The Stranger has a provocative article about what theaters need to do to not suck. Less Shakespeare, more new plays, drop out of grad school, produce more fringe-style plays more frequently, and most important:
Build bars. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional-theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle.
Haven’t I always said the best theater happens in small theaters with cheap beer? (Un-Scripted, Impact, Sleepwalkers, Magic, Barrow Street.)
Crater Lake. This was taken in the middle of June. The first time I’ve seen snow in about 20 years, having lived in Austin and then San Francisco that whole time, and it’s the middle of freaking June. I will never again whine about how cold it is in San Francisco in August.
Java Jive. This place was a roadside attraction in Tacoma. I assumed it was going to be a tiny little coffee shop that closed at 3PM. Oh no, my friends. It’s a very cool dive bar, with live music and cheap beer and friendly bartenders and it used to have monkeys in a cage behind the stage until someone realized it was cruel to subject monkeys to all those Kurt Cobain wannabes.
Blackwood Canyon Winery. See that dirt-covered homeless-looking dude? That’s the winemaker and winery owner. The guy’s worth — well, he just sold off part of his land to a guy from Microsoft for about $6 million, and he owns a huge chunk of Santa Barbara where he caters parties for Oprah. But when you visit his winery, it’s just him and about six dogs roaming around the place. The guy’s super-interesting: he basically hijacked our day and took us through a complete history of winemaking, with five hours of sampling some amazing wine, including some that sells for $125 a bottle. He even paired some of his wine with food he whipped up for us in the back room. Then he walked us out to the fields where we drank some unbelievable French-style dry rosé right from the barrels. An incredible day, and a good reason to be married to a travel writer.
One of the benefits of being married to a Lonely Planet travel writer is tagging along on research missions. While it’s no vacation for her, with all the running around and investigating hotels and interviewing winery owners and writing down new addresses and photographing everything to keep it all straight — for me, it’s three weeks of seeing a lot and writing nothing.
Knowing that we were going to be going every goddamn place in two states, I spared you from a bunch of posts about how we stayed in a different hotel in a different town every night and how good our gas mileage was and how much I was enjoying the Velvet Painting Museum and the Doug Fir Lounge and the Columbia River Maritime Museum and RichArds Yard Art House and Bern’s Tavern and Voodoo Donuts and the (pictured) Museum of Glass.
