own artistic voice.

I returned to this essay recently after a brief conversation I had with a local Dallas drama critic. She had returned to see my play DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN for a second time. I was glad about this, since the opening night performance she had seen was the first public showing and, of course, the piece has become better and better with each performance for subsequent audiences. We got off on a line of conversation about how many local theatre artists don't see themselves as instigators of their work, but merely guns-for-hire who perform or direct or design for whatever they may drift into.

I mentioned that in 2009 while on a cross country road trip from Texas to Winnipeg I read John Southworth's book SHAKESPEARE THE PLAYER. It centers in on Shakespeare as an actor in his own company and in his own works. It reaffirmed a notion I had abandoned in my early days as a theatre artist... a single artist can drive the vision of a piece of theatre from idea to production and be a part of all the stages of that process. I had abandoned it because it seemed pretentious. I was a young artist and there seems to be a special ring of criticism hell for a young artist who has the presumption to wear more than one hat. The world is not looking for a new Orson Welles. So, I stopped being in the plays I directed or wrote.

It was only when I drifted, in earnest (beyond some small, tentative early attempts), into solo performance with CHOP that I shook off the old worries about how I would be perceived. 

Perhaps it is age, but I care less and less how I am perceived as the maker of the work and more and more preoccupied with how the work itself comes across.

I am about to return to solo performance with my newest piece about a man haunted by an eternal goldfish and I am excited to continue to play in that sandbox of multi-disciplinary work.

How to Make a Pie Tin Robot Hat... Tutorial

DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN keeps on chugging...

Brad McEntire as Robot and Jeff Swearingen as Dinosaur in
Audacity Theatre Lab's DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN

My show DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN has opened at the Bath House Cultural Center as part of the Festival of Independent Theatres. We have performed two shows of a six show run. The audiences seem to be digging it and the press has been positive so far. 

I am extremely proud of this show. On many fronts, for me as a theatre artist, it is the most difficult show I've done in a long while. I'm acting, designing, directing and marketing a play I wrote myself. It has been a tremendous amount of work and occupied that space several notches outside my comfort zone (which is the space I normally strive to be in my work). It is both the most fun I've had in a while on stage as well as the single biggest cause of stress. I'll post more on the process as it finishes up the run. For now, I wanna encourage any and all to come out and see the show. 

The show is funny and weird and charming and harsh and tender and layered. Above all, it is - in a very undiluted way - the kind of theatre I'm proud of creating right now, the kind I believe in and the kind I would want to experience myself if I were sitting in the audience.

Info on the show, including performance schedule, HERE.

DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN opens this week!

Taken by Ruth at the final Dress Rehearsal.

My play DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN opens this week! I'm really proud of this piece. It is all the things I like in theatre: weird, funny, touching, spontaneous and difficult to pull off. Come see it.

Details and performance times HERE.

What is New and What is Abandoned

Paul Valéry 

I am part of a New Works thread of local playwrights where I live and recently the discussion touched on the vague phrase "New Plays." 

A local critic made a passing statement in a review about a recent production at one of the area's larger theatres. Despite the fact the work had not been transferred to New York yet, it had received development and productions elsewhere before playing in the Dallas area. The critic cited this and, therefore, did not consider the piece a "new work."

This launched a discussion about what constitutes a "new play."

My belief is that the phrase we use, "new work," is too vague to have adequate meaning nowadays. For instance, a few years ago, Dallas had a slew of Sarah Ruhl plays presented over the course of a year, year and half. Every play presented had been seen at multiple other theatres around the country either previously or at roughly the same time they were being shown for Dallas audiences. All of the plays were published. But Sarah Ruhl (and I really do love her stuff) was marketed as a "new playwright" presenting us with "new work."

When does a play stop being "new?" This is one of the things I struggled with when I worked as a Literary Manager. 

Theatres are often, and usually in an unspoken way, reluctant to do honest-to-goodness new work. That is, unless it is a world premiere. It seems preferable to find a piece that has some legs, but is still under the national radar. Proven enough, but not something everyone else has had a crack at yet.

The problem here is, there is no name for this kind of work. Could we call it "new-ish?"

As I've progressed as a playwright, I have formed my own theory on the definition of what constitutes a "new play." It is new, or in-progress/development, as long as the original creator(s) of the piece are still working on it.

Poet Paul Valéry famously said "a poem is never finished, only abandoned." This is how I regard plays. Only when they are released into the world, outside the involvement (and protection) or the original creators, only then is it no longer "new." This includes publication. If a play is published or otherwise available in the marketplace for anyone, anywhere to produce, then it is no longer new.

This does not preclude the playwright from still working on the piece, it only acts as the dividing line representing when a play is no longer "new."

A play is, like a poem, never finished. I think sometimes theatre artists are too quick to move on from one project to the next. We enjoy our gypsy encounters. But sticking with something over a long time can be beneficial. It can't indefinitely stay new, but it also doesn't necessarily need to be pushed out into the world too quickly. I profited hugely by taking my solo show CHOP around to various festivals and playing before different audiences over a two year span.

There is an anecdote about the director Peter Brook (one of my long distant mentors). Directors usually leave the production process after a play hits opening night. Not Brook. He watches it and continues to work on it well into the run.

He rehearsed a scene from his production CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS on the day of the final performance in Paris. The play had had a lengthy run. Asked why he was rehearsing on the final day of the run, he replied, "There's no reason that tonight's audience should be denied a potential improvement."

I love that.

Brook knows there's always room for improvement and, though it is the goal to strive towards, perfection is impossible.That's how it is. Theatre is ephemeral, perishible, but that is where it draws its strength from. It isn't set. You can keep going back to the theatre. It is the only form of artistic expression that can be changed at any time.

I conclude with another Paul Valéry quote. Here he is explaining the thought behind his "never finished..." saying: 

In the eyes of those who anxiously seek perfection, a work is never truly completed - a word that for them has no sense - but abandoned; and this abandonment, of the book to the fire or to the public, whether due to weariness or to the need to deliver it for publication, is a sort of accident,  compared to the letting-go of an idea that has become so tiring or annoying that one has lost all interest in it.