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MFA vs. NYC: America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?

As long as we’re on the subject of “the Steady State” of theater, how about a look at the state of fiction writing? This article by Chad Harbach, published in n+1 back in 2010 and excerpted on Slate, looked at the difference between MFA culture and NYC culture, and posited that we may be seeing the triumph of the MFA system. Which leads to this:

It was announced recently that Zadie Smith — one of the few writers equipped by fame to do otherwise — has accepted a tenured position at NYU, presumably for the health insurance; perhaps this marks the beginning of the end, a sign that in the future there will be no NYC writers at all, just a handful of writers accomplished enough to teach in NYC.

New York will have become — as it has long been becoming — a place where some writers go for a wanderjahr or two between the completion of their MFAs and the commencement of their teaching careers….The lit-lovers who used to become editors and agents will direct MFA programs instead; the book industry will become as rational — that is, as single-mindedly devoted to profit — as every other capitalist industry. The writers, even more so than now, will write for other writers.

Interesting similarities between this article and the one by 99Seats that I linked to.

Steady State

One of the best theater bloggers out there, 99Seats, is back! And he raises a provocative question:

What if the new movement in theatre is here, it’s now established and this is it? We’ve landed at Steady State:

Broadway is a place for mass entertainments at a price set for tourists; Off-Broadway and the regionals will continue to cater to an aging, upper-middle class audience with the occasional feint in the direction of diversity; the indie scene will remain largely segregated by class, race, gender and sexuality with occasional cross-pollination; and theatre will, in general, continue to hover in this place, this narrow, wobbly space between being a luxury good for cultural elites and something that connects to a wider audience.

What if that’s what we can expect for the duration?

The Split End

Lily Janiak, a theater critic for SF Weekly, has a wonderfully transparent blog post about the struggle to cover all the many plays in the Bay Area:

I guess what I’m writing about here is really many different issues: how to pick shows when I find out about them all at different times, especially since earliness of press releases generally corresponds to company size, and also what to do when I want to cover shows beyond what I’m paid to cover.

‘I Was There’: On Kurt Vonnegut

William Deresiewicz, in the Nation, re-reads and re-evaluates Vonnegut’s novels:

“The cruelest thing you can do to Kerouac,” Hanif Kureishi has a character say in The Buddha of Suburbia, “is reread him at thirty-eight.” If that was true, I wondered as I opened the first two volumes of the Library of America’s ongoing series of the complete novels, then what of Vonnegut at a decade older still?

Updated with Ben Fisher’s response.

Carey Perloff, the Artistic Director of A.C.T., recently posted on Huffington Post suggesting that training programs emphasize new works at the expense of classical work:

We have all but abandoned an interest in classical theater or in older literary forms in our desire to push young writers in and out of MFA programs where they successfully learn to write acceptable contemporary plays that might appeal to the watchful eyes of television executives and artistic directors hungry for “relevant” and sellable plays.

Melissa Hillman, the Artistic Director of Impact Theatre, responded with a post on Theatre Bay Area’s Chatterbox:

It’s concerning that the head of the Bay Area’s flagship LORT house believes that the rising stars and new voices of American playwriting have had no exposure to the classics, and that their work is poorer for it. What does she think is missing from the writing of the rising stars of the American stage? Does she really believe that Rajiv Joseph, Sarah Ruhl, and Katori Hall lack “range and longevity”?

And it looks like other A.D.’s theater makers have been asked to respond. So click and follow along.

Update: Ben Fisher has chimed in here:

There are young, sophisticated, intelligent people out there that would pack the house for “The Tooth of Crime” or a rock-opera version of “The Aeneid” (I call dibs, by the way). I think they’re not as interested in “Private Lives,” even though that’s a great play too. If we continue to stress plays — classic and modern — where people sit around a living room and talk about relationships, they are going to stay away. It’s not about old and new, it’s about inclusive and non-inclusive. To truly speak with the power of the past, we have to listen more carefully to the present.

When I write about an upcoming event, I try to keep it focused on things that somehow involve me, in order to maintain the proper amount of narcissism for this thing to legally be called a blog. (Otherwise it’s just a website.)

But today I want to highlight a thing that, yes, I will be attending — but that will not feature me in any way. It’s the latest edition of the Portuguese Artists Colony‘s show, and it’s got some great guests:

Local singer-songwriter David Berkeley wrote most of the songs from his latest album Some Kind of Cure while living in a 40-person village in the mountains of Corsica. He also penned a memoir called 140 Goats and a Guitar, which tells the stories that inspired those songs.

Jane Ganahl has been a journalist, author, editor and arts producer in San Francisco for 30 years. She is the co-founder and co-director of Litquake, the West Coast’s largest independent literary festival. She is also the author of the memoir Naked on the Page: the Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife.

Plus, a new play by Daniel Heath! Follow-ups from live writing winners Linette Escobar and Kevin Hunsanger! Music from Miss Erma Band! Live writing by Julie Greicius, Douglas Henderson, Ira Marlowe and Ethel Rohan! And it’s all hosted by Cary Tennis!

Now you could technically say it involves me, because I am one of the newest colonists. But for the last two shows, I either hosted or read. This one I will maybe, maybe, take your money at the door and steer you to the bar. Speaking of the bar, yes, there’s a bar, because the show is here:

Hotel Rex
562 Sutter Street
In the Salon, just behind the Library Bar
San Francisco
Sunday, May 27
Show at 5:00 pm
Sliding scale $5-10

Theatre Requires Hope Beyond Logic

Paul Mullin:

Nobody in the last fifty years has gone to live theatre to kill time like they would slip into a cineplex. Nobody has sat and blankly watched theatre like they would TV because they don’t have anything better to do. There is always something better to do. People go to the theatre because they hope — more often than not against their better judgment — that what they will experience there will change them, open them up, break down some poisoned part of them, help them live with some unbearable pain, give them more hope. People who go to the theatre are frequently disappointed.

My newest play is going to be part of San Francisco Theater Pub’s awesome festival-in-a-bar. As artistic director Julia Heitner said:

We have 10 new plays by 10 fantastic local playwrights. For Pint Sized III I plan to include everything our audiences love about the festival: entertaining theatre, great acting and direction, live music, beer drinking, and of course, our resident llama!

The festival runs July 16,17, 23, 30 & 31, 8pm @ Café Royale, (800 Post St @ Leavenworth in San Francisco) with a special touring performance, July 18, at Plough and the Stars, (188 Clement St. @ 2nd Ave in the Richmond District), SF.

If Theatre Isn’t Dead, Let Me Kill It

Not quite sure what Sabotage Times is, but the pull quote is certainly intriguing:

I have come to the conclusion after a lifetime of acting and writing for the theatre, that the theatrical experience largely sucks and there is absolutely no redemption for it. The pay off is categorically not worth the discomfort endured.

Lots of Guys, Not Enough Dolls

While Tonys are equally bestowed on male and female stars of the stage, there’s a colossal gender gap in the honors given to the men and women who create the shows.

Make friends with other playwrights. They are, after all, the best sort of people, as they like to be alone, and they also like to be with other people, so they understand one’s predilection for eating lunch alone and panicking if there’s no living soul around at dinner.

- Sarah Ruhl

Stage Directions and the 17%

Andie Arthur on 2AMt:

As a female playwright, the odds are already against me getting produced. They’re even worse in Miami, which has a hyper-masculine theatre culture and artistically prefers what I’ve called “plays where people throw chairs.”

New Play Festivals: The Blog Salon

Laura Brueckner is curating a salon series on the Theatre Bay Area blog. First up, Jessica Holt from the Bay One Acts Festival:

We talk about value a lot in the new work field. We say: “New work is valuable, it’s vital to the future of the theater.” Clearly, it’s important for us, as theatre artists that make our living in the new work field to advocate for its importance and significance. And yet, I am not convinced new work is inherently valuable just because it’s new.

Be sure to read the responses from Jim Kleinmann (PlayGround and the Best of PlayGround festival), Amy Mueller (Playwrights Foundation and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival) and M. Graham Smith (Global Age Project at the Aurora Theatre). And then tune in for the rest of the series.

Just to be clear for newer readers, of which there appear to be a few: the red type and the arrow mean the headline above is a clickable link.

I spent most of April traveling around. First was Oregon, where I saw a play in Ashland, saw Meiko in Portland, drove down the Oregon Coast, slept in a lighthouse, saw a lot of trees and waterfalls, and tasted 47 different craft beers. Then I was in Austin, for a wedding, where old friends kept asking me what I’ve been up to. Which made me realize that I haven’t done a “What I’ve Been Doing” type post in a long time. So here’s what’s up with me:

  • I’ve become an official colonist of the Portuguese Artists Colony, a group that hosts literary readings every other month, formerly at Fivepoints Arthouse and now at Hotel Rex. Besides hanging out and listening to great musicians and wonderful writers (often with special drinks mixed by fellow colonist Daniel Heath), I’ve also read a few short pieces myself and participated in our signature event: Live Writing. This is where four writers get a prompt from the audience and write for 10 minutes while a musician entertains the crowd. Then the writers immediately jump up, read their work, and the audience votes for the winner, who returns in a month with a finished piece. And I won! Oh, plus I hosted the last show.
  • I’ve been writing a lot more short prose lately, as a direct result of the above. A short story about a roadside stand in Texas selling Albert Einstein’s head in a jar. A flash fiction piece about a guy in hotel bar talking to the pianist, who keeps up his side of the conversation by changing the jazz songs he’s playing. And a thing I’m still working on about a woman who gets married several times a day.
  • On the playwriting side, I’ve been fiddling around with a play that I started last summer and began to revise in an Anthony Clarvoe class, about a woman who’s so afraid of identity theft that she creates an entire second identity in the hopes that her first identity can stay protected. Still trying to figure out what length it wants to be. I wanted it to be a no-intermission full-length; then I tried to make it a two-act; now I fear it wants to be a short one-act.
  • I’m still the SF regional rep for the Dramatists Guild. So I’ve been hosting the Guild’s monthly reading series called Friday Night Footlights (despite being held on Mondays) every month for, erm, quite a while now. I also hosted a special event where I interviewed Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”, “Pippin”, “Godspell”) onstage at Aurora Theatre. Since seeing “Pippin” as a freshman in high school was what made me get into theater in the first place, it had a “full circle” surreality to it that I made sure not to mention in the interview.
  • Production-wise, my short plays “What Particular Skills Do You Bring to the Workplace?” and “Questioning” were produced as part of the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival at Thick House. And while not much is happening on the local side of things at the moment, I’m huge in Florida. More on Orlando and Saratoga productions to come later. Possibly New York, too, although that particular opportunity is starting to slide into long-shot territory.
  • And, during my short week between trips, I co-hosted another Playwrights Pub Night, this one at Yancy’s Pub and featuring a special appearance by the busiest man in SF theater.

That brings you up to date. So now when someone asks me what I’ve been up to, I can go back to saying, “I don’t know. Read my blog.”

On Receiving “Notes”

Nicholas Kazan on the horrible script notes that almost led to us not having “Death of a Salesman”:

This harrowing story is the most instructive one I’ve ever heard about script notes. I repeat it to every producer and studio executive I meet.

A must read, and I don’t even like the term “must read.”

A Seat at the Table

One of my favorite playwrights of all time, Nicky Silver, has a Theater Talkback article in the New York Times:

On Monday night, my play “The Lyons” opened at the Cort Theater on Broadway. Now, I’ve been writing plays for almost 30 years and been getting them produced Off-Broadway for 19. So, I guess I can’t be shocked that people keep asking me how it feels to have a play on Broadway “after all this time.”

Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter share literary legacy

Charles McNulty, from the LA Times, has a strong opinion about the precise language of Beckett and Pinter, and why we don’t see more of it:

Beckett, 20th century playwriting’s No. 1 game-changer, and Pinter, his most original disciple, were writers steeped in literature. Their education and training didn’t come courtesy of an M.F.A. program, with its cramped curriculum divorcing the stage from the other arts….

The looseness of so much of today’s playwriting comes in no small part from the shift away from dramatic poetry to dramatic writing, a less medium-specific pursuit in which the “storyboarding” of plots is considered equally applicable to theater, film and television. What’s important is a good yarn rather than a trenchant vision. The stage in this scheme is nothing but a steppingstone to a more remunerative opportunity.

A definite entry into the “should I get an M.F.A.?” debate.