My Final Keen Post

For those of you who aren’t avid readers of Variety or Playbill.com, Friday is my last day as Artistic Director of Keen Company. It’s hard to believe that a journey begun over dinner with my roomate at McDonald’s (the first time I talked to anyone about the company), ends so soon, with so many memories and so many feelings. Our resident Director Jonathan Silverstein takes over on Monday as the new Artistic Director, and I am now a Board Member at Keen Company, and the new Dean of Drama at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

There are many things I have thought to write about in this last post. Too many. I want to do a quick bullet list of all the blog posts I would have written if I weren’t moving and taking a huge job and trying wrap things up here. So, here’s all the blog posts I didn’t write but wish I had.

• THANK YOU. This job has been a gift, made possible by the belief and sacrifice of literally hundreds of people. My incredible and dedicated board, my talented staff and artists, the thousands of audience members – the company was a dream come true for me, so thank you all for making it happen.
• THIS BLOG. I started writing it ten months ago at the express request of Board Member Alban Wilson. I am glad I did, it was fun to do and (according to wordpress), I have had more than 6,000 views. It’s not quite Harvard baseball’s CALL ME MAYBE, but it’s a lot more interest than I expected. Thanks for reading.
• MY NEW JOB. More than one person has said this month, “That’s great. That is a perfect job for you.” That might sound like a backwards compliment (what about running Keen Company?), but even a week before I start, I think they might be right. My intellectual pursuits, my interest in teaching, my belief in the future, desire to write, and my philosophical bent are well suited to a school setting. Also, I am directing Sidney Kinglsey’s 1950 drama DETECTIVE STORY this fall. With 42 characters. Hard to do that at Keen Company. And, I have done this job for twelve years – I think change is good and healthy; it’s scary, but I am excited.
• MY FAMILY. I haven’t blogged about them, and I’ll just say this: no one does something like Keen Company alone. My whole family has pitched in, believed in me, supported me, and been there for me through the best and toughest times these last twelve years. Without them there would be no Keen Company, and I love them very much.
• MY BEST FRIEND. Josh Bradford, Keen Company’s lighting designer and production manager, is unique in the off-Broadway world. No one does those two jobs with as much grace, generosity, and cheer as he does. He’s also been a stalwart friend and support, and Keen Company was always better because he was on our team, and I was better because he was my friend.
• POSITIVENESS. Has anyone else noticed something cool about FACEBOOK? It’s mostly good news. “I got married”, “My kid graduated preschool”, “Day off!”, “Great dinner!”, “I’m in a show!”  It’s like the opposite of the evening news: it’s personal, and it’s positive, and it’s celebratory. I know people like to knock it, and maybe it’s just my 1,201 friends, but I think there is a yearning for good news and positive stories. I know this is not a major insight, but I keep thinking about it. It mirrors my feeling about NYC – look at us, we all pretty much get along. It’s beautiful.
• OUR MISSION. All week Jonny and I have been sitting in the office, just talking about what we do and how we do it. There is a lot to tell, but I am not worried, Jonny will figure out his own way to slice the apple. And he’ll do things differently from how I would, and that’s to the good. I think he is dedicated to the core of what we tried to do, and that’s important to me: I always wanted to do plays that affirmed our idea of what might be best in all of us, or plays that talked about the challenges to being our best selves. That left a lot plays to produce, I never felt limited by the mission. It gave me a reason to make plays in the first place. I know Jonathan has embraced that idea – but I hope that even the central idea will continue to evolve and, if need be, change. Keen Company was founded on the premise that there were stories worth telling, and Jonny will find his own reasons for telling them, and new ways of talking about those reasons. I trust and know that whatever comes next, the company will continue to be something I am proud to be associated with. And to me, of course it will always be home.

Thanks for reading. I hope wherever you are, you know that your own story is being written by you each day, and that we have been given a life that we can choose to fill with compassion and generosity. I hope your story includes forgiveness and tolerance, and that the art you see reflects a life lived with the values you wanted it to include. I ask every cast a version of this question on the first day, wouldn’t it be great if we were all our best selves for this time we have? Well, wouldn’t it?

My Benefit Speech

I give a lot of speeches in this job. First rehearsal? Speech. Opening night? Speech. Talkback? Probably starts with a speech. Cocktail party. Reading. On and on. Lots of speechifying. Benefit, big speech.

I don’t write them. Usually, I just think of the first idea. I spend a fair amount of time in the days before my speech trying to think of what I want to focus on – a story or image, something concrete that I can make a symbol and locus for the talk. So a few days before Monday’s 12th Annual Keen Co. Benefit I started thinking. And I thought about this blog, and something I wrote about months ago: Brene Brown’s TED talk (click HERE to watch it).

Specifically, I wasn’t actually thinking about the center of her message. I was thinking about one of her predicates: that is to say, something she says early in her talk, a given that she is building the rest of her argument on. In this case, it’s this early note of hers (here’s the gist of it, I haven’t watched it again): “So, we’re here to connect. We know that. That’s why we’re here.” She explains it some, but she pretty much takes it as a given.

And it’s pretty much the summary of what I hope Keen Company is trying to do, what our work tries to achieve. I can’t remember my speech, but the gist of it is – folks who are at the benefit, they are the reason we’re able to try and complete that important work, connecting us in a world where “Every good thing stands on the razor edge of danger” (as Thornton Wilder eloquently put it). It’s easy to do my job, because the faith of those who make my work possible are proof enough, if I ever need it, that the work is important, and worth doing. It’s easy to work hard when you feel grateful for the chance to work at all.

Benefit Time

On May 14th it’s party time. That’s the date of this year’s Annual Benefit for Keen Company. Every year since Keen Company was founded in 2000 we’ve had an evening with all of our friends, at some point in the season, to celebrate how far we’ve come (and raise cash to keep on going). Some of the parties have gone perfectly (the year we took cocktails at the vintage car showroom and had Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara singing AND SO I WROTE THE MUSIC MAN was pretty great), some less so (once a performer had to stop mid-show and admit he’d maybe had too much wine in the cocktail hour. It’s a good party!) Every year, the event has been marked by an incredible display of generosity and an outpouring of belief in my little theater company. And that always makes it worth the work.

And it is work! Every year we plan a big fancy party, and people pay top dollar to attend. It’s so important to us that we show everyone a good time. Last year was our first event with a full dinner, at Manhattan Penthouse, and I was so thrilled to find out that they are consummate professionals, as concerned as we are to make sure that everyone is taken care of. We are going back to their venue again because everyone enjoyed the space so much (and the food is pretty great too!). It makes for a very intimate performance, and it’s a perfect setting to celebrate a year in which Keen Company sold more tickets than ever before in our history. The whole company is only possible because of the generosity of the people who believe in the work we do, without whom the party would be infinitely less fun.

It’s work to get the night together. But once I’m there, it’s always my favorite night of the year.  Who doesn’t like a party?

Another Kickstarter Idea

A few years ago we did a revival of CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, which gave us the incredible good fortune to work with Alexandria Wailes, a wonderful, talented actress. She is now in the throes of producing a web horror series using deaf actors! It’s such an exciting project! Check it out (well worth it just to watch Alexandria’s pitch. ASL is the most beautiful language in the world, I think…)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/RitualTheatreCompany/god-loves-you-a-dark-horror-web-series-in-asl

Mr. Albee, what’s missing?

I had the great pleasure of seeing Signature Theatre’s production of THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE this weekend. (I’m sorry the title is actually EDWARD ALBEE’S THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE. I think that stuff is pretty silly, but that’s another blog post.)

I have been a great fan of Frank Gehry’s for years; I love his spaces, and the Signature Center did not disappoint, it’s a thrilling environment. I look forward to seeing the other two theaters. But this is another blog post, as well.

What I wanted to write about is something rather curious about Mr. Albee’s play. In EDWARDS ALBEE’S THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE (see, isn’t that silly?) there is (spoilers, I guess) a lot of talk about death and dying. It is all wildly smart. Everyone in the play has a point of view, emotionally, on their relationships. It’s well written – you really get a chance to sympathize with each character, and all of them behave terribly, so you are forced to constantly adjust your view of whether you can sympathize with any of them or not. I have often wondered whether Mr. Albee’s plays aren’t all interested in the question of whether anyone is worthy of sympathy. Which seems a strange thing to wonder, but at any rate, that’s another post as well.

What I want to write about is what’s not there. Faith. There’s no discussion or consideration of religion or belief in the entire play. A play, as I said, about death. I have spent a life surrounded by people of faith, so it never occurred to me how atheists might handle questions of mortality.  I know I am paid to imagine things, but honestly, that one never occurred to me. And having seen it up close, I admit to feeling very lucky to have been raised with it. It’s absence seems very painful and lonely.  (To be fair, they never declare themselves to be atheists, but anyone confronted with this much suffering who is incapable of invoking faith seems, to me, a de facto atheist).

Here’s the funny part: (again, spoiler alert): there is the implication that the mysterious lady & her friend in EDWARD ALBEE’S THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE might themselves, perhaps, represent a figure of divinity or the beyond or something, I suppose… Which, again, makes the absence of any discussion or acknowledgement of faith (to me) a stranger omission. I suppose that, taken in this way, perhaps the play asks: What happens if the divine is just as cold and unfeeling as the atheists who don’t believe in her? And now that I write that, it sounds like an interesting play; certainly foreign to my experience, but interesting.

Thanks Mr. Teachout

From today’s WALL STREET JOURNAL:

“Warren Leight is best known in his latter-day capacity as showrunner for “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” but theater buffs also know him as the author of “Side Man,” a 1998 play about a young man’s attempts to come to grips with the irremediable incompatibility of his trumpet-playing father and alcoholic mother (“The rocks in her head fit the holes in his”). Though it won a best-play Tony in 1999, “Side Man” doesn’t get produced nearly as often as it should, nor is its exceptional quality sufficiently recognized. It is, in fact, one of the most beautiful “memory plays” of the 20th century—a little masterpiece fully worthy of comparison to Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia, Here I Come!” and Lanford Wilson’s “Lemon Sky”—and 1st Stage, a four-year-old theater company located in a suburban strip mall not far from Washington, has given it a revival that is no less deserving of comparison to the original New York production.”

You can read his whole article here. Mr. Teachout’s review of LEMON SKY this past fall was very powerful; it is clear that our production has kept the play in the front of his memory. I am so proud that we got to pay our respects to the life and work of Lanford Wilson, a writer who inspired me to come to the theater in the first place, with a production that evoked his humor, heart and wisdom so humbly.

Reaching back

I have a bit of time right now. We are doing benefit planning for our big shindig on May 14th, and of course I have to choose a season for Keen next year. That work is happening. But I don’t have to be at the theater every night so the 50- and 60-hour weeks are over for now.

So I’ve been reading, a lot. And I am reading a category of book I haven’t looked at in years: theater theory. I am reading the books I read in drama school: Peter Brook’s THE EMPTY SPACE, Robert Edmond Jones’ THE DRAMATIC IMAGINATION, Stanislavsky’s ON THE ART OF THE STAGE, and (next up) Martin Esslins ANATOMY OF DRAMA. I might go back to read Stanislavskys acting trilogy, and maybe Artaud and Grotowski too.

It’s been interesting. Some parts I remember well, some not at all. Some resonate deeply with my experience, some seem silly and irrelevant. One theme I note: fear. They all talk about fear. They all talk about the danger of the work, of how the fear of exposure and failure and money etc., how fear compromises and challenges the truth and beauty of the theater constantly.

I know fear to be a real and present enemy to the creative process. Stanislavsky is adamant in his belief that the rehearsal space must be free of fear. Brook, too, wants for people to feel safe. But both also acknowledge the need for discipline and rigor – they are hardly chummy in their description of their working methods. There is something very adult in their view of how a rehearsal might be conducted. But both men clearly value (and talk about, at length) the necessity of freedom and play. It’s as though one’s grandfather agrees to get on his hands and knees and romp around with a child. We know he enjoys the game, but he knows that game is maybe the most important thing hell ever do.

I suppose what’s been most reassuring is how little the essential challenge has changed. They sought beauty and truth, and they worked to develop ways to achieve those ends within the cultures they worked from. Stanislavsky movingly writes: “Simpler. Easier. Higher. Gayer. Those are the words which ought to be inscribed on the front of every theater.” Sounds like a good start to me.

4618

4618. That’s how many people saw PAINTING CHURCHES in our 8-week run. It’s a wonderful number, because for us, it’s pretty big. But is it big enough? How many people should see it? Does that number mean it was a success?

And, is the attendance a good metric to use? Far fewer people saw IN THE MATTER OF J ROBERT OPPENHEIMER. But many of them had deep, profound experiences. One of our most important board members is with us, I believe, alost exclusively based on his experience at OPPENHEIMER. The Thornton Wilder shorts SUCH THINGS ONLY HAPPEN IN BOOKS had NEA support; maybe the advance funding is a better measure of a play’s value.

Or maybe we should talk about the cost per attendee? THE GOOD THIEF cost less than $25,000 originally and sold almost 1200 tickets, let alone the thousands who saw it after it moved commercially off-Broadway. Per person it was extremely efficient.

Or maybe we should measure it by how much fundraising we do the next year. 2007-2008 was our biggest year for individual giving; by that measure, THEOPHILUS NORTH and TEA & SYMPATHY generated the best result.

Or maybe we should think of the plays as children. No one would ever think to ask someone to measure the relative worth of various young people. No funder would ask you to figure out how to quantify the value of Billy versus Bobbie, to decide Sandra’s “impact” or Johnny’s “cultural significance”. I know there is something fanciful about thinking about the plays that way. Except, that’s how I think about them. When people ask me which one I like best, I shrug. They are all beautiful to me. I am very pleased 4,618 people saw PAINTNG CHURCHES.But if it had been 416 I would still have loved it. I would be running a theater that was bankrupt, but the show would still have been beautiful.

It seems a fair way to describe how I judge success and failure. I think about it like I’d like to think about people: each has their advantages and difficulties, but each has a real value endowed by the nobility of their creation. Which is not to say that we theater makers are noble, but I think the desire to create meaning and value is pretty close.

 

A good idea

I am not sure if you’re familiar with Kickstarter. It’s a fundraising website, and an incredible way to take a small part in making artists’ dreams come true. I’ve been giving little bits of cash to all sorts of projects – by friends and strangers – this year, in an effort to pay it forward and learn more about how to fundraise this way for our own work, eventually.

Today I came across a project I really admire. They are well short of their goal with a week to go, but I am hoping they’ll make it somehow. It’s a project to bring an Iraqi College Shakespeare production to Oregon Shakes next summer. How cool is that?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1432575895/shakespeare-iraq

I wish them the best of luck. Anything that might promote understanding between our cultures seems good to me.

A Ted Talk share

In my work with actors, I often talk about “asking, not telling”. All characters exist in a state of need, they are all seeking a better situation than they currently have. They can only get what they want from others, thus they are constantly in a vulnerable position in terms of getting what they want.  Which is to say, I am a firm believer that good acting requires vulnerability.

I think this is the core of my feeling about why theater is benevolent. Because it requires a level of vulnerability between people, which is something that is rare and precious and important. When I say that we live in a culture of cynicism, I am describing people who are “telling” – ‘I know better, I know what’s right, I don’t need anything from you because I have all the answers’ – those points of view are invulnerable. They aren’t generous (and they also make bad plays). I try to make work filled with vulnerability, and vulnerable acting.

Today a friend shared this Ted Talk on Facebook, by a researcher named Brene Brown. Almost 4 million people have watched it already, so maybe you’ve seen it. But I think she is speaking directly and eloquently about a subject that is close to the center of my artistic process. I think it’s twenty minutes well spent, enjoy:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html