Higher Education: What’s In A Name

Barbara Jwanouskos is back and better than before.

I am now back in the Bay Area and I am now done with school. So, this blog needs a new name. Over the past year, I’ve tried to describe my experiences as a theater artist in school and what some of the challenges that come up have sparked moments of learning and understanding.

I have mixed feelings about school. On the one hand, I love learning in a formalized classroom with peers and with the mentorship of an instructor. And on the other hand, I feel like some of the lessons that have been most imprinted upon me have been from experiences of navigating through the real world. Maybe the name for this blog series, then, should reflect the ways in which learning is a process that never ends.

As a writer, I know that a well-written title lends weight to a piece and helps to suggest what an audience member might experience. But man, coming up with titles for things is hard…

Some people have a knack for it, like Madeline George’s “The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence”. Not only is this an intriguing title for a play, but it also just looks cool with those parentheses. Plus, “curious” and “intelligence” are fun sounding words that imply mystery, secrets, and power structures. Then there are titles where you sort of scratch your head and say, “why the hell is it called that?”

Perhaps a good title should be a stand-in metaphor for what the thing is going to be about. I’m totally jealous of Marissa Skudlarek’s blog title, “Hi-Ho: The Glamorous Life” because it’s clever and implies what Marissa likes to write about as well as her personality – and it has an allusion to Sondheim. I’m hoping for a smidge of that in something of my own.

I also sort of subscribe to what Blake Snyder (author of the Save the Cat! screenwriting books) has to say about titles, which is that it’s the one piece of marketing for your play that *potentially* may not change. You really have an opportunity to draw people in with an engaging title.

Ahhh! The pressure!

Well, in the meantime, I’ll be making a never ending list of possible titles and hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a brilliant one by the next time this blog series rolls around.

Til then…

Feel free to add your suggestions too! The more, the merrier.

Hi-Ho, the Glamorous Life: Intersection at a Crossroads

Marissa Skudlarek voices what many of us are thinking.

The news about the massive cut-backs at Intersection for the Arts came out last Thursday. I had tickets to see the latest show at their resident theater company Campo Santo, Chasing Mehserle by Chinaka Hodge, for Friday night.

Before the news came out, I had been looking forward to the show with uncomplicated enthusiasm — I loved Hodge’s Mirrors in Every Corner, which Intersection produced four years ago, and Chasing Mehserle revisits the characters of Mirrors. After the news came out, my emotions became more tangled. Gratitude that I’d get to see one more show at Intersection before the organization changed forever. (Per press reports, Campo Santo will continue to exist, but will become an independent nonprofit organization.) Guilt that I hadn’t taken more advantage of Intersection’s programming — I hadn’t seen a play there since Halloween 2010, hadn’t visited their space since they moved from the Mission District to the Chronicle building downtown. The recognition that my feelings of guilt were slightly overblown — even if I’d patronized Intersection more, that wouldn’t have saved it.

There were sellout crowds on Friday night for Chasing Mehserle, and the audience was one of the youngest and most diverse I’ve ever seen in the Bay Area. It was all I could do not to buttonhole each one of these people and shout “How did you hear about this show? What brought you to the theater tonight? How could I get you to come see the theater that I make?”

After all, sometimes I can become cynical, and believe the doomsayers who tell you that young people don’t go to the theater anymore, it’s hopeless, we should just give up, we should become more like opera, we should realize that our core audience is old white rich folks. The audience that night proved me wrong — and proved right the counter-narrative that young people will go to the theater if it reflects their lives and their communities, presenting compelling stories that mainstream film and television don’t provide. (Chasing Mehserle is an artistic response to Johannes Mehserle’s shooting of Oscar Grant in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009. It’s deeply grounded in the Bay Area, and deeply aware that it’s a piece of theater rather than a movie or TV show.)

The diverse audience I saw at Chasing Mehserle should therefore have given me hope for the future of the theater — except that, having read the news the day before, I was left with a feeling of increased hopelessness. This enthusiasm, this diversity, these people who want to see stories that reflect them, this community interested in Chinaka Hodge’s growth and development as a playwright… it wasn’t enough to make a difference. It wasn’t enough to create a viable, fiscally healthy organization. So what will ever be enough?

The full story of how Intersection got into such dire financial straits has not yet been revealed, but it looks like it might fit in with the “tech money is ruining everything” narrative that’s becoming prominent in this city. It would be oddly fitting, too: a major theme of Chasing Mehserle is the gentrification of Oakland, and Chinaka Hodge just published an essay about gentrification in San Francisco magazine (a magazine whose web address is ModernLuxury.com. The ironies, they pile up).

At the end of Chasing Mehserle, the actors come forward and declare their real-life identities: “My name is… I was born on… And I’m still here.” Hodge is well aware of the difficulties faced by African-Americans in our society, and the cast members saying “I’m still here” is a powerful statement of survival in the face of forces like gentrification and racism. Survival itself is a form of heroism, Hodge seems to imply. Perhaps we should celebrate the fact that an arts organization like Intersection survived for nearly 50 years (an amazing record for any institution) rather than mourning its passing. But it’s hard not to be sad about its loss, and feel guilty that we have not done more to create the kind of culture we want. It’s hard not to wonder “How much longer will I still be here?”

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer who plans to live in this city for as long as it’s physically possible. Find her online at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.

Cowan Palace: Casting Makes Me Itchy

…and scratching it makes it worse.

Ashley Cowan brings you this blog.

Casting is the worst. Yes, I know I have tendency to say a lot of stuff is the worst but sometimes, putting a cast together can be tricky. If you’ve been in the Bay Area theater scene for more than a minute, I’m sure you have a story of some casting nightmare. Either as an actor, director, writer, producer, WHATEVER, we’ve all been there at some point.

Yet even as I sit down to put this blog together, my heart starts to race and I get itchy. (I have a bad habit of breaking out into hives when I’m uncomfortable or nervous. Sexy, right?) Because I don’t want to go publicly airing all my theatrical horror stories out and about! This is a small community and I want to be able to work again!

It never seems like the right time to be honest with these types of experiences. They’re better saved for tipsy parties and whispered secrets in the back. Or passive aggressive blog entries and tears in dream journals. But when we can’t openly talk about these things as they’re unfolding, how do they have any chance to improve?

I’m sorry, guys. I think we can do better! This can be a brutal business and I think there’s some room for improvement. In my experience, too often across a range of theatre companies, I’ve found an unfortunate lack of communication throughout a production’s development. Maybe it’s just one too many callbacks because the “right” people weren’t there during an earlier audition or perhaps it’s hearing that the producer loves you but the director wanted to go for someone with a different look. Sometimes casting can really put the “itch” in bitch (am I right?!). And even once your group is set and you high five those involved, the production process and run can be a whole different beast.

Okay. Calm down, Ashley. No one wants to work with a Debbie Downer (waaaaahh waaaahhh). You have to understand that I come from a place of love. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. I love being involved in as many capacities as possible. I’ve been fortunate enough to wear a few different hats during my time in this community. And I love hats. But each one certainly comes with its own set of challenges.

I’ve directed pieces and made strong casting choices that the writer did not envision. I’ve written work and seen it played by characters I didn’t expect. As an actor, I’ve watched writers undermine a director’s creative power by interjecting themselves deep into the rehearsal process. I’ve observed directors ignore a playwright’s opinion in lieu of their own. And I’ve struggled to honor the true intent of the play without the right guidance. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

One thing about San Francisco these days is that there’s lots of new stuff being done. Which means, often, the writer is very much a part of the production process. And while I haven’t had a ton of plays produced here, I still tend to have a hard time letting the grasp around my words go and allowing someone else to come in and direct them. Often, when I’m writing, I’m envisioning very specific details that don’t always come across in my stage directions or character descriptions. So when a director and I don’t see eye to eye on who should play a role, it opens up an interesting discussion. Who should get the final say? At what point does a writer have to step back and allow their story to come to life through the collaboration of others? Who ultimately takes ownership for the words once they’ve been sent out into the world?

Like anything else, I suppose it’s a delicate balance. We all (hopefully) want what’s best for the show. Our communication could be stronger. We need to be able to talk about these weaknesses and struggles for the sake of the art. Roles need to be defined and agreed upon. Writers need to trust their words and their directors, actors need to be confident to take risks and strong enough to stick to the text, and producers need to encourage these types of instincts and conversations.

When I’m not being Debbie Downer, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by words gaining new input and vision. I’ve witnessed the positive effects of a strong collaboration matched by earnest communication. And I like being a part of something with purpose. While casting and putting a show on its feet may never be the easiest thing in the world, we can each strive to be more aware of our place and how we can best move forward together. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find some Calamine lotion.

Working Title: The Forging Power of Witch Trial

This week Will looks back and marvels at the The Crucible.

A curious thing happens when you see a new production of a show you once worked on. An uncanny fusing of auditory time travel and welcome familiarity stacks upon the material. In the most recent case, I took in The Custom Made Theatre’s production of The Crucible directed by Stuart Bousel. This Arthur Miller masterpiece happens to be the first play in which I had the pleasure to act. I played the small part of Frances Nurse. I had 18 lines. I know because I counted them. Boy, was I proud of those 18 lines. I was also proud to have found a home amongst the odd, hodge-podge, theatre kids in my high school. Anyone within the theatre community can tell you their origin play and when they felt the bite of the theatre bug. What is nice, all these years later, is when I see a production that reminds me what good theatre feels like and possibly why I got into this creative madhouse in the first place.

The San Francisco theatre scene is very proud of it’s new works. More new plays are premiered here than anywhere else in the country, or so I’ve heard. So why do The Crucible? Why now? We have a 1996 film version with Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen. It’s hard to get better leads than those two. Often when discussing film and theatre, I can favor the best of the film offerings when placed against the average production here in the bay area. That may be an unfair fight, but we all have our biases. But this case is different. Why do The Crucible? Why now? Well, it’s never a bad time to put up a great play with outstanding actors and a clear vision of direction. More directly, there is a potency built within this play that unfolds more powerfully when performed in a close space. The 3/4 thrust staging of this current production refuses to allow the audience an emotional escape. We are locked in the closed courtrooms and cloying country houses as the world falls around these characters. In the best theatrical experiences, you, as an onlooking audience member, become a part of something. You are not separate. You are more than a mere watcher. You are entwined. Your experience wraps in the actions of the actors on stage and the fellow audience around. All become one, living the drama before us.

The cast is large and I’ll admit, in the past, I might have thought it possibly too large for the performance space. But this is not the case. Due to the precise direction, I never felt that the cast was overwhelming the space or the audience. It just fits. In the film, the realism afforded in the setting also allows the dark clothes and the dark hair and the plentiful drab town-people to blend together. It’s easy to mix up one Goody from another Goody or one old grey haired judge from another grey haired judge. There are many admirable things about Nicholas Hytner’s film but the realistic breadth of the town may be a detriment that distracts from the emotional core of the story. The play does not suffer from this problem.

One would think that the long scenes written into the structure of the play could create a pacing issue. With a less apt cast this might be true but the play clips by with speed and intensity. Film, in general, has the ability the solve pacing issues through editing tools or the ability to cut to new locations and new scenes without pause. However, this trick also can carry along an audience whether they are invested or not. In this case, The Crucible film races over increased stakes and plot developments as Abigail cries witch, more towns folk are hanged and our dear Goody Proctor is accused. The way Arthur Miller writes the lengthy scenes of his play, the revelations have time to breathe and then impact the audience fully. The film covers all the same notes yet undercuts the emotional impact with truncated script choices. Arthur Miller, who wrote both the original and the adapted 1996 screenplay, would probably dislike my saying so of his screenplay. But the play simply works in a way the film does not.

The film gives a fuller sense of the rampant chaos when Salem is turning with the witching upheaval yet it is from a more distant point of view. When John Proctor gets the news of towns disruptions from Mary Warren, it’s more personal news. As if a friend is dolling out town gossip to the audience personally. We overhear this news as if it were local gossip. The intimate space rounds out much atmospheric emotion.

The production aspects that excel throughout are the costumes, acting and sound design. While the film matches the quality acting and costumes, the sound doesn’t achieve the disconcerting heights of the production’s original music and sound design by Liz Ryder. The soundscape is both haunting and moving. It folds the audience in the maddening world of Miller’s Salem, echoing the longing desire and futile separation inherent in every character.

The silver screen can offer a personal journey that rings a unique bell in our being. I love the art of film and will always return there. But there is something individual about those journeys. Less communal. It’s personal. Great theatre is both personal and communal. Instead of “I see”, it’s “we experience”. We must not underestimate the power of sitting in a small space together screaming at witchcraft birds and the tragedy of prideful poppet pins. This production is a reminder of that power.

The Crucible runs the next few weeks at Custom Made Theatre Co. You can get more info and tickets at http://www.custommade.org.

Photo Credits:

Yamada, Jay. Proctor’s Final Embrace. 2014. Photograph. Www.custommade.org, San Francisco. Web. 27 May 2014.

Theater Around The Bay: Untitled For Your Protection

I only just met Phil Huang in April while facilitating a panel on “Offensive Theatre” for TBA. Phil is a trip- super smart, super concerned about the world, super unconcerned with your opinion of him- which is as refreshing as you’d expected it to be. He first published these thoughts on his particular brand of performance art back in January of 2011, but in that way that Facebook has of occasionally spitting up the bones of the past, it recently resurfaced and instigated some more interesting conversation on Facebook. I asked Phil if we could republish it here for our readers and he consented, despite being semi-retired and fairly certain he wouldn’t write this list as is today (note he did update it, however, to include a reference to me). Still, I think he raises some amazing points here. Let us know what you think!

Recently, a number of people have talked to me about the offensive nature of my work. What’s the point of shocking people? What good does it do? It’s just juvenile. It’s not art. Art is supposed to have substance. Art is supposed to heal and bring us together and stimulate thought. You’re no better than Rush Limbaugh. You’re just hurting people. If you’re not careful, you won’t have a career in the arts.

This got me thinking about my work specifically, queer art in general, and obscene/offensive art in total. Here are my thoughts:

* My queer ancestor, Leigh Bowery, said he only asks himself one question when he makes work: Where’s the poison?

* Queer artists are here to end the world as we know it. We’re here to be the monsters they say we are. And they should be scared.

* There’s a difference between offending people and hurting people. I’m out to shock and offend you, but I’m not out to hurt you. You have not been victimized by my work. You do not need to be protected from my work. As Keith Hennessy says, “Safe space…continues to frame us all as victims or potential victims in need of protection. And victims are always justified in excluding others, or Others. Safe space is the ideology that supports the prison industrial complex.”

* The bible is an object. Objects do not have fixed meanings. I am defiling what the bible means to me, not what it means to you.

* I don’t give a shit if I have a career in the arts. Bust my ass and play nice so I can beg for a $2,000 grant and do some shitty 3mo residency for $500? No thanks.

* I don’t need to be more sensitive or careful about what I do. Your feelings are your responsibility.

* Lydia Lunch said she used to scream obscenities at her audience until half of it left, separating those merely seeking entertainment from those who will fucking die without her work.

* If your only intent as an artist is to bring healing, your work probably sucks. Conversely, to paraphrase Stuart Bousel, if your only intent is to shock and offend, your work probably also sucks. But you’d be more fun to make out with.

* If you’re a curator, have faith in the intelligence of the audience. You don’t have to pre-chew their food for them.

* Offensive art starts conversations. The avoidance of offensive art does not. Once the worst thing has been said or depicted, the rest is easy.

* To paraphrase Kirk Read, the true evil in the world is fearful, well-meaning people.

* Art never needs to explain or defend itself. Art does not need a reason to exist. Art has no obligation to heal.

* I never said what I do is art.

Is what Phil does art? Find out more at http://hickeysushi.blogspot.com.

It’s A Suggestion Not A Review: The Shows I Didn’t Walk Out On — But Should Have (Part III)

Dave Sikula brings us home…

So we’re finally at “The Lily’s Revenge,” are we?

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve been putting it off for two reasons. The first is that I just don’t know how much I’ll have to say about it, beyond “It was unimaginably bad.” (Imagine the worst play you can think of. Double it. Double that. You still won’t be in even the same time zone.) The second is that, unlike the other productions (“The Three Sisters” and “Lear”), it happened in the recent past, and I still kind of know some of the people involved.

Oh, if only it had been this good.

But, dammit, it was, like five hours I’ll never get back, so what the hell.

Before I begin, a digression.

At the show the other night, one of my fellow cast members mentioned a particularly bad production of “The Tempest” he’d seen, and it brought up the whole issue of bad Shakespeare.

Bill’s none too pleased. Nor am I.

We’ve all seen bad Shakespeare; hell, it’s hard to see good Shakespeare. (The only things worse than bad Shakespeare are bad Chekhov and bad O’Neill.) By “good,” I mean a well-spoken, well-thought-out production that illuminates the text and the characters and shows us the universality of the work, usually by highlighting the particulars of one aspect. I’m certainly no purist. Some of the best and most memorable productions I’ve seen have played havoc with the text, but made it work because there were ideas behind it. The best Shakespeare – the best single production of anything – I’ve ever seen was Ariane Mnouchkine’s “Richard II.” Her Théâtre du Soleil performed them at the Olympics Arts Festival in 1984. The productions were an Elizabethan/Asian mashup – in French! – that was visually stunning, intelligent, and illuminating. I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since – other than her productions of “Twelfth Night” and “Henry IV, Part I,” which were on the same bill, playing in rep.

Georges Bigot as Richard.

On the other hand, last December, I saw the Globe Theatre’s productions of “Richard III” and “Twelfth Night,” with Mark Rylance as Richard and Olivia. They were produced to be as authentic to a 17th-century production as possible, and were absolutely traditional, but still gripping, funny, and tragic.

The Globe’s “Twelfth Night”

Give me a consistent and logical framework for your Shakespeare, and I’ll go for the ride. Fuck with me, though – give me Lear on Mars because no one has ever done it that way before, or Macbeth on a cruise ship, and if there’s not a reason, I’ll cut you.

For example, when my castmate was describing his own “Tempest” horror story, I was suddenly reminded of the production I saw in the mid-80s (what was it about the mid-80s and bad theatre in Los Angeles?) that was bad enough on its own – very poorly-acted and directed by someone who really didn’t have viewpoint as to what the play was about – I could have forgiven that; the company was earnest and fighting the odds as best they could. What bothered me was that the director chose to have the actors cast as Trinculo and Stefano – ostensibly the play’s comic relief – not only play their roles as Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (in a production that in no other way referenced the 50s), but to ad lib their dialogue. Martin and Lewis have gone down in history as probably the greatest nightclub act in history (their appearances in other media run the gamut), due to their prowess in ad libbing. These actors were not so fortunate. It was an attempt at garbage, but by performers ill-qualified to do it. Their stuff just laid there. (Had I been the director, I might have been tempted to have tumbleweeds roll past their scenes; but then, had I been the director, I wouldn’t have put those actors in a no-win situation.) As a director friend of mine put it (in so many words), “If you’re not going to do the original text and ad lib, you’d better be sure it’s funny.” Or at least, funnier than what Shakespeare wrote. (Personally, I find most of Shakespeare’s clowns tiresome. There are fewer less-funny characters than Touchstone or Feste. A lot of the material just doesn’t hold up, and actors usually overplay in an attempt to make it work. Douglas Campbell really missed his chance.)

Well, at least it wasn’t “Macbeth.”

The guys in this “Tempest” made Shakespeare look like, well, Shakespeare, though. It was the most painful aspect to an already-painful production.

But, finally, The Lily.

I started college in the early 70s. By the time I started, most of “the 60s” were over, though there were still some hold-outs and left-overs. One of the professors at Cal State Fullerton (my alma mater) had created a national scandal for his insistence at staging Michael McClure’s “The Beard,” the climax (pun intended) of which features Jean Harlow giving Billy the Kid a blowjob. (It was the 60s …). The show was raided every night (it was the 60s …), but the professor persisted.

A proud tradition.

So, suffice it to say, there was a lot of experimentation there. Some of it was interesting (a production of a Moliere play that featured one actor sitting on an upright cucumber and suddenly realizing how much he enjoyed it); some of it not – endless lunchtime productions that were little more than allowing directors and actors to masturbate artistically at the audience’s expense.

As I said about Shakespeare, I’ll go along with your flights of fancy if I sense an intelligence and a plan behind them. I’d heard about Taylor Mac, whose reputation as a major part of New York’s avant garde should have been a warning, but the advance word on “The Lily’s Revenge,” his magnum opus that had gotten a great review in the Times (alright, it was Isherwood, but still …), was good, and my experience with long-form theatre (Peter Brook’s nine-hour “Mahabharata” and Mnouchkine’s Shakespeares, among others) in the past had been good, so I figured “what the hell.”

And “hell” is what it was.

It was every bad cliché of the 60s brought roaringly to the stage (I almost said “to life,” but it was all so deadly) in front of me: the nudity, the simulated sex, the psychedelia, the inane “profundity,” the self-importance (again, this perspective comes from a guy who did 800 words on haircuts), the utter and complete BULLSHIT of it all. I’d say every act was worse than the one before, but after it hit its nadir, it somehow lost its mojo and laid there. It could have been a “is it just me?” situation, but it wasn’t.

I was begged to leave, but my stubbornness is such that I wasn’t going to let them win. “Bring it on!” might as well have been my motto that night.

Who won? I have no idea. I outlasted them and have gained a new standard for awfulness, but on the other hand, I was the one who watched the whole thing when I didn’t have to.

Claire Rice’s Enemy’s List: And Now a Note without a Suicide

Claire Rice on the Year of the Rat.

Madam life’s a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She’s the tenant of the room,
He’s the ruffian on the stair.
– William Ernest Henley

I’ve spent the last year of my life contemplating incomplete suicides and other deaths. I’ve killed a great number of people on stage in a variety of ways. Sometimes I’ve written their deaths and sometimes I’ve directed them. Once or twice I’ve acted them. It often surprises me how flippant in the moment I can be about death, but after all the actor will get up and walk off stage in the dark only moments later. Crudely, it is often just one tool in the great storytelling tool box. Character B must die to show that Character A has lost all humanity. Meanwhile, Director A and Playwright B have spent hours going back and forth on the best method to bring about Character B’s demise. Should we slit the throat? Hang from rafter? Drown in a well? Poison? How fun it is to play at such violent fictions.

But this year has been the year of the Rat. Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl, that is. In particular, I’ve spent the last year contemplating the climax of act one where she attempts to end her own life. I spent hours contemplating her method of death. Her door out. In the end I choose a violent and painful end. She picks up a discarded and used box cutter from the clutter that surrounds her. The tool yields itself up out of her world as if she’s bidden it to come. The box cutters appear during a discussion of the death of god, perception and responsibility, art and creation.

But it isn’t easy. The idea is there. The tool is there. The will is there. The need is there. Everything except the action.

In literal time it takes about ten minutes to get there.

In stage action time it takes two full songs and a monologue to get there.

In play time it takes a sleepless night, the purgatory of a hallucination, the stalemate between the fractured self and the sane self, and a calm acceptance of deeper desires.

And then she is reborn. At the top of act II she’s faced her own death at her own hands and now has to move forward and deal with consequences of that battle: the pain on the faces of her loved ones who feel betrayed and scared, the condescension of professionals who’ve seen it all before and the dismissal of those who expect nothing less of an artist. She’s died, but she hasn’t yet decided to live. As the evidence of the value and worth of her life piles up around her, she still cannot be sure. How can she be? How can we demand of her to hurry up and start living when she knows just how close death is and how easily it can be willed closer? At any moment the door out can be manifested before us and we can choose to walk through it or stand before it still.

When she finally chooses life she does so with her own voice.

How long does it take for her to find that voice?

In literal time it takes two hours and thirty minutes including a fifteen minute intermission.

In stage action time it takes about 38 short scenes split between two acts, several songs, a few monologues and two car scenes.

In play time it takes a crisis of identity, a swim in the ocean, a loss of a friend, a terrible accident, multiple discussions about art, the value of art (and thus the value of the self), a lonely suicide, a fractured survival, a move, a pregnancy, a validation, disillusionment, an escape and a return (all in all about a year and change).

Maybe in future productions it won’t take that much literal time, or that many songs or that many car scenes. Maybe in future productions it will take longer. But it will never be easy and it will never be separated from the discussion of art. How could it be? How could the life of an artist, who lives to created, not be filled with discussions on the value of that creation? The perceived value of that creation? The act of creation? Its place in the world? Its place among other art? The difference between art and product?

Of all the deaths on stage, it is this near death that has been the most difficult for me and the most rewarding to contemplate and put out into the world. It isn’t mine. It’s so many other people’s before it is mine, but it is so close to me.

I refuse to allow this death to be easy, or the life that follows it. I refuse to make it simple or direct, because it isn’t.

I’ve taken death on stage for granted, but I refuse to take the choice to live on stage for granted any more. And I’m not going to let you take it for granted either.

Everything Is Already Something Week 33: Laying Down Banana Peels

Allison Page is a trap.

Someone or other has created a monster. I’m the monster. I might also be the creator though, so it’s like…I’m both Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Frankenstein himself…Dr. Monster.

In the three weeks since I became Co-Creative Director at Killing My Lobster (a 17 year old sketch comedy company never before headed up by a female Creative Director) I’ve really surprised myself. Mostly in the good way. I can be a pretty self-deprecating person. I mean, it’s comedy, that’s what we do. But I’m having this sudden disgusting burst of…of…oh god…pride? How awful.

As an actor, you only have to own your performance. That’s all you’ve got control of, and everything else – though noticeable to you – isn’t your job. As a writer, you write. But as a Creative Director? There’s a lot of shit going on there. A lot of moving parts. They have to be lined up and organized and figured out and manipulated into something that makes sense. It’s tough cookies.

Allison’s first blasphemous Killing My Lobster show

Ever since I was laid off from my job January 31st, I have been doing whatever I want. That’s not always as great as it sounds, but taking on serious responsibility? That sounds…like a lot of work. I mean, it IS a lot of work. A lot of work that other people will be paying attention to and very likely judging. Definitely judging. Harshly, harshly judging. Somehow, I’m doing it anyway. The judging part hasn’t started yet, but the work part has – and I’m LOVING IT. Maybe what I’ve needed all along is some real responsibility to someone or something other than myself.

At heart, I’m a dreadfully lazy person, which you know if you’ve ever tried to get me to go out on a Saturday night – good luck. But the difference here is that comedy is my passion. I eat and sleep it. I pour it on my mashed potatoes and form it into little snowmen. It’s often the only thing I care about (I mean, I also love my mom), so I guess that’s why I’m willing to crank it up a notch right now. This company comes with a lot of history and all I can do is try to make it the absolute best it could be.

Which means that right now – I gotta go. I have a giant audition to schedule, paint colors to choose, and banana peels to lay down on the road to laughter.

Slippery when wet.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/comedian/creative director. You can follow her on Twitter @allisonlynnpage

Theater Around The Bay: Tossing the Baby and Bathwater

Today’s guest blog is by Charles Lewis III, who returns with a record number of links in one article.

In olden times they had to make their own fun.

“So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.”

– Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (co-authored with Will Durant – 1965)

I didn’t attend the recent Theatre Bay Area convention (aka TBAcon14 or “T-bacon”), so you’ll forgive me if today’s topic well-worn territory for any attendee who might be reading. Still, though I was not present, there was a topic of discussion rattling around in my brain.

If you’re reading this, you likely have a connection to the theatre community – most likely that of the Bay Area. As such, in the past few months, I’m willing to bet you or your connections have seen this Brendan Kiley article floating around social media. It’s from 2008, but it’s reignited the same passion now that it did then. I’ll be honest, when I first thought of writing this piece, I didn’t want to link to the article at all; I thought I’d just refer to it as “that article” and everyone would know what I was talking about. But that would have made it sound like some anonymous internet comment that should be easily dismissed. Since the article – or rather, the topic it covers – being something about which we all feel so strongly, I offer you the chance to (re-)read it and decide for yourself on which side of the debate you fall.

Me? I have a major fucking problem with it article and it starts with the very first sentence: “1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already.” From the get-go he dismisses the greatest playwright in history as someone whose work is archaic and obsolete. Shakespeare’s work, he infers, has no place outside of high school – and he doesn’t want to see it there either. As such, if one wishes to “save” theatre from going the way of the 8-track tape, Rule 1 is to eschew the work of the very man from whose work nearly all modern drama draws its inspiration.

And he’s not the only one. Nary a week goes by when I don’t see some new article stating how all traditional forms of art – theatre, opera, poetry, painting, etc. – are just pageantry for the bourgeoisie and in need of the sort of upheaval more often seen in a coup d’état. But whilst these artistic “revolutionaries” argue over whose head to fit in the guillotine, I find myself equally disturbed and amused by their myopic thinking. Disturbed by the way they so easily wish to dismiss history; amused by the way they’re so blatantly repeating it. “Isn’t this something every young person says?” I think to myself. “Hell, isn’t it something I used to say?”

Thankfully I did no major damage in my youth before coming across the phrase “das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten”. If you’re German’s a li’l rusty, just look at the title of this article and the accompanying woodcarving.

Now let me start by saying I don’t think anyone’s heart is in the wrong place here. I get what everyone is going for: as we keep our ears peeled for the latest news relating to our most cherished art form, we’re easily disheartened by news that the forum for said art – be it theatre, gallery, or even bookstore – appears to be dwindling. You’re not ready to see it disappear and neither am I. So we’re kicking around a series of ideas to make it more appealing to this newly-discovered agoraphobe of the Digital Era: the one less likely to venture out into the real world (with its weather, traffic, and people) and more likely to huddle in a dark room with their digital device watching reruns of Say ‘Yes’ to the Dress.

Friends, I’m not here to slam you for trying out new ideas, I’m just here to give those ideas a little perspective. For instance…

1 – Yes, it’s okay to hate a classic.

Remember that South Park episode where all the kids (8 and 9 years old) are falsely diagnosed with ADHD because none of them can sit through a reading of The Great Gatsby in its entirety? That wasn’t the first or last sacred lamb to be skewered by their show: they’ve fired off on such beloved classics as Catcher in the Rye and A Charlie Brown Christmas. While one’s tastes are entirely subjective, the fact that something has been labeled a classic doesn’t make it invulnerable to criticism. Quite the contrary: being labeled a classic means a work must face even harder scrutiny because it represents the highest of standards.

My personal tastes are pretty eclectic: I get the same thrill from the cinematic majesty of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis that I do from the chuckle-inducing sight of Sting in a blue speedo in Dune. When recommending musicals, I’ll mention Jon Waters’ Cry-Baby with the same enthusiasm with which I’d mention West Side Story. I love the exploitation films of Larry Cohen just as much as the masterpieces of Alfred Hitchcock.

But I fucking hate Vertigo.

I’m not kidding, I hate it. I find every character unlikable, I find every action unbelievable, and instead of appealing to my suspension of disbelief, I find the film an insult to my intelligence. I think the critics of its time were right in calling it Hitchcock’s failure. I think it’s bullshit that one list recently named it “Greatest Film of All Time”. I think the only good to come from the film was Brian De Palma ripping it off for Body Double. Seriously, fuck Vertigo.

And it’s perfectly all right to feel that way. Not every work is for everyone. It’s okay for someone to say they don’t like the work of Shakespeare, Euripedes, or Lorraine Hansberry. Each one of their works was composed a long time ago in places unfamiliar with characters and dialogue that don’t quite fit today. They’re old. They’re ancient. But being old doesn’t mean something is obsolete.

And it’s perfectly all right to feel that way. Not every work is for everyone. It’s okay for someone to say they don’t like the work of Shakespeare, Euripedes, or Lorraine Hansberry. Each one of their works was composed a long time ago in places unfamiliar with characters and dialogue that don’t quite fit today. They’re old. They’re ancient. But being old doesn’t mean something is obsolete.

You can argue that Shakespeare is taught in schools only because of outdated curricula; you can also argue that the reason Romeo & Juliet continues to resonate with youngsters is because it’s about two horny teens [/LINK] whose over-the-top emotions lead to disaster. You can say Raisin in the Sun is a quaint piece from the pre-Civil Rights Era; you can also say that in this time of racist headlines and record evictions, that it could have been written yesterday. TheaterPub’s own Stuart Bousel is currently directing a production of the quintessential “American high school play,” Arthur Miller’s The Crucible [/LINK]; a play that takes place in a time (1692 – Salem, Mass.) that was outmoded when it was written (the 1950s). Do you think of it as a heavy-handed – and sexist – anti-McCarthyist parable of Good vs. Evil? Would you believe me if I told you that it’s a complex meditation on three-dimensional characters not speaking up when they should? That the women are the strongest characters because they exercise the most control, whilst the men spend the entire playing trying (and failing) to catch up? That its themes of paranoia are even more powerful in this age of surveillance?

You don’t have to like a classic, but when you call for its removal from regular academia, you’d better prove its obsolescence. Nobody likes a cry-baby who whines “I don’t get it, so it must be worthless.”

They give new meaning to the phrase ‘What fools these mortals be’

2 – What’s really “new”?

This past February I got to see The SF Neo-Futurists’ weekly show, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Though I’d heard about from a good friend – troupe member and ‘Pub regular Megan Cohen – and from Will Leschber’s ‘Pub write-up of the Chicago branch, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Everyone kept describing it in such mythic terms (“A whole new form of theatre!”) that I wondered what frame of reference my mind would even have for what I was about to see. No sooner had the show begun when I immediately identified their type of performance: Sketch.

That’s not at all criticism of the work I saw (some pieces were brilliant), but it was still Sketch. Yeah, they “don’t do characters” and pieces can be dramatic, comedic, insightful, and everything in between – but it’s still Sketch. Hell, I went to the show as the +1 guest of a member of Killing My Lobster – one of the Bay Area’s best sketch groups (one of their Creative Directors is ‘Pub’s own Allison Page) – and y’know what? He was the one who kept insisting to me that it wasn’t sketch; that the Neos’ intense workshops are what distinguish it. Having never taken one of those workshops, I can’t speak on them. All I know is that what I saw that night was part of a long tradition that goes as far back as Vaudeville and is as recent as Key & Peele.

And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with acknowledging that you’re part of a long, great tradition? I know everybody wants to sell their products and services by saying “This isn’t your grandfather’s whatchamacallit!”, but our grandparents had some really cool shit. Sure, we have a more enlightened socio-economic perspective (or so we think), but they had things that were built to last – that’s why they still do.

And I can see the ancestry of classic formats in all of these “new” productions that have popped up recently: the much-lauded “interactive theatre” show Speakeasy, the popular Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding, and even the upcoming SF Dungeons Tours are part of a trend that extends back as far as the 1930s and ‘40s. Even the new so-called [LINK: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/top-5-participatory-opera-experiences/%5D “Participatory Opera Experiences” [/LINK] (including [LINK: http://www.operaontap.org%5D Opera on Tap [/LINK], which I’ve attended several times) owe their history to fourth-wall-breaking that took place long before any of us were born. Hell, I performed Sarah Kane’s Blasted in an actual hotel room with the audience mere inches away.

The only difference between the aforementioned productions and elementary school history tours is that the former allow – nay, encourage – heavy drinking. But that’s great because there’s just as much room for these experiments as there is for a traditional theatre setting; especially when they recreate history. It’s easy to laugh at Renaissance Faires and Civil War re-enactments, but they bring you face-to-face with a piece of history you otherwise wouldn’t experience. And history will always be necessary, even when it isn’t trendy. Remember the “Kissing Cousin” episode of Frasier, where Zooey Daschanel played Roz’s young cousin? Roz tries to keep up with the early-20s party gal, but soon realises she can’t. When said cousin gives her lip about Roz’s songs all being on the “Classic Rock” station, Roz replies “For your information, Classic Rock is both classic and it rocks!”

Kudos to you for experimenting. Just ask yourself this question from time to time: Are you performing in front of an audience? If you answered “yes”, then very little of what you’re doing is “new”. But that doesn’t mean you can’t distinguish yourself. Speaking of which…

3 – Innovation vs. Gimmick

Four or five years ago I got into a very heated on-line debate with the social media admin. (possibly the artistic director) of a highly-renowned SF theatre company. I was voicing my displeasure at their new implementation of “Tweet seats” – a trend where a certain section of audience members spend the entire show dividing their attention between the action on stage and commenting on said action via social media. The admin and a few supporters said it was somehow more immersive with the show, even if the actors don’t always have their undivided attention. As I said then: the action on stage should always have your undivided attention! What the fuck do you think all the lights, costumes, make-up, and who-knows-how-long rehearsal period was for? To be ignored? It’s one thing to zone out during boring show, it’s another to pay admission just to look at the glowing box in your hand.

Technology will always be a double-edged sword in the arts: on the one hand, it opens up a host of new possibilities for both the creation of work and the promotion/distribution of said work; on the other hand, it can become a crutch to distract from a creatively bankrupt production. Tweet seats remind me of someone going through a mid-life crisis: so desperate to maintain relevance that he or she will adopt the most ridiculous contemporary fad in an attempt follow the zeitgeist. The only thing missing is cheap hair dye, plastic surgery, and an expensive sports car. Tweet seats don’t compliment a performance, they contradict it.

Can those people up there be quiet? I’m trying to update my Pinterest board

But there are many great strides in the marriage of classic theatre and modern technology. From its inception, PBS has been bringing theatre and opera into the homes of millions. The rise of digital projection cinema has allowed this idea to flourish into full high definition presentations on giant screens. And now independent theatres are getting in on the game with live-streaming outlets, including HowlRound TV. As this trend grows, everyone will have to keep up-to-date with things like internet access, internet speed, and how to get cameras and microphones in key places to best capture the performance, yet not be noticed by the audience. None of which is impossible. None of which takes away from what the performers fought so hard to put together.

I’ve been a tech buff since I was four years old and the only one in the house who knew how to set the clock on the VCR. I’ve seen “the next big thing” come and go without so much as a blip on the national radar (does anyone even remember MiniDisc? CD-i? HD-DVD?). It’s near-impossible to predict which new technology will most influence the future, but as artists there is one thing we can do. When we come across some new tech – be it a new shade of blue to add to an illustrator’s palette, or the ability to project on the side of a skyscraper – we can ask ourselves “How will this make it easier for me to say what I want to say?” Hitchcock and Kubrick were always innovative in the technology used in their films, using bluescreen, matte paintings, etc. Do you honestly think they wouldn’t have used CGI, had they lived? Terence Malick uses it. To an artist, everything is a potential tool. Everything.

Similarly, right now you’re reading this on the internet. Chances are you came to this article by clicking over from a social networking site. I currently do part-time work for a company that handles the outsourced social media for corporations. A single headline can make or break a casual patron’s entire impression of a company. It has to short, to the point, and intriguing. We all hate Upworthy’s click-bait headlines, but those fuckers know how to dangle a worm somethin’ fierce, y’all. The impact of social media on the arts cannot be understated. When you work thrives by word-of-mouth, you have to keep track of the words about you that are instantly published and can be seen by thousands a day. Print reviews and postcard advertising are still a part of what we do, but few of those make the impact of someone taking to Facebook to say how much they loved/hated a show, how long the show playing, and where you can donate funds to the producers. These are things that all add to experience.

It shouldn’t be about keeping up with the Joneses, it should be about telling the story the best way possible. Something else to keep in mind…

4 – Scorched Earth

Before I go on, I think it prudent to issue a mild DISCLAIMER: I’m going to address a topic that is very sensitive and stirs up passions for those on both sides. I’d like to say that I’m not trying to throw fuel on the fire, just that I see an unmistakable parallel.

You still there? Okay then…

This idea of dispatching the old to make way for the new is not only a problem with theatre, but with the city of San Francisco in particular. I say that with many good friends in the tech industry. Said friends are good, hard-working people who actually would like to be part the unique culture for which this city is known. Unfortunately, they find themselves employed by companies who have torn down century-old building for the sake of erecting a new Starbucks in its place. When the art galleries on Geary Blvd. are evicted to make way for a new headquarters of a-company-that-might-not-be-around-in-two-years, then that’s a problem. The loss of an artistic outlet is a problem, in no short part because the identities – those of the artists and the town that welcomed them into their gallery – will be lost. History repeatedly tells us the cost of destroying something ancient just to make way the new invaders: something truly invaluable is always lost. And once the new owners of these buildings have no use for them, they’ll just leave the damaged remains behind.

On the plus side: I have a Mad Max fanfic for just this occasion.

But I’m not here to blame anyone. Really, I’m not. No good comes from misguided blame. In fact, you might find this hard to believe, but I’m actually pretty optimistic. I really am. I know what you’re thinking: how can I, an independent theatre artist, be remotely optimistic about the future of theatre when even Broadway and The Metropolitan Opera [/LINK] are tearing their hair out over how to save their “dying industries.” ?

I’m glad you asked, and the reason is…

5 – Conclusion: We’re all in this together.

The reason I don’t freak out about the future of theatre is that all of the ideas mentioned above, including the ones I don’t like, mean that there will be a future for theatre. You know what literature, television, painting, and film all have in common? They’re all dependent upon technology. Every one of those great artistic and entertainment format would be impossible without some great technological advancement to make them possible: the printing press, the cathode ray, the feathered brush, and the photochemical process – all of them an inextricably linked with the advanced that bore them. Theatre requires only two things: a performer and an audience. It’s been like that since the beginning of time.

As much as I abhor some of the ideas to “save” theatre, it comforts me to know that it still stirs that kind of passion within people. It’s okay to hate a classic, because it became a classic by being scrutinised over the years. Citizen Kane wasn’t called “Greatest Film of All Time” until the 1960s. Y’know which film held the title before that? Birth of a Nation. Seriously. Hate as many classics as you like. I happen to know of a local theatre company that “produces re-imagined classics and scripted original works, as well as creative and social events, preferably in a casual bar environment or other non-traditional venue, emphasizing collaboration and connection between new and established theater artists and audiences.” What was their name again?

As much as we worry over finding that audience of One , new innovations allow for a wider net to find that audience, no matter where they are. I was there the night my good friends at PianoFight Productions raised all the funds for their new Taylor Street headquarters. After having heard them talk about it for so long, it was amazing to actually walk through the space: multiple stages, a full restaurant & bar, a film/video studio, and a recording studio. There will be full plays, improv shows, stand-up, and live-streaming capabilities. All of the classic qualities of live performance successfully merged with cutting edge technology in a venue where there are no limits. That is how one creates “new theatre”.

I’m optimistic about theatre because I know theatre isn’t dying, it’s evolving. It’s getting more perspectives from women and people of color . It’s thriving in places, even when you can’t find it. It’s refusing live or die by outdated definitions of what it is or isn’t.

Whatever old-school theatre folk think of the new upstarts (and vice versa), the point is that we’re all after the exact same thing. Know how I know? We chose theatre. No one goes into theatre to be cool. They go into theatre because they know there’s nothing like an audience and a performer breathing the same air; nothing like connecting with someone, even when there’s distance between you; nothing like truly losing yourself in the experience of something that you logically know is make believe. I recently read an article of polled theatre audiences who say that attending a live show is just as invigorating as getting a pay raise. And that is what we do, what we have done, what we will continue to do until the end of time: make everyone’s life a little richer, one performance at a time.

But seriously, fuck Vertigo.

Charles Lewis is a local actor, writer and director who is equally adept at mending fences and burning bridges.

Theater Around The Bay: Playwright’s Note vs. Director’s Note

With RAT GIRL about to close on May 24th and THE CRUCIBLE about to open on May 20th, Stuart Bousel finds himself in the rare position of not only having two works playing simultaneously in San Francisco, but both being works based on true stories (that interestingly enough, also both took place in New England, and both focus heavily on teenage girls). Paradoxically, one is a new work being tested for the first time (RAT GIRL), and one is a great American classic that’s been done many times (THE CRUCIBLE), and while he penned the first one (adapted from the memoir by Kristin Hersh), he directed the second (which is written by Arthur Miller). The juxtaposition of these two works has certainly generated a great deal of introspection on his end, particularly in regards to how we tell a story, and why, how it is received and what expectations audiences and critics walk in the door with, what we bring to a production process depending on our role in that process, and what roles truth and reality play in making a work of art, whether we’re breaking new ground or re-visiting a well trod path. Though there is, no doubt, a whole other article coming discussing his experience of inhabiting two such different (and yet oddly similar) worlds at the same time, for the moment it seems like the best way to offer a window into his mind is via the notes he wrote to accompany these two unique shows.

Playwright’s Note On RAT GIRL

Kristin is a real person.

She’s a mother of four sons who divides her time between New England and New Orleans, and when she’s not being a mother, writing songs or touring the country with her indie rock royalty band The Throwing Muses, (or her more recently formed punk rock trio, 50 Foot Wave), she’s working on more books and co-running a non-profit to empower more aspiring musicians. The fact that she took the time to personally respond to my ridiculous request to turn her book into a play is a high-point of my life, let alone the part where she gave us the permission to create this show and put it on. But from what I can tell, that’s Kristin: generous, benevolent, all about people pursuing their passions and quick to say “hey, we’re all losers here.” By which I’ve come to think she means we’re all human, all struggling with something, and that’s what’s interesting about us, even if some of us happen to also be rock stars.

I originally conceived and pitched this show as a piece about the relationship between Kristin and movie star Betty Hutton, who had relocated to New England in her 60s to “dry out” and pursue a masters degree at Salve Regina University, where Kristin’s father was teaching and she was also a student. But like so many shows it evolved into something else, but with the added element of being based on historically true events and the lives of people who actually lived and not only that- lived in the public eye. One of my major challenges in the process was balancing the source material (the book) with all the outside historical information, trying to stay true to what happened and who these people were, while still trying to turn it into a dramatically viable play abut people who anybody could potentially relate to, while also trying to unpack the exquisite mystery that is Kristin’s music and her love/hate relationship to it. At some point I realized the second two values trumped the first, and the drafts got a lot better after that, if less reverent. Luckily, my two heroines are neither reverent, nor people with a conventional relationship to reality.

But they are all real people- down to the reporters and the students in Kristin’s art therapy class. Betty (about whom Kristin wrote the song “Elizabeth June”) died in 2007. Tea is Tanya Donelly, who would later leave the band to form The Breeders, then Belly, and then go solo, becoming an alt rock icon in her own right. Gary is Gary Smith, of Fort Apache Records, Ivo is Ivo Watts-Russell, who founded 4AD Records and has a Cocteau Twins song named after him, and Gil is Gil Norton, a now legendary record producer whose discography reads like a Who’s Who of the last thirty years of rock music. Leslie has retired from music and returned to California, but Dave is still Dave, touring with the Throwing Muses, sitting at the drums behind Kristin, not wearing his glasses.

Mark has also died since the events of RAT GIRL, but the details around his life are always fuzzy. Numerous lyrics in songs by both Kristin and Tanya seem to reference him, this gentle, kind boy who was living under a porch for a while, but unlike so many of the other people in RAT GIRL, he was never part of the music industry or larger art world, and so he has the rare luxury of being a private citizen who has remained, mostly, part of Kristin’s private life. Along with Betty, Kristin dedicated the book RAT GIRL to him.

As a new play is developed, many things come and go. What you’re seeing on stage is something between draft 4 and 5. My first draft was incredibly reverent of the material and four hours long. With each draft, material has been cut, while subtle things changed or were added, put into my own words, or morphed together from Kristin’s. In the case of the character of Jeff, who is a major figure in the first half of the book, at least three other people have been collapsed into him, and Kristin’s parents, so important in the memoir, are now just voices from the past. Still, it was the last cut I made, a week before previews, that I think stands out most in my thoughts on the process. It is the final line of the book and was to be the final line of the play: “I absolutely did not invent this.” In the book, it’s Kristin talking about her first born son. In the play, it was to be the summation of everything the audience had just seen. But with each draft it felt less and less necessary as the play truly became a play, something apart from the book, from the music, and from Kristin’s actual life, a story about a young woman who could really be anybody, any of us.

She just happens to be named Kristin.

Director’s Note For THE CRUCIBLE

Note: it’s probably helpful to know this production is staged on a floor painted with a map of the Salem area of Massachusetts in 1692, and that this was the foundation concept behind this particular production.

The decision to place this production of the Crucible on a map of Salem Town and the larger, more ambiguous region known as “Salem Village” came from a desire to communicate to our audience that what is often perceived as an event taking place in some quaint, cobblestoned seaport, actually took place over almost 100 square miles of farmland and hamlets that would later become what is present day Beverly, Andover, Marblehead, and Salem.

With roughly 2,000 residents in 1692, Salem Town was the second largest settlement in New England (after Boston), but the home of Reverand Parris, where the witch hysteria began, was located 7 miles away, at a crossroads where 10-15 buildings and homes had clustered together to form the center of an agricultural parrish over which 500 or so farmers and craftsmen were scattered, living the majority of their days in relative isolation save for their own families, servants, and hired farmhands. Their once a week journey to the parish center for Sunday prayer at the meeting house would have been the bulk of their social interaction with people outside of their households, and for many this would have been a trip of several hours, often on foot, through fields and pockets of forest in which Natives Americans and wolves prowled. In winter they could expect anywhere between three to nine feet of snow, and very little by way of highway maintenance. Households in the parish had to be largely self-sustaining and also defensible, especially in a time when marauding bands of French soldiers were attacking villages and farms along the Maine borders, and even one’s neighbors were more likely to be strangers than friends. News was communicated slowly, by foot or by horseback, medical aid was difficult to obtain in a timely fashion, and firewood was arguably more precious than gold since it would have to be dragged a great distance and obtained from the source rather than in a marketplace. Candles, the primary source of indoor light, were expensive and used sparingly, windows heavily curtained in an effort to insulate houses made of wood and stone.

The cliche of small towns where people lived their lives within five miles of the house they were born in is not only a truth about Salem Village, but intrinsic to understanding how something so incomprehensible as the witchcraft hysteria could have happened. Isolated from one another and attempting to eke out a living under harsh conditions, perched on the edge of a strange continent only barely explored, it’s not hard to see how an avid and culturally ingrained belief in demons and angels could morph into something diabolical when combined with the active imaginations of people living in places where the night-time darkness must have seemed impenetrable, the shadows full of dangers, the chill weather deadly, and help far away, if it existed at all.

That these people had come to New England in search of a new and better life, usually in the form of land ownership that was impossible in the Old Country, is further hinted at by the map, which was continuously re-drawn with each generation as farms failed or succeeded, families grew or died off, and disputed territory was correctly or incorrectly designated in wills or via private sales often occurring outside any kind of formal and enforceable legal process. It has been argued that a principal motivation behind the witch trials was one faction of families, lead by the wealthy Putnams, seeking to acquire the land of those they accused, but in reality the land of the accused rarely became available to private buyers, reverting instead to the state. Long standing disputes over land, and the resentments attached to those disputes, however, most certainly fanned the fires of personal grudges that combined with the miasma of paranoia and resulted in nearly 300 people being arrested on false charges and 25 people losing their lives- 19 by hanging, 1 by being pressed to death, and 5 by sickness while languishing in Salem’s prison.

Today Salem Village no longer exists, having been renamed Danvers in an early attempt to erase the dark past of the region. In a delicious stroke of irony, the Danvers Lunatic Asylum was later built on the land once owned by Judge Hathorne, whose great-great-grandson Nathaniel (who added a “w” to his surname so as to distance himself from his legacy) would pen “The House of Seven Gables”, which still stands in modern day Salem. The Asylum, however, burned down in 2007, and the land remains empty except for a cemetery which is consider haunted.

RAT GIRL has three more performances. Tickets and info at www.divafest.info. THE CRUCIBLE opens Tuesday, May 20th, tickets and info at www.custommade.org.