Beth Hoyt in video rough of a monologue in “Transition”
originally in my play “The Wife”,
which was workshopped by P73.
“Transition”,
which I co-created and directed,
is having its world premiere
at the Under The Radar Festival,
Jan. 7-17, 2009
Show info at:

http://www.publictheater.org/content/view/167/275/

The problem with expressing your opinions as a playwright is that you will never get produced, ever. At least it feels that way. Especially us up-and-comers — we are told to develop our voices boldly, but this doesn’t actually mean that we should offer our opinion about how the business of theatre is currently running. (Unless you’re Mike Daisey, then you can do anything you want, and God bless him.)

The atmosphere of playwrights offering frank commentary feels like 2003, during the Bush Administration — there is a whole lot wrong, but we’re too afraid to offer our version of the truth. I wish I could publish half the conversations I had last week with playwrights and actors and directors — frustration and confusion and disillusion as toothless irrelevant small-minded productions pass quietly in front of audiences, much better television shows flickering in the back of their minds.

Not every play should be as aggressive as “Blasted”, that amazing play with an amazing production currently playing at Soho Rep. But we can do better. “Blasted” is perhaps the best example of why we go to theatre — and it is not to *enjoy* ourselves. This is a tradition that started with thousands of Greeks watching Oedipus gouge his eyes out. And the Greeks were like, “Now I’ve learned something about my attraction to my mother.” They were surely shocked, and they may have been outraged, but they were definitely stirred, definitely unable to go back to they way they thought previously, and that’s what theatre is for.

For me, “Blasted” felt like the end of theatre, the end of the conversation that started with The Greeks. It unfolds like a regional theatre play gone to hell, a Fuck You to anyone who would ever want to sit through another Ayckbourn comedy or measured play about Iraq (take your pick; there are at least a dozen playing right now to snoozing audiences comparing the the on-stage drama to the New York Times headlines or that conversation they had with an ACTUAL veteran, i.e. a frustrating maddening 2 hours of wasted time.) I’m used to walking out of a theatre and having that annoying 15 minute “checklist” conversation with my date, then immediately forgetting what I saw. I walked out of “Blasted” nearly a month ago with a violent cloud above my head, unable to speak to anyone, and am still visited by its imagery — Marin Ireland’s terrifying seizures, the loving blowjob ending in a beating, the wild human eyes of Louis Cancelmi’s soldier, Reed Birney violently cradling the soldier like it was the last physical thing on earth, the last line (“Thank you”).

That the play has been sold out for nearly its whole run and been extended twice is a big Middle Finger to everyone who shies away from producing aggressive work that provokes an audience. The old adage of “our subscribers won’t like it” has been rendered false. We always knew it wasn’t true. From here on out I’m lumping people who profess this opinion with the people who said Obama couldn’t be president — the fear of success overwhelming the possibility of change. You know you’re wrong. Have courage. Do the plays you want. The audience will love you for it.

I’m not one of those cranks who rant about the Death of Theatre, which is sort of like ranting about the Death of Drawing — will humans ever *not* pretend like they are other people to one another to make a point about humanity? But, like volcanoes, theatre has a habit of going dormant. I dare you to identify a play of note written in the English language between 1800 and 1900. You will not be able to. Why? For a hundred years, audiences were obsessed with spectacle, Equestrian pageantry, nautical dramas. That is, plays that had explosions in them and horses on stage and huge fake ships sinking into the sets. “Quantum of Solace” made 70 million this weekend. Welcome to the next century.

A photo from our recent workshop of SEXTET in the NYTW rehearsal space. The “1812″ scene. Pictured: Matt D’Amico, Sarah Grace Wilson, Sam “Father Theatre” Tsoutsouvas, Valeri Mudek and Jeff Biehl.

We shot this video for “Transition” but ended up not using it in the final show. I now present it to the p73 blog. Enjoy!

directed by Tommy Smith and Reggie Watts
shot by Austin Elston
sound by Emily Gallagher
editing by Joby Emmons
featuring Dana Acheson, Jess Adcock, Afreen Akhter, Raniah Al-Sayed, Ben Beckley, Aaron Cedolia, Dan Cozzens, Mary Guiteras, Nicholas Hoover, Chris Illing, Mark Karafin, Nick Lewis, Christopher Loar, Michael Markham, Stas May, Sylvia Mincewicz, Nana Mensah, Kyra Miller, Aimee Mullins, Erica Newhouse, John Pizzolato, Jessica Pohly, Livia Scott, Jen Taher, Han Tang, Geraldine Visco

A device that simulates the effects of being in another dimension.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine

Dream Machine from Tommy Smith on Vimeo.

PERFORMER REGGIE WATTS, CHOREOGRAPHER BILL T. JONES, AND PLAYWRIGHT LISA D’AMOUR AMONG 2008 MAP FUND GRANTEES

NEW YORK, NY (July 15, 2008) – The Multi-Arts Production Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, announces the recipients of its 2008 grants for new work in live performance. Thirty-eight projects, engaging more than 70 individual composers, choreographers, designers, solo performers, and playwrights will receive awards ranging from $10,000 to $40,000. In addition to the monetary award, as part of Creative Capital’s commitment to helping artists sustain their creative practices over a lifetime, grantees will take part in a professional development weekend retreat, which offers skills-building assistance in fundraising, networking, marketing, and strategic planning.

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Portland, OR
Reggie Watts: Transition
Lead Artist: Reggie Watts, Tommy Smith
A theatrical employment of visual and linguistic tricks to destabilize the mind and render it open to suggestion.

See full article at: www.mapfund.org/announcement_188.html

I just experienced a couple months (two) where I simply could not write. Or rather, write anything good. Granted, I kept busy during this time — thankfully, I’m co-creating and directing Reggie Watts’ next show (www.pica.org/festival_detail_new.aspx?eventid=337) otherwise I would have been in Kafka-like despair for lack of creative output.

But for a writer, writing is a very important thing. And when you can’t do it, or feel like you can’t do it, your total sense of worth goes down the tubes. Drinking has an added tinge of despair. The sky seems duller. You wake up and think: This again?

Enter into my last few months. It started with my last p73 reading of THE WIFE, which got such a total and baffling response that it simply shut me down. You get three tiers of response from readings. There is the superficial level — everyone smiling and saying good work. This is always appreciated, of course, but you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are two subcategories here: People who are on your side, and whether they liked it or not, will give you honest response that will benefit your thinking in further drafts. The other: People who don’t care for your artistic project in general, and will lob comments aimed to kneecap your worth as an artist and, by proxy, human being.

Many times, the latter category are playwrights themselves. After the reading, I found myself cooking breakfast for a playwright friend of mine who was present at the reading, and as I was frying the eggs slowly over the stovetop, I was greeted with passive-agressive and outright vicious comments about my naive assumptions about Jews and women. A week later, I found myself on a train with another playwright, who similarly had major problems with how I could *possibly* depict people in this manner. In both cases, they assumed I didn’t know my tactics — that the childish and self-centered and racially incorrect POV that the play employs was somehow a mistake of my misguided perception. (read the play here to see for yourself: www.vimeo.com/tommysmith) Of course, I smiled and said nothing during these interrogations — the only thing worse than a playwright writing a play is a playwright defending a play.

When I get stuck in these situations, I wonder if people are superimposing their desire to see the narrative conform with how they view the world. I know I do this when I see work. Playwrights are people with stubborn and inflexible points-of-view — without this, we wouldn’t be able to write.

But when this stubborn and inflexible point of view becomes dilluted, we pause. We reconsider. We evaluate our tactics and purpose for writing our narrative. And we entertain the death-knell for any artist: Maybe they’re *right*.

I can’t claim why Writer’s Block happens to anyone else, but for me, it always occurs when I listen to people too much. You can’t shut yourself off to all comments, of course, because you’re in theatre, and without a certain level of communication it all falls apart. But when you feel people aren’t understanding your work, and they are letting their frustration with your project overwhelm their decency in conveying their response, you must not listen to them anymore. Even if they are right. Because the worst thing that can inflict you as an artist is a multiplicity of voices inside your consciousness. How can you possibly express yourself or your characters if you are trying to pay heed to the multiple desires of an outside commentators? I’ve seen so many promising plays destroyed by “committee” — the playwright, in an effort to make their work please everyone, creates a monster that contains a lot of elements but has no driving perspective. I would rather see a searing play from a singular voice with flawed dramaturgy (e.g. Thomas Bradshaw) than a well-made drama with nothing to say because it has three or four voices competing for dominance.

I was receiving so many varied comments on THE WIFE — many positive, some negative, all with a strong point-of-view on how it should be *different* — that I literally had to flee the city. I went to LA — Reggie and I decided to construct our show while crashing a series of couches. And the detachment ended up cutting down the voices rolling in my head. I ate lots of cheeseburgers. I swam in rolling waves. I hung out with my LA friends, who are *convinced* that everything (aside from global evidence to the contrary) is going to be all right. I disengaged. Five days before I left, I woke up with an idea, and that idea led me to my computer, and before I knew it I had the narrative for my next play. Nothing *happened* — I just stopped listening, and made myself unavailable to commentary.

I know much more accomplished playwrights than I who have been crippled by reviews, or stopped writing temporarily because of how something was received. The Block happens at all levels, at all times, all ages.

I don’t really have a final thought or aphorism to summarize all the above. I should probably get back to writing…

(Addition on 7/13/08: Just talked with Thomas Bradshaw. What I mean by “flawed dramaturgy” is that the strong idiosyncrasies of the writing and subject matter force the play to not conform to a easily recognizable structure, and in many cases, refuse to include characters we can “identify with”. I simply don’t understand this need for “identification” in characters — when I listen to classical, I don’t complain when a violin solo is too complex and out of my experience, and nor should people care if they can’t see their desires reflected in complex and challenging writing, because there are millions of different experiences and you should be grateful that you’re getting to experience one that it outside yourself.

Regardless, “flawed” plays often render themselves useless in the eyes of producers and literary managers, who have been forced to concern themselves with the desires of a phantom audience. But these kind of plays include everything by Caryl Churchill, Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”, Sam Shepard through the 80s, Charles Mee, everything by Harold Pinter, etc. In short, masterpieces. AND the only plays we remember from that era. So the argument could be made: Flawed plays with strong points-of-view have shaped the history of theatre.)

Michael McQuilken (man in video) and I are going to Prague Theatre Festival later this month to perform our co-written show “A Day In Dig Nation”. We just re-staged the opening; Michael needed this for rehearsal purposes. Rehearsal space is my loft. Imagine an intricate projection sequence going on behind Michael, illustrating the sound & foley…

Reggie Watts and I curate a performance event “Occurrence” at Ars Nova. Our show last week featured a commissioned piece by the Neo-Futurists, a standing monologue by Mike Daisey, Lathrop Walker, Beth Hoyt, Havilah Brewster and more. We also shoot short films for the event, and we paired this one with “On Playwriting”. Reggie and I wrote and directed this. I don’t really know what it means.