A little manifesto on putting it out there

In my time in a saturated, overstimulated market, I've made some valuable discoveries:

1. There is no excuse for mediocre work. The resources exist to always achieve excellence-- It can be an excellent failure, but an attempt to grasp for brilliance should be present.

2. Making work because there is a vision of its necessity or adventure or truthfulness of the times will create the opportunity for excellence. "Exposure" is no reason to put art in the world. It's self-indulgent and creates the glut of horrible theatre that erodes audience faith and attendance. Continuing to achieve excellence is what creates opportunity for exposure.

3. The work should provide something that doesn't already exist-- a greater purpose than "it's mine and that's what's been missing from the scene" must be attempted. Loving the material isn't enough-- knowing what it's doing in the world at this moment in time is necessary.

4. In a saturated market, there are so many wonderful companies doing wonderful work-- it's necessary to know who and what have come before. If there's a company already doing what an indivdual desires to do, create a connection. Let them be the conduit. Bring your excellence to theirs and see what energy flies.

5. The potential for change always exists. Asking how can I do this differently? (be it style, content, audience development, artist recruitment, financing) is crucial in an overstimulated environment. It's the only way to cause change and also requires the knowledge of #4.

6. Risk is scary. That's why it's called risk. BUT, risk is the only way to learn and expand limitations, stretch boundaries and engage in ways that you've only imagined. Risk is also hard. It takes a lot more hours of work than comfort, and you may find yourself doing a lot more than you bargained for.

7. Vision doesn't always get achieved the way you expect or the way that's been proven before. Allowing the knowledge of what's come before, the awareness of what is and the quest for change to inform process will open up pathways that didn't previously exist. Traditional routes will probably no longer apply or be helpful in the achievement of vision. But that's why it's vision.

By any other name...

When visiting Quincy this weekend, we were talking about reinvigorating our audience bases. I began to think about what the word AUDIENCE means and its etymology. I thought about the word audience's synonym, spectator.

audience (definition from Online Etymology Dictionary © 2001 Douglas Harper, www.etymonline.com)
c.1374, "the action of hearing," from O.Fr. audience, from L. audentia "a hearing, listening," from audientum (nom. audiens), prp. of audire "to hear," from PIE compound *au-dh- "to perceive physically, grasp," from base *au- "to perceive" (cf. Gk. aisthanesthai "to feel"). Meaning "formal hearing or reception" is from 1377; that of "persons within hearing range, assembly of listeners" is from 1407. Sense transferred 1855 to "readers of a book." Audience-participation (adj.) first recorded 1940.

spectator (Online Etymology Dictionary © 2001 Douglas Harper, www.etymonline.com)
1586, from L. spectator "viewer, watcher," from pp. stem of spectare "to view, watch" (see spectacle). Spectate (v.) is a back-formation attested from 1929. Spectator sport is attested from 1943.

I feel that these words, which at their roots indicate watching and listening, are too passive for the new generation of theatre-goer, the person who attends the new wave of the American theatre.

The audience needs a christening: the spectator need a new name in order to fulfill their new role as active partners/participants in the theatrical event.

I want a word that connotes a conversation-partner, a participant, a theatre-maker, a collaborator, a peer, a responder.

Any ideas?

Anti-company model? Or reinventing the wheel

There's an embryonic idea I'm working on for a company-- but it feels like it's at the edges of my brain and needs a catalyst for the AHA moment. So I'll rant a little
now and see what I come up with-- maybe one of you has an AHA response???

If part of my (our?) dissatisfaction with trends in American theatre today stems from the running of non-profit companies with subscribers and seasons, is there a way to break apart that model and build something else in response? Perhaps a company built on a project-to-project basis that attracts funding and audiences for each specific project? A company that knows it's temporary, like the show itself?

The company's project ideas are need-driven. Those needs can be broadly defined. (Ex: There's a need to bring light to the state of veterans affairs. Or there's a need to create event-style theatre pieces to help shake up the audience experience. Or there's a need to LIGHTEN UP during the election year. You get my drift.) Fundraising strategies get streamlined this way and different deep pockets can be picked with each topic that projects are based on.

Projects are given lengthy developmental processes (9months-1year for creation) and are built with an investment in the community that the need-based idea comes from. (Is this from interviews? Classes? Coffee shop readings?)Using the "Tipping Point" idea of "The law of the few" seems important here.

There is no single location for the company. The company locus moves to serve whatever community best fits the project. (Ex: I've got an idea for a project on Executive Assistants. The piece could take place in a midtown location during lunch or at happy hour during the week.)

(The more I write this, the more I'm thinking about En Garde Arts and Tectonic Theatre Project. I think I'm talking about a mash-up of the two models.)But how is there sustainability with a model like this? Does a company need institutional memory in order to have success? What are the administrative needs and is there a way to experiment with their structure without creating chaos or funding gaps?

I'm also thinking a lot about how to make changes in theatre that can cause audience excitement and artist invigoration. I want to change the way theatre is created and perceived in this country. Are these somewhat scattered ideas a pathway to that goal? Or is this just a rehashing of old ideas that have fizzled before?

On The Audience

This is a quick little spit of a rant:

I think one of the deadliest things to say to oneself is "will The Audience understand/like/connect to/laugh at/emote with this idea"?

The Audience. What the hell does that mean? WHO is The Audience? Most of us don't really have a clue who our audience is (outside of our friends and colleagues - but even then we cannot begin to guess what each of our nearest and dearest are going to get out of a certain moment). So how can we guess what The Audience will think or understand about a piece?

I keep coming back to Quincy's citation of Foreman's philosophy of making theatre only for three specific people. I think that all theatre artists (especially directors, playwrights and designers) should strive to focus on communicating to his or her own private, specific audience - even if that audience is, say, one's 8-year-old self, one's inner angry young man and one's dead grandmother.

Specificity of intention is what communicates, not generality. I am firmly against telling yourself NO to an idea, a moment or a story-telling method because of the anticipated reaction of The Audience. Of course, not all ideas are good, and not all ideas communicate. But you can't guess what comes across the footlights until you have a real live breathing audience of individuals in the room with you. Once you're in previews, if your Actual Audience (as opposed to your theoretical audience) does not understand/like/connect to/laugh at/emote with this moment, then you can adjust accordingly.

I meant for this link to post with the previous...

http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/?do=browse_projects&category=Theatre

Herding Cats

How many freakin' theatrical mission statements are out there?

Why do they all start to sound the same?

Even the good ones?

Why are we splitting our little piece of non-profit pie into so many more small pieces?

Is there a way to harness this energy?

Do we want to?

And what makes a mission "visionary" these days?

Exploding the Kitchen Sink

The Kitchen Sink Drama is, for the purposes of this rant, the epitome of American naturalism. The Kitchen Sink Drama ("KSD") entails a myriad of domestic dramas. Generally the KSD is a one-set two-act play, and generally is set in an apartment in NYC, although sometimes it is set in a family farmhouse. The dialogue strives to sound natural, the situations generally are "realistic", and the stories more incidental than epic. The play generally is "well-made" and follows a linear trajectory. There are many wonderful, moving and true KSDs. I am certain there will be many more.

I, however, want nothing to do with them. The KSD is antithetical, in my opinion, to evolutionary theatricality. I want to explode the kitchen sink and move the American theatre out of its 100-year long romance with naturalism.

And so I have to ask: Why is naturalism still so prevalent on American stages? Why are theatre companies, emerging and established, still producing kitchen sink dramas? Why are playwrights still writing them? What is the ongoing appeal of naturalism/realism in the American theatre?

Is it simply that naturalism/realism is sanctioned voyeurism? Voyeurism is more than just a sexual act. It is a desire to view other people's lives intimately, to learn secrets of their lives and somehow validate the normalcy of our own lives. When we watch things that pretend to be real, are we not satisfying some urge to validate our own existences, no matter how mundane? So naturalism seems to me: a satisfying kind of voyeurism that is not only sanctioned (presented with the intention to be consumed), but that it is also ordered (most "realistic" plays, movies, etc. add up to something - a moral, a resolution, whatever). Is not reality TV then a trump when it comes to sanctioned voyeurism - one, because it purports itself to be "real" (certainly, we can agree that while it may not be real, it is less contrived than a kitchen sink drama) and two, because it embraces "real" life and imposes meaningful order upon it? Sanctioned voyeurism then works best in a film or television medium.

How can the new theatre of the 21st century still provide the satisfaction of sanctioned voyeurism and yet still have epic, theatrical possibilities?

How can we, as evolutionaries, understand its appeal while exploding the kitchen sink on theatres everywhere?

Focused Support

I've been doing a great deal of grant research recently and come to the conclusion that an individual artist without a non-profit institution is basically a funding pariah. Unless they're a playwright. Which brings me to a question-- why is theatre (generally recognized as a collaborative artform) only allowed individual grants to playwrights? Don't get me wrong, I love writers. I have spent my career working with writers. They have earned their place in the funding cycle. However, with very few exceptions, there seems to be only the institutional route for other artists to get their ideas funded and explored. There is exactly one grant for emerging directors as individuals, and that's a grant for observation, not creation. The other individual grants are major (Guggenheim, MacArthur, USA) and take some real established ties to qualify.

Is there a place that funds the generation of non-scripted ideas? Or commissions artists that don't bill (necessarily) as "playwright"? I see more and more theatre companies creating focused commissioning programs that give decent amounts of money (dollar amounts that can sustain an artist for 3-5months) to individual writers. It's a wonderful model and about time we moved from the "we'll develop you with a public reading" mode of developmental support to the "you need to not work a day job and write" kind of support. I suppose, selfishly, I want that kind of focused support for my own ideas without having to run a company or be at home on a computer. I would like to see a paradigm shift in the funding community that grants money to "theatre artists" generating work. Think of it as focused commissioning support that funds the ideas and initial phases of execution-- space, time, and money for the artists involved to create a work -- not the production end of things. Where is the support for interactive, on your feet creation?

On Sustainable Models

I want a laboratory setting in which to test theories of structure. I want to experiment in action the issues we're grappling with on this blog. I want a forum to create solutions to the problems we all face as theatre practitioners. I want the Malcolm Gladwell solutions to our strategic problems. I read the reports and look at the statistics and feel like we're inches away from producing ourselves out of existence. Or at least sustainability. What is a sustainable institutional (maybe the wrong word) model for the theatre that allows the following:

1. Living wage for the artists involved
2. Appreciation for the support team in pay, benefits and decent hours
3. Experimentation (and accepted margins for failure)
4. Ticket prices for all economic demographics

At the forefront of this model must be that we are operating under the auspices of a public trust-- that the art itself is a valuable commodity (in the words of another theatrical evolutionary "it makes you a better person") like a cultural think-tank. We shouldn't actually expect the art to make a monetary profit. The business investment is in the betterment of society. (too lofty?) And I think we may also need to think of that society as the neighborhoods or communities we live in. (Have you noticed how theatres always start in less expensive neighborhoods because of the rent, but often choose not to program toward their immediate surroundings? I've seen them be at the forefront of a "transitional" neighborhood, enabling the neighborhood to become "trendy" and then lose their leases to "trendier" shops when the rents increase. But that's another topic entirely...)

Is this possible without major Medici-style patronage? Is this possible without promising a tangible financial return on the investment? How can we start a lab environment to practice some of the rants we're preaching? (America itself was an experiment until the Revolutionary War.)

Go ahead. Discuss.

On the Search for the Cross-Section

I originally started this as a comment but then it started to grow into something larger, so here goes:

I have heard this "audiences and casts as diverse as my daily commute" thought from Q before, and it is one that I have often thought about.

On my commute (when I use public transport, as I usually prefer to walk or bike as I need more sunshine and control over my own destiny than the typical office drone) I do NOT feel like there is a commonality of experience. I feel that most commuters are attempting to put up an impermeable force-field (be it with a paper, a book, headphones, or snoozing) and NOT to relate to each other. Of course we don't have subway performances or begging in DC, so those artists or those panhandlers might change the temperature in a car by connecting people together as witnesses, but generally, strangers are not connecting. Nor are they putting out signals that they WANT to connect. It seems to me that people want to preserve their anonymity - I know that I do.

In my life experience, humans seem to be predominantly self-segregating, seeking people with similar backgrounds and similar perspectives on life. Blue collars at one bar, rich frat boys at another, artists in one place, attorneys at another, etc. Add age, race, income, religion, music tastes etc. into the mix. I have lived abroad a few times in my life, and Americans always stuck together, as did the foreigners in general.

Churches - where you might think that a bunch of really different people could get together to worship a common god - self-segregate within denominations, too, along economic and race lines (possibly by age as well). And all those different types of people heading to all those different churches all over town feel that they are participating in something valuable and rewarding.

It's not that individuals have anything against any other group necessarily, it's that, for humans, like attracts like. Or safety in numbers. Or whatever. It's more relaxing to be around people where there is a kind of shorthand, and that shorthand can be most quickly developed through common experience.

So here's the question I pose:

Why does the theatre NEED to be a place where different types of people come together? Why is that IMPORTANT to the art form, and more importantly, to the EVOLUTION of the form? What makes you think that the theatre should do what hardly anything else other than public transport does? How can you make a piece of theatre that appeals to all those different types of people? How does this desire fit with the advice of R. Foreman, as Quincy posted yesterday?

It seems that there are two ideas at play here:
1) diversity of all kinds in the audience
2) a sense of community and connection across these diverse groups

First, I agree with Foreman. I think you have to narrow your focus and tell your story for one or two people whom you know intimately because I believe that it is through SPECIFICITY that we find the universal. How can you guess what the white granny, the Latino businessman, and the black teenage girl want to see and what will speak to them? How can you make art for a broad spectrum without generality? How can we possibly guess what moves a complete and utter stranger to laughter, to tears, to rage? I think all you can do is think about yourself (this moment makes me laugh), and your three people (my mom's heart would break in this moment), and you just hope that it communicates more broadly.

Secondly, how do we create a community through performance? Yes, I'm excited to experiment with the lights-up-in-the-house (but I want to be clear that the houselights should not interfere with the design of the stage lighting - so long as the audience can never "disappear" as long as there are actors on stage). But I think that Q's bringing up something that needs greater discussion and invention: what creates a community of theatrical witnesses? We know how that has happened in the US after a tragedy (even tiny, private tragedies). But how does theatre create that community, however transient and fleeting that community is?

I'm curious to see where this discussion goes. I know Q has some philosophies about how to attract different audiences (including some pretty pinko ones, but she can't help her lefty leanings) and I definitely want to start the brainstorm on how to create our community of witnesses/ spectators.

On Shared Experience

I'm curious about the audience. Who are they? Why do they come to the theatre? Are they really who I assume they are? Do I really want the audience I think I want? I say I crave an audience experience that looks like my daily commute on public transportation, but does that include the drunk guy I accidentally sat down next to last night that hit on me? Or do I mean the working class families? Or what?

I think what I mean is that when I get on a subway in New York City, I feel a commonality-- like the train is the great leveller. And I look around in the morning and we're all sharing the experience of commuting and exhaustion. And I look around on a late Friday night and we're all sharing the energy of chatter and a night out or some common goal of SEEING SOMETHING that uplifts. And I look around most of the time and everyone's reading. And when the subway crunk performers get on and jump rope with their little brothers' bodies, we're all sharing an energy of amazement. And we're trapped in a metal box. Underground. Traveling in short bursts. And often, I look around in a darkened theatre and I see people that I don't feel a commonality with at all. Why is that?

This may go back to TJ's experiment of leaving the lights on so we can see each other...

On Self-doubt

I'm not even sure how to approach this one. I'm even too doubtful of my own ability to be articulate enough to create a blog post. I'm not sure that this is a universal question or if it's simply THE thing that I grapple with personally. I am currently in a real rut. A real slump. A real experience of crippling self doubt. We're in this profession that relies on the public eye-- on some sense of approval for the risks that we take-- and I have no idea how to reconcile my own sense of artistic growth and risk-taking with prominent public failures. It makes me want to eat cake. Grow fat and move to Nebraska where I might just be a big fish in a little pond. Quit theatre altogether and become a masseuse. How do I continue to put my ideas out there (and really, to produce my own work and invite people to it) if I am constantly thinking "I don't think I'm good enough" or "gosh, the theatre doesn't think I'm good enough" or "jeez, there's no way I stack up compared to the other work that's out there. I bet the WORLD doesn't think I'm good enough"? Richard Foreman once said to me that he makes theatre for three people. Literally. And he knows who those three people are. Everyone else can go hang. I'm not sure I have that chutzpah. Or if I even like his work. But his words resonate. There's something to be said for knowing who to listen to-- whose opinion counts for you, personally. It's that need for approval, in a global sense-- a need for "Fellow" or "Award-winning" or somesuch after my name that's kicking my butt right now. In a business that (rightly so) relies on audiences approving of the work in a way that means they'll purchase a ticket for it, how do we, the artists, measure success? And what is artistic growth anyway? Is it just another phrase for pretentious? What does risk mean in our business?

On Impermanence

Theatre is intrinsically impermanent.

There is something so sad about that, but also marvelous. Shows close, sets are struck, costumes reintegrated back into stocks across town, the creative team moves on to other projects. There will be a time not that long from closing that all of you don't even quite remember things that seemed second nature only weeks before.

Photos don't capture the humor or pathos of the live moment, and video guts the performances so that it is barely worth watching a recording of the production. Once it's closed, it's gone. Forever. That play will never ever happen again in the same way with the same people in that same climate.

I know that this is all obvious, but I think it is a relevant discussion for the Founding Fathers, because I think we live in a time obsessed with permanence. Tattoos, video tapes of births and weddings, a million million blogs existing in perpetuity on the Internet of people's intimate thoughts... We live in a time when we believe that if it's not recorded, it may not have actually happened. Is this a response to our caffeinated fast-paced American lifestyles?

Where does the theatre fit into this obsession? How does transience become a valued part of the landscape? Or does it?

Food for Thought

Yes, whatever the planetary alignment is, it has signaled for my silence. So I will post a quote and then comment on Quincy's thoughts on Monday. In the meantime, chew on this:

"When the aspiration and exclusiveness of high art were countered with the vigour and craft of entertainment, then the pretensions of the one and the sentimentality of the other were both under mutual surveillance, and it was somewhere there, in the middle of this collision that you were likely to find a healthy--a Shakespearean--kind of theatre."
Michael Blakemore, Arguments with England: A Memoir

Socialist Theatre Tickets?

Buy tickets for you and your fellow man! Spend $200/seat at this opening night and you'll send a needy family to the show for free.

On despair...

TJ has been told by the stars to "still thy tongue", so here I am. I'm struggling with something I'll refer to as the "poverty-mentality" of the American theatre and the American theatre artist. I am so weary of working my evolutionary fingers to the bone for squat in my checking account. There are a million other professions out there that pay a living wage and allow you the freedom to go home at 5pm to your dog. So, I ask, why don't we demand more monetary respect for what we do?

I believe the fault lies in the institutions' hands, the unions' demands and the artists' lack of self-respect. Yet, I feel my business acumen is woefully lacking to truly understand the real economics at play. I use the phrase "poverty-mentality" to mean "oh, we'll never make enough money, so we might as well be grateful with the crust of bread we've got". To that I say, I'm tired of bread. I want champagne and oysters. I see younger organizations all the time emulating institutions founded on a subscriber-basis and putting their eggs in the "oh we'll get grants" basket in order to produce on a "we can't afford that" level, while those established institutions are generally far from fiscally sound. What about a model that has nothing to do with subscriptions? What about tiered ticket prices for the uber-rich and the struggling? (Think Rent's "starving artist" tickets or Wicked's lottery.) Or a model that's actually based on the sale of a product? I'm fascinated with De La Guarda and Cirque du Soleil for their astonishing theatrics, but also because of their business plans.

What about the idea of a small business model for theatre? Instead of a non-profit? Could this work? I think of the Starbucks guys or the neighborhood beauty-supply store-- those owners make a living, pay their employees and generally have nice benefits packages. I'm sick to death of the letter writing campaigns saying "believe in art and write me a check" -- let's put a product out there that's worthy of disposable income. I don't think I would mind becoming the "triple iced sugar-free vanilla soy latte" theatre of our time.

I may just get Tommy to open up on this one...Stars be damned.

On Artifice

Quincy points out that Artifice in the definition of theatricality is troubling to her.

Why is artifice problematic? It's acknowledged artifice, meaning that everyone who goes to the theatre knows that what on stage is not "real" - the actors, set, lights, costumes are working to create an illusion that is acknowledged ((somewhat)) openly on either side of the footlights.
Realism for some reason attempted to overwhelm that artifice. I'm not sure how useful ignoring that artifice is any more.

It's fake. But that it's fake and we all KNOW it's fake is part of the uniqueness of the art form.

Perhaps we crave the space that artifice creates - the space to experience reality with just enough breathing room to interpret it as more significant than just reality.

The Basic Ingredients

What are the basic elements of theatre?

Live: both audience and actors are experiencing the story in the same space at the same time. This is different from a t.v. show broadcast live from in front of a live studio audience: the theatrical experience is meant to be experienced only First-Hand, not through the interpretive eye of a camera.

Acknowleged Artiface: we all know that the actors are pretending to be other people, in an environment that is artificial, under lighting that simulates "reality" or attempts to signal a mood or tone.

What are the other elements?

Does theatre need to:
tell a story?
have an audience?
use language?
have design elements?
start as text?

What is specific to theatre that is not possible in other forms?
Where do theatre and other art forms overlap?

The Fourth Wall

So is the fourth wall necessary? Why do we have that convention in the first place? And why do we keep audiences in the dark expecting them to be silent?

It seems to me that it might be worth investigating a modern movement away from a passive, darkened, silenced audience - a movement away from the pretense of the fourth wall to a place where the actor and the audience interrelate in a way that still contains the pleasures of voyeurism inherent in the passive spectator, but opens up the possibility for more dynamic conversation on either side of the footlights.

My (limited, cursory) research into Victorian and Edward melodrama for my last project brought to my attention that there is a direct correlation between the use of electric light in the theatre (which allows for concentrated and controlled use of lights) and the previous lighting techniques (making theatre outside to make use of daylight, using chandeliers to light the entire theatre as well as the audience). In short, the practice of holding the audience in the dark and the spectacle in the light is a new one - perhaps 150 years old at the most. Why is it still intact? Why might it be useful to investigate the effects that presence (through lights) have on audiences?

Here are some other musings on the issue:

• When the audience was darkened, the theatre no longer could be a place "to see and be seen" - what does this mean for the socializing component of theatre?
• What happens to the status of the storyteller and the status of the listener when the storyteller is in the light? Why are the status differences important, or are they?
• it seems to me that the movement toward staging in the round comes from an attempt to keep the spectator conscious of his fellow spectators - but most of the shows that I have seen in the round, the audience behaves like a proscenium audience. I wonder if that was different when those theatres came into vogue, and if audiences were more participatory then than they are now in that configuration.
• Perhaps for my next project, we will keep the audience lit.

I'm sure that I will have more to ramble about on this topic in time, as I often leave a show wondering what my and my fellow darkdwellers experienced and what our relationship was to the piece and to each other in experiencing the piece. And since this space is about my musings on all things theatrical, I hope to be writing about them here.

Theatricality

I rant and rave quite a lot about my personal mission of inherent theatricality in my work and the work that I produce. But what exactly does that mean?

Here's the definition of THEATRICAL from the American Heritage Dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theatricality):

the·at·ri·cal (thē-āt'rĭ-kəl) Pronunciation Key adj.
Of, relating to, or suitable for dramatic performance or the theater.
Marked by exaggerated self-display and unnatural behavior; affectedly dramatic. n.
Stage performances or a stage performance, especially by amateurs. Often used in the plural.
theatricals Affectedly dramatic gestures or behavior; histrionics.

A fine definition for the layperson, but it seems that there are plenty of plays put on in the theatre that are "suitable for dramatic performance in the theatre" but that do not in fact meet my personal requirements for inherent theatricality.

The question that must always be asked is: why tell this story using the medium of theatre? Why theatre and not film, photograph, novel, graphic novel/comic, song, painting, dance, television, computer program, animated serial, magazine article, rant on a blog, text message, sporting event, town hall meeting, presidential election, virtual reality, circus, etc.?

More importantly: what constitutes theatricality here in the 21st Century, when there are so many more things to define the art of the theatre against?

I see and read a lot of work that I think is cinematic or literary, but not necessarily theatrical. I have seen plays that were cinematic on the page transformed into theatrical experiences through the director's keen eye and imagination. I have seen literary works adapted for the stage to be vital, theatrical experiences and seen the opposite true as well.

Is theatricality something that can be determined on a case-by-case basis? Or is it a larger, over-arching concept that can be penned and used like a mission statement? Can the components of theatricality be broken down and then reconstituted to reinterpret inherent theatricality for the 21st century?

I think so. It's a multi-faceted concept and one that will be a central theme to the manifesto in the making, and one that I think is (and has been, always) central to the evolution of the art form.

The Death of Divas

". . . the prima donna is not the figure she once was,- perhaps partly because the overall position of women in society has advanced to such an extent that her achievement no longer seems remarkable or heroic.

Fifty years ago, it was different: a girl had to fight to make a career in opera, and, in a business dominated by flattering yet patronising men, even the biggest stars had to assert themselves aggressively - hence the prevalence of the sexist myth of the difficult diva."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/07/18/baarts118.xml

What does it mean to be a female artist today? What, if anything, is the balance you strike between your femininity and your role as a leader? As a collaborator?

Cultural Evolution?

I am developing a rant on the preservation, propagation and generation of American culture. A tirade about accessibility, provocation, and subversion. A rant about art as the mirror mirror on the wall. A rant that ties together the brand-blandness megacorporate capitalism to the bare-shelved flatline of communism, and the place of boutique experience in a culture that fakes freedom of choice.



How to incite Evolution? How to start the seismic shift ?

****

"When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace. "

-- DANA GIOIA, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010352