daddy's got legs

john caird and paul gordon's daddy long legs plays three more theatres before the end of the year.

every little detail plays a part

alec barniskis attaches a reverse canvas of an "in progress" version of george seurat's painting "a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte" to a metal frame in marquette university's helfaer theatre.

do you see what i see?

an unfortunate promo photo for "the child" – a musical retelling of the birth of jesus christ told from joseph's point of view – which premiers this christmas the fireside dinner theatre in fort atkinson, wisconsin:

upside down...better or worse?

from happy talk to head banging

over the holidays, the new york times' christopher isherwood took in a double feature of rodgers and hammerstein's south pacific and the arena-rock, jukebox musical rock of ages:

As we settled in [at "Rock of Ages"] I commented to my companion that it was a pretty safe bet that I was the only one in the theater who’d just been to see “South Pacific.”

“You’re probably the only person here who’s heard of ‘South Pacific,’ ” she replied.

the critic and the actor should be friends

a month ago i wrote what amounted to an ode to milwaukee theatre critic damien jaques, ending with this:

jaques couldn't do it. he couldn't bring himself to write that scathing, awful review.

because he cared too much about those actors.

and you know what i thought?
i thought, "i like this guy."

today, there's this from the guardian's theatre blog:

A question that comes up time and again in the theatre world is how critics and practitioners should relate to one another. The rise of theatre blogging has done a great deal to blur the lines between these two camps, due to the fact that more directors, actors and designers are taking to their keyboards to air their opinions, and that the internet allows artists and reviewers to talk more directly than ever before.

and it gets more, well...complicated.

i think this guy likes us

an op-ed by milwaukee's own damien jaques, written a week or so ago during one of the many crests of the skylight opera theatre saga, didn't get the attention it deserved.

in it, jaques reminds us that artists, milwaukee artists, actually do actually matter:

Milwaukee and Wisconsin reached a critical mass of stage talent in the 1980s, and like nuclear fission, the energy has happily continued to spark and feed on itself for more than two decades.

Outstanding theater artists who could work anywhere, including New York, decided to settle here, sink roots, buy houses, send their children to our schools, pay taxes. We developed a reputation for being a welcoming community with good, artist-friendly stage companies that received strong box office and fund raising support. Artists were respected and even cherished here.

It should come as no surprise that these favorable conditions affected what we saw on stage. A good work environment inspires the best in people and attracts others of superior talent.

you know, i think this guy likes us.

this jaques fellow and i had a wee squabble a few years back – quite polite, nothing too serious, mind you, just a friendly tiff – over a review he'd written about a play i'd been planning to see. the play starred many of my dear, dear friends, and i was anxious to know what to say of their performances should i be forced to greet them at the stage door after the show.

this is the basic reason i read most theatre reviews: to memorize a line or two i can toss out post-performance while in the midst of hugging a sweaty ingenue. good or bad, it doesn't matter – i am a master at manipulating a review quote to make it seem perfectly appropriate, whatever the circumstances: "i thought you did so much more than posing, mary-ann!" or "goodness gary, you were better than broadway!" or my personal favorite, "oh, henry! i don't really think every quart of milk in a ten mile radius curdled when you began to sing!" and jaques' reviews were the best, a veritable fountain of stage door compliments, most of which i didn't even have to alter, except for the words i couldn't pronounce.

however, after reading this jaques' review – which contained a mere three sentence, one paragraph mention of which actors played which roles – i was stumped. jaques' article said nothing of the actor's accomplishments, nothing of the director's staging, it only listed their names (many of which i already knew, save that tall man with the beard.) that, and some cheap talk of a few pretty lights, a sharply focused gobo, some painted flats, and a pleasant curtain speech was all i got.

what was i to do?

i'll tell you what i did, i didn't go to see the play. i couldn't! instead, i sent a pissy little letter to the milwaukee journal/sentinel saying something incredibly wry, like, "after reading mr. jaques' lengthy review of "bladdy-blah-hoo-ha", i have no earthly idea if he thinks i should attend a performance of it or not. please tell mr. jaques for me, if i was interested in reading a book report on playwright applejack mc-twoshoes, i would have paid a visit to the local library." in my head, i pronounced "library" in that snotty, upper crust, british way - libry. libry. fuh-fuh. take that mr. reviewer guy, i thought.

several weeks later, i heard through a friend of a friend that jaques actually felt bad about the letter i'd sent.

"he read it!?" i shouted, incredulously.

"yes, and he felt quite bad."

being the stone cold, hard-as-a-rock, iceberg man that i am, i wept. immediately i felt a walloping sense of guilt for making the man feel bad.

"really? bad? he felt bad?"

"yes." i was told. "quite bad."

oh man.

cripes.

i didn't mean to make anyone feel bad.

oh hell.

so a day or so later i called him. i called damien jaques on the telephone and we talked about that horribly written review. after giving him a heartfelt apology (that i'd memorized earlier that day from a dear abby column in jaques' own newspaper) i decided to cut to the heart of the matter. "why, jaques!?" i demanded, "why did you write such a lame, flaccid review in the first place?"

"tony," he said – trying to butter me up by using my first name, a trick he learned, no doubt, from his days slumming with the likes of clair richardson – "i didn't think it was a very good production."

ah-ha! settled, i thought! finally, i had the truth! i pounced: "why the devil didn't you put that in the review, you dunderhead!" i may not have said dunderhead.

"because i have such great respect for all those people, every one of those actors, and the director, i just...i couldn't bring myself to write in a review what i really thought about the show. so i only talked about the things i liked."

now, you might be sitting there in milwaukee, relaxing in your boxers with your cat yawning at your side, and you might be reading this delightful anecdote thinking, "well the bastard didn't seem to mind giving me a crappy review for my performance in ziggity-do-dah-day!" and you're right. he did give you a crappy review. someday we'll talk about your stale, lifeless performance in ziggity-do-dah-day, but save that for another occasion. your birthday. purim.

apparently this production (and boy, am i'm going to get mail) was just so damned horrid, jaques couldn't do it. he couldn't bring himself to write that scathing, awful review.

because he cared too much about those actors.

and you know what i thought?
i thought, "i like this guy."

a society that values profitability above all

an article from the miami herald has been popping up on facebook pages and in email blasts over the last couple of days (certainly among us artsy types.) considering the turmoil going on at the skylight right now, it's a worthy read.

Two South Florida dance companies closed recently. West Palm Beach's lively, lovely Ballet Florida filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago, and Miami-Dade's gallant Ballet Gamonet, after months of financial struggle, suspended performances in March and seems unlikely to return.

Meanwhile, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest will get $45 million to stay with the show for another three years, and Goldman Sachs made $4.3 billion in profits from April to June. Presumably, both Goldman execs and Seacrest feel like dancing, though it's doubtful the rest of us would want to watch.

These events may not seem connected, but they are. We've always been a society that values profitability and celebrity above almost all other qualities.

(hat tip valdez)

part 2: what does an artistic director do?

cescarini: "if you run out of trust, good luck."

next act theatre's david cescarini responds to the last "what the heck is it you do, anyway?" (which, for fun, can also be read "what the heck is it, you do anyway?")

david's vast 33-year theatrical career includes such highlights as casting me in my first brecht review. yes, my only brecht review. he is the producing artistic director of milwaukee's next act theatre, now in it's 20th season (whew!) and has directed over 27 shows for the company. his lovely wife was once on the lawrence welk show.

The AD and MD must work in tandem, bound by trust and driven by a strong faith in the vision. But as for earning and spending: the artistic director must be as concerned with earning as the managing director is about spending. Hence, the AD must propose a vision that is sellable and supportable overall, but also intermittently challenging. This insures forward progress, artistically, while hopefully providing a stable financial base to keep it happening. The one thing that the administrative leadership absolutely SHOULD NOT do, is go into hock to a bank to the tune of almost half a million bucks to support deficits. Some boards and administrators can be reluctant to comprehend the danger of this fiscal policy. This can lead to rather desperate action and disaster.

The artistic director job description is not monolithic: it is dependent upon individual strengths, personalities and relationships, company history, the internal creative pathway of an organization, budget size and many more factors. But trust is the currency that every AD relies upon, much more so than money. If you run out of money, you can find more or work with less. If you run out of trust, good luck.

Also, trust is a free-flowing commodity. It flows in all directions in a healthy environment. In a vibrant resident artistic community, trust is generated with each successful creative relationship or project, and in turn engenders work that is deeper, richer, of appreciably better quality -- which our audiences recognize. Milwaukee's a terrific theatre town because of trust.

The fiasco at an unrecognizable Skylight has trashed this most basic and essential element for artistic endeavor (or perhaps any human endeavor that's worth pursuing). Since the time that each of us fell backwards into the waiting arms of two fellow acting students, we have depended upon trust to make us better.

As an unsolicited answer, Tony, artistic directors trade in trust. And the great thing is, the more you invest and spend wisely, the better are your returns. It's kind of like accounting ... but different.

the continuing combustion

the big skylight theatre/milwaukee journal-sentinal pow-wow that happened last wednesday – an interview with skylight managing director eric dillner, board president suzanne hefty, past president howard miller and skylight marketing director kristin godfrey – produced some big scary financial numbers, some whining and groveling, and a couple of real doozies.

like this, from hefty:

"We knew [the company's restructuring, including firing artistic director William Theisen] would be an unpopular decision, but we didn't anticipate the pace or the tone. The social media response caught us off guard.

We need to get our message out that we're trying to manage through a recession and that the artistic vision of the Skylight hasn't changed at all. We haven't done that well; we will establish forums for conversation and explanation."

hefty, dillner and miller knew the decision would be so unpopular they didn't even inform the rest of the skylight's board of directors. and someone might remind hefty and miller that the artistic vision for the company comes from the artistic director. what's dillner going to do from now on, ask himself WWBD (what would bill do?)

after completely gutting the company of its entire artistic staff – the resident music director, the artistic associate/company manager, and the artistic director – it's almost sick-making that the words "artistic vision" would even come out of hefty's mouth.

but this is especially rich:

Dillner, Hefty and Miller acknowledged that they handled Theisen's departure badly and that it led to the continuing combustion. They would have handled things differently, especially since they ardently hope that Theisen will return on a freelance basis to direct three main stage shows and two studio shows next season. They need him for artistic and box office reasons, and they need his calming presence.

The plot of this drama will turn next on whether Theisen will help the company that pushed him out the door last week.

in other words: theisen must come in and save the day, and if the skylight fails without him, it's partly his fault.

this is pathetic, reprehensible behavior. if william theisen were to never set foot in the skylight theatre again, there would be no person who could or should blame him. dillner, hefty and miller are responsible for this mess, and they should bear the consequences of their decision.