February 5, 2008

by Mike Daisey

Seven years ago, I left Seattle for New York—I abandoned the garage theaters and local arts scene and friends and colleagues—because I was a coward. I’d already tried to sell out once, by working at a shitty Wal-Mart of a tech company, but I knew I would not survive in the theater if I stayed. I fled to New York to bite and claw a living out of the American theater as an independent artist because I was young and stupid enough to think that would actually work. Today, my wife and I are one of a handful of working companies who create original work in theaters across the country. We’re a very small ensemble: I am the monologuist; she is the director. We survive because we’re nimble, we break rules, and when simple dumb luck happens upon us, we’re ready for it.

We return to Seattle maybe once a year. During my first week back this time, I ended up at a friend’s party, long after the rest of the guests had gone, in that golden hour when the place is almost cleaned up, but the energy of the night is still hanging in the air. We settled down in the kitchen under the bright light, making 4:00 a.m. conversation and, as all theater artists do, I asked the traditional question: “What are you working on?”

My friend’s face fell, for just a moment—she’s a fantastic actress, one of the best in the city, with an intelligence and precision that has taken my breath away for years. She corrected a moment later, and told me carefully that she wasn’t going out for anything now—that she was giving it up. She has a job-share position at her day job to let her take roles when needed, but now she is going to go permanent for the first time in her entire life. After 15 years of working in theaters all over Seattle, she’d felt the fire go out of her from the relentless grind of two full-time jobs: one during the day in a cubicle, the other at night on a stage.
(more…)

I recently watched a most fascinating film. It was so good that my husband and I watched it again a few days later, and then he felt it necessary to actually purchase the DVD and companion book. We do not own many DVDs, so that gives you an indication of exactly how compelling this film was. It is called “Helvetica,” and that pretty much sums up the film’s subject. It is a paean to the typeface, with many designers weighing in on how it has affected their life. I must admit that Helvetica has become so ubiquitous that I don’t pay much attention to it, and I never think of using it. This film has changed all that for me. I have a new respect for it, as a result of seeing a number of inspirational designs that employ the font. So I have decided that I owe it to the font to try it out. And in some large and obvious way. I am aware of walking that fine line between simple, clean and powerful…and simple, clean and boring. This is the challenge.

I’m sitting here in my office on Friday night, after Josh’s farewell party, feeling the crazy range of emotions that would normally occur with any changing of the guard. Sadness for seeing a dear colleague, friend and boss leave the theatre, yet joy in the thought of his future looking bright. I wrestle these feelings furiously as I prepare to leave for vacation. Josh just said goodbye to me with a hug and a smile, and I begin to acknowledge that Josh will no longer be in the office next to me when I return. I won’t hear the audible reactions to email, whether with a hearty laugh or a piercing expletive. I won’t get asked the question, “What’s the status of….” or “Do you have a moment to …”. I won’t get to hear his response to any particular problem begin with “Here’s what I would say.” I bite my lip at the thought, and try to imagine what is to come.

I kept silent today during the farewell party, thinking of what I should say to someone I admire so much that didn’t sound repetitive or cliche, wearing my smile like a mask of complexity. I did have some thoughts but I didn’t really think they would do justice to Josh’s contributions to the theatre. The asset we lost with his departure is enormous, and the contributions he’s given us will go on for many years to come. But I didn’t say this. I didn’t think I needed to. It’s clear to everyone who attended today that we were saying best of luck to someone special.

I’ve seen many colleagues come and go at the theatre, and I don’t think any of them have quite inspired me the way Josh has. He has given great advice, put out fires, kept me sane, kept me focused, and strenghtened us all with insight and wisdom that comes from common sense and clear thinking. He’s stood by me through every decision I’ve made; he’s supported the good ones, and helped me rethink the bad ones. He’s made me feel better about my work when I didn’t. The selfish part of me is losing a inspiration, a rock, a fellow soldier in the battle to make the theatre as content as possible, and a great boss.

A wise man once said to me “everyone loves progress, as long as there is no change.” There will be a whole new set of challenges, a new world of change and many exciting prospects that will come in the new year, and they will need to be met with both hands open and head held high. Nothing is set in stone, and the way we look at new possibilities is a reflection of our ability to adapt and grow. And that’s what it should be about. Looking forward with hope, looking back with fondness.

It was Josh who spoke those wise words to me.

Josh: I’m forever indebted to you for all you’ve taught me. I sincerely thank you for being a great boss and a good friend. Best of luck,

~Matt*

Did you see the recent Times Style magazine? It was the one with Natalie Portman on the cover. I was particularly struck by Editor Stefano Tonchi’s note concerning the introduction of the magazine on the web. He professes his love for the feel of magazines, the weight of the paper, the feeling of flipping the pages, but knows that the electronic version of his magazine can reach so many more people. He states that much of what we see on the web is visually unpleasant, busy and clunky. So true. In an effort to make the “virtual experience as sensual as the written one,” he has focused on the things that the paper version can never supply: sound and movement.—————————————— The theatre has just hired an email content management company to handle all our email blasts. Yet this requires the acquisition of email addresses from our patrons. I don’t know about you, but I am very selective about giving out my email address. But one cannot fight this technology; it is here to stay, to evolve, to be one with our lives. Someday historians will look back on this period of web infancy and muse about our attempts to create, become comfortable, understand and navigate around our fairly new virtual world.

12/17/07

Last night I played a game of football - water polo-style with the New York Giants. Their coach wore a yellow slicker and hat and called plays from a World War I airplane (the kind with the enormous propellors). The plane turned into a ship when the water rose too quickly in the third quarter. I think this could mean that I’m overwhelmed. Dream Moods (http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/) says: Water is the living essence of the psyche and the flow of life energy. It is also symbolic of spirituality, knowledge, healing and refreshment. To see a raging flood with its muddy debris, signifies that you will have much unsettling occurrences and tribulations in life. Your repressed emotions may be overwhelming you. If someone could fill in the meaning of the New York Giants, I might sleep better. I was losing the game and the crashing of waves kept waking me in a panic, but not stirring me enough to tell my body to move to the sofa or get the dog to calm me.

 12/18/07

I’ve been spinning in the anxiety of a water-polo-football-airplane/ship-hurricane/flood-holiday-winter-wonderland dream for two days now. Is it needing to close on sponsors for Shipwrecked? Is it holiday preparations that do not interest me in the least, yet need to be addressed. Is it the mortgage, utilities and medical bills, the check engine light that has been on since August, and the paycheck that can’t support any of it? Is it the avoidance my my mother’s request for advice on how to mask the empty places at the holiday table - there used to be so many chairs and the cane sags where they sat for so long - but they’re not coming back now. Or is it needing to find a way to catch up on a decade of no sleep - or rather a decade of actually being asleep but getting no rest? Is it this new language I need to learn or the 23 X 30 foot trench I need to dig, but can’t because it has frozen over? That plane from the dream kept crashing into the places I wanted to stand and the water eventually froze so that I could walk over it - with trepidation.

12/19/07

There’s play and competition, then overwhelm and the spinning, there’s trying to find a place to stand where it’s safe - but it’s always too cold. The referee jumped plane - then ship - and stopped keeping order. He changed the rules of the game - the tradition of it - and here I am at 2:00 am, baking a new version of what was once my ex-husband’s favorite dessert. I realize that in the last year I’ve had to find a new way to do everything - a new twist to tackle it alone and make it truly mine, a new strategy and the strength to ask for help, a new method to build a healthy community around me.

We (at LWT) have been so focused on a new vision - a new strategy revolving around community - perhaps the overwhelm, the team, the game, the coach , and the pilot/captain of that plane/ship have been sitting at the back of my thoughts laughing as I try to articulate their strategy. Are we ready internally for the crashing of waves? Intellectually, it is natural to embrace this new vision, but what will our bodies and our psyches do when we hit a spin and the referee becomes a deserter? Do we know what it will take to make it real - and then comes the overwhelm. 

Building a new tradition - especially when so many existing and powerful ones are in place - takes every bit of emotional, intellectual, and physical strength you have. It takes the attention of a new lover, the compassion of a dear friend, and the patience of a spider to remain still when things are crashing and spinning and filling with water around you. It takes careful analysis of what hasn’t worked, what has gone terribly wrong and why, and even an analysis of what you’ve managed to choose that happened to be the right direction. It takes a mercury sence of humor that rises and falls with the heat of something new and the chill of the unknown or unforeseen challenge. It takes food - home grown and cooked in your own kitchen so that it is enjoyed and appreciated to the fullest when shared with others.

Are we ready for this? I mean truthfully prepared, each and every one of us? Does it matter? Regardless of whether we’re ready, the game is in play, the storm is here, and it’s cold outside. I can only speak for myself to this new vision of LWT and these new traditions I am now crafting. I will play fiercely, I will fight, I will still feel the overwhelm and learn to walk immediately after spinning. I will bake this new version of the dessert that was my ex-husband’s favorite - and he will not get to enjoy it, but I’m sure it will show up in Development one of these days. In the dream, the plane/ship never stopped moving forward, no one (not even the New York Giants) succumbed to the water or the cold, now we just need to find the safe place to stand.

Anna Deavere Smith’s process is rigorous. She believes in discipline of the body and mind and spirit. As I was writing an essay about her this weekend, I was particularly aware of the powers of procrastination… (I launched myself in a SCARF-reorganization project to postpone writing…among other things. And I have a lot of scarves.)  In her Letters to a Young Artist, she says: “I am in awe of the power of procrastination. I am so in awe of it that if I have something I have to do, I try to program myself to do it so quickly that procrastination cannot possibly set in. At one point I was afraid of not fulfilling my commitment to swim every day that I slept in my bathing suit! I would sleep in my suit, through on a swim parka at five a.m., and, without thinking about it, head to my car and off to the pool.” And that was at 5 a.m.! Every morning … Hem.

I was sitting in a Board meeting the other day, and we were hashing out some important issues, when our “working dad” spoke about the idea of filling 100% of our houses every performance as a goal. What a genius! No, seriously, that comment struck me as a particularly profound and inspiring idea. We are so used in our industry to playing below capacity, especially when we come to budgeting, and we have to realistic, so we project for houses that are indeed way below capacity. And in the process, we translate our current reality to be an unchangeable fact. So, it follows, that at some point we forget that consistently full houses were the goal from day one.

Its both interesting and useful for me, to take it back to the most simple and obvious of notions, because they are the ones we tend most easily to forget, or at least to take for granted, at which point we have effectively forgotten. So the question is perhaps not, how do we earn enough income from a show to remain viable as a theatre, but instead, how do we fill each and every one of our houses, while making sure we make enough money to stay alive. I see this as a subtle but important distinction, and perhaps one that will help us stay important and sustainable as an art form. But what do I know? These are just some thoughts. I’d love to hear what people think. Here’s a picture of the La Scala opera house to perhaps motivate some inspiration.

Today I read an article in the CT Post about “The Santaland Diaries.” Thomas Sadoski, who plays “Crumpet” was talking about having “eureka!” moments: where the solution to a particular stage problem will suddenly pop into his head…often months later. It is the same feeling I’m sure we’ve all had when reacting to certain situations. It is always easier to figure out the most appropriate reaction in hindsight. Designing is often like that as well. Sometimes you see things in the final printed piece that you never would have noticed while in the design process. There are times I have looked at my work and thought “what possessed me to do THAT?” Other times I have worked on a design to the point where I cannot imagine why I was initially excited about it. Often I will pull out these pieces years later and realize that they actually were good, and that they succeeded in doing what they were supposed to do. Time and distance often helps.

I went to my high school reunion last weekend. We have one every 5 years and I’ve gone to all of them. I guess I want to show my graduating class that I have survived, thrived, succeeded, and that I am proud enough of my accomplishments to continue to show up. One former classmate has not been so fortunate. Although he has built a successful business, he is still tormented by demons and bullies from the past. He was very upset to see a typo in a printed flyer from the reunion photographer. His reaction seemed a bit over the top to me; being in the print and design field, you get used to these things. I showed this flyer to a number of people, and no one saw the typo, even after being told to look for it. Recently a Long Wharf piece came back from the printer with an unfortunate ommission. It is just one of those moments when you realize that as careful as you have tried to be, something just slipped by unnoticed. In the newspaper business this happens often. Sometimes it happens in front page headlines, and even though many many people are staring at it for several hours before it goes on press, it somehow still winds up in print. I take it as a message to breathe, slow down and pay attention. Even when you are too busy to think.

I love Donald Margulies’ comment about life being too short for The New Yorker. I couldn’t agree more! I am constantly juggling my New Yorker reading with all my other reading. If I read a novel I get behind on The New Yorker. If I keep up with The New Yorker I get behind on all my other reading. It really makes me crazy that they come out with a summer reading issue every year. Since when does life stop in the summer? Do I have more time to read in the summer? No…in fact I’m much busier in the summer, with my garden and my biking, to carve out any extra reading time!

Moving right along….there was a wonderful large graphic in the Times recently (yes, I try to keep up with the Times as well!) about campaign logos. The artist, Ward Sutton, analyzes all the presidential campaign logos for color choice, impact, and overall look. In the last panel, he acknowledges that it is all in the eyes of the beholder anyway. Nothing could be more true. This is a constant challenge for those of us in the visual arts. It isn’t enough if you know your design works in all the ways it should; if the client doesn’t like it (for whatever subjective reason) it is back to the drawing board.