The Hardest Working Man In Monologuing

Earlier this year, when monologuist Mike Daisey got himself into hot water for lying on National Public Radio, I was conflicted. Actually, no—I was giddy with the kind of spiteful joy that comes from watching someone successful take a big step forward, look down, and find they are ankle deep in shit. Plagiarism scandals amuse me endlessly, and while Mike's screw-up wasn't plagiarism, I found it compelling for the same reason: we like to see cheats caught.

Daisey apologized, saying that he should not have brought Steve Jobs to This American Life—not because it contained falsehoods, but because it was a theatrical work unbound by the constraints of journalism. That struck me as a cop out, for the show's run at the Public theater was billed as non-fiction, and the audience came to be told something true. Embellishing details was a betrayal of that trust, and the fact that Mike revised the show to remove the offending bits tells me that he understood this.

I didn't feel conflicted until I heard that the Public was bringing him back for a run of six original shows, starting in October. Screw that guy, I thought. He cheated, he lost, game over. But then I interviewed him, and I was happily reminded that artists—everybody, really—are much more complicated than the news media can comprehend. 

"At PS 122 I used to do a new show every Monday night," he told me last week. "I would give them these sort of evocative titles, but I wouldn't actually work on them until an hour before the audience was there. As they would come in, I would create the outline and perform the monologue. It was really pivotal into making me the artist I am now."

Daisey's extemporaneous style makes such speed possible, and the simplicity of his set-up, which requires nothing but a table, notes, and a glass of water, keeps it cheap.

"The work develops faster than it does in traditional American theater," he said, "in large part because we own the whole widget."

Even when off-the-cuff, Daisey's work seems scripted—polish given by a mind with an uncommon ability to quickly organize stories in a meaningful, often powerful way. Lots of people tell stories. Daisey is a storytelling machine.

It goes on like that. Mike Daisey screwed up badly, and to atone he is working as hard as he can at the thing he does best. Perhaps I was the last person to reach this conclusion, but the guy definitely deserves a second chance. I'm glad I wasn't too stubborn to give him one.

Let's Stop Making Jokes About Porno Titles, Please

When The Performers was first announced for the fall season, I thought—"Gee. A porno comedy with Cheyenne Jackson, Henry Winkler and Alicia Silverstone. That's either a very good idea or a very bad idea."

Guess which one it was!

I was just wondering, “Should I go see The Performers?” when the show’s producers made my decision for me. After seven performances, the show has closed, making it the first casualty of the fall season and one of the finest flops in recent memory. It also gave headline writers around the country an opportunity to trot out sorely-underused impotence gags. Good job, fellas!

The producers tried to cast some blame on Hurricane Sandy, but the apparent ease with which the rest of Broadway bounced back from the storm suggests that the real fault might have been the hailstorm of nasty reviews. Think there’s a connection? Oh, I don’t know.

Read on if you'd like to know which of the play's jokes—as quoted in the reviews—were the lamest. Hint: They're all tied.

Theater Subscriptions: As Healthy as Magazines

Jonathan Mandell has an excellent story in TCG about the theater subscription model, which is currently existing in a Schrodinger's cat set-up—simultaneously thriving and stone dead. Serious theater-types should take the time to read and think on Jonathan's article. The rest of you should scroll down and look at that picture of Hedy Lamarr some more. Yowza.

For me, the question of where the subscription model is heading is moot for two reasons. The first is that I live in New York, surrounded by so many theaters that it would be insane to commit to just one. I'm down the street from BAM, and so might throw my hat in the ring for them, but I've seen enough bad shows there that I don't really want to sign on for a whole season. The only place I might consider subscribing is Classic Stage, because they rarely produce bad work, and because their shows sell out so quickly that only subscribers really have a chance of getting a seat.

Despite my love for CSC, it's unlikely that I'll ever subscribe to a theater, and that's because of the second reason. Put bluntly, theater subscriptions are lame. I'm fully corrupted by the stereotype of the theater subscriber—a middle aged liberal who re-ups his or her subscription every year because going to the theater is a thing one ought to do, like listening to NPR or giving to PBS. I realize that's completely unfair, but it's the image I have in my head, and I suspect that the ten or fifteen other young people who think about this kind of stuff might be on the same wavelength.

I've seen plenty of writing about how THE OLD MODELS ARE BROKEN WE HAVE TO FIND NEW MODELS, but until people are able to offer alternatives, the subscription model remains worth thinking about. Jonathan quotes a few theater directors who have come up with interesting ideas. At Seattle's ACT, $25 buys a card that lets members see any play they want. At Mixed Blood, in Minneapolis, they've found that it's cheaper for the theater to give away seats than to sell them for super-cheap, so they just let a lot of people in for free. Mandell doesn't mention it, but the Signature Theatre's $25 ticket initiative is along the same lines—the kind of thing that makes me think, "Hey! I'd pay to see that!"

Compared to this kind of forward-thinking discount, the subscription model is undoubtedly a dinosaur. Paying $60 or so for the right to purchase tickets feels like gouging—the way the Jets and Giants charged thousands of dollars for Personal Seat Licenses that allow fans to buy season tickets. I never want to feel bound to a theater, and I think other twentysomething theater-folk feel the same way. If I'm right, in fifteen or twenty years, not only will the subscription model be dead, but so will the "IS THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL DYING?!!!!" thinkpiece. Few will mourn either.

But for now, read Jonathan's piece. It's great. He's great. Theater's great. Let's all have fun, y'all.

How The Bushwick Starr Kept The Blood Play Flowing

In searching for the effect that Hurricane Sandy has had on local theaters, I've concentrated on those in the path of the storm—near the coast, or in the part of Manhattan that lost power last week. But the storm had other ways of messing with us. Today I spoke to Noel Allain, co-founder and artistic director of the Bushwick Starr, which was wrapping up a critically lauded run of The Debate Society's Blood Play when Sandy came to town. Cut the L train, and Bushwick becomes an island. Did the Starr's audience bridge the gap?

How have things been at the Starr?

Things are good. The L train is back up now. We had a show Monday and Wednesday the week of the storm, and obviously cancelled the show Monday. When everyone started to see how badly the city was being affected, and that the trains were not going to be back up any time soon, we canceled the show Wednesday, and were afraid that was it for the last week of the show. We were pretty disappointed, obviously, but on Thursday we had a conversation about it and looked at the list of ticketholders and said, Hey! Most of these people live in Brooklyn!

We wrote the list, and asked everyone—if we go ahead with the show, will you come? They said they'd be there, and we had a full house. People walked from Carroll Gardens. It was very heartening, especially after everything that had happened for the past few days, to see this support, this enthusiasm, for the show, for coming to the theater. At that point, I felt, oh—this is filling a need.

When we saw that, we decided to have the show the rest of the weekend, and they were all full. Even without the train, we had a great turnout.

Is most of your audience local to Bushwick? Or do people trek in?

They trek in. We're still working on building an audience in the immediate area. The crowd here is mostly visual art, music, parties. You say, oh, come see a play, and they look at you like, oh, why would I do that? It takes time to get people to show up.

What about your cast and crew? Did they have trouble making it in without the L?

They banded together; they found creative solutions. Some people live in Inwood. Our stage manager Liz is in Long Island, and drives in, so that whole week she stayed with the director of the show in Brooklyn. Everyone was under such duress, their lives were already turned upside down, that making the show happen was a welcome challenge. 

Until recently, I lived in Williamsburg and my girlfriend lived in Bushwick, and I got used to the L train going out for whole weekends at a time. Are you used to dealing with the L train vanishing?

We're used to living in fear. Shutting it down on the weekends—there's so much weekend business on the L train, it's like, are you fucking kidding me? Knock on wood right now, they've changed things up a little bit, probably because of that public outcry, and started doing work weeknights after 11. On a weeknight, people aren't gonna be staying out all night anyway. I hope they keep that up.

Those shuttle buses were part of why I left Williamsburg.

How can they think they can replace the whole L train with one little shuttle bus? Living where I am, the shuttles actually worked, because they would be empty when you got on. But once it got to the Graham stop, to the Lorimer stop, just forget about it. I just started walking. 

Did you get nervous seeing those pictures of the L tunnels completely flooded? 

I thought, oh God. How long is this gonna take? When it started running again, God, I felt like a king! Like, the world is open to me! The last couple weeks, you got, more than ever before, a sense of the delicate ecosystem that a city like New York runs on. It was scary. Hopefully, a little bit of a wake-up call to the people who organize this city.

People organize this city?

Somebody does, right? Somebody call those people!

Shut Up Annie, Shut Up Oliver, Shut Up Everybody!

Perhaps writing about the hurricane has gotten to me, because I just lit in to Little Orphan Annie and a few other famous musical characters who are, depending on your taste, either beloved icons or easy targets. The title of the post is probably the best thing I've written all week—"Little Orphan Annie, And Five Other Musical Heroes I Want to Punch In The Face."

The new revival of 1977′s toothache-inducing Broadway classic Annie premiered last night at the Palace Theater. Reviews have been just on the happy side of lukewarm, with most of the praise going towards the undeniably adorable dog that was profiled last week in Business Insider, beneath the barely-comprehensible headline, “Annie’s Sandy Hopes Sun’ll Come Out Day After Tomorrow.”

But no matter how much love is heaped on the red-headed twerp, her shrill squeal, bubbly optimism and unforgivable curls have always made us want to belt her. Now now, I’m not threatening to make my way up to 47th Street and start slugging. I’m not getting paid enough to go to Times Square, and with my freelancer’s build—a unique combination of flabby and scrawny—it’s really not a good idea to pick fights, even with tweens. But boy, something about those bouncing red locks makes me want to hurt somebody, and she’s not the only one. Here are five other musical legends who fill me with an overwhelming urge to bust their lip.

Am I an utter jerk, or do I have a point? You be the judge.

One other note about the Little Orphan which I forgot to mention—she's pretty sure the sun'll come out tomorrow. It doesn't always. Sometimes it stays cloudy, y'know? I'm just saying it's not the thing to bet your bottom dollar on.

Trouble At The Kitchen, And A Benefit In Red Hook

In case you hadn't noticed, I have spent the last week trying—in my own clumsy way—to document the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the theaters of downtown New York. What makes doing this hard is that the theaters who are in the most trouble are also the ones who are too busy to talk to reporters—even dashing reporters with sexy offbeat blogs. Coney Island USA, for instance, sustained serious damage, but I haven't been able to get any more information than that. I don't know much about theater in the Rockaways, but I'm sure that what is there is in very bad shape. And The Kitchen, in Chelsea, has posted a press release on their website saying that they are in very dire trouble indeed. Normally I wouldn't just quote from a release, but these are special times and, hey, this isn't a newspaper. It's my blog, dammit.

"Four feet of flooding filled the building's theater and lobby spaces, causing severe damage," sayeth the release. "Initial estimates of our loss are between $400,000 and $500,000, if not above, depending on how much material we are able to salvage for future use."

This is bad news. The Kitchen is a cool space and deserves as much love as you can spare this month. Besides wrecking their fall season, the storm forced them to postpone a November 12th benefit art auction which has now been postponed to November 26th. If you are in the market for some art, consider buying it here.

If art auctions are out of your price range, consider throwing a few dollars at the Red Hook Initiative, which is turning its November 13th Snacky Tunes concert into a benefit. More information available here on this, uh, photo of a flyer.

There are going to be lots of benefits this month, and I'm going to do my best to keep you updated on them. If you hear of anything interesting, or if you represent a theater that needs help, please drop me a line. I'm a man with a lot of spare time on his hands, and I can only take so many showers in a day.

In Queens, Storms Stymie A Parkside Theater

Snow fell on Jamaica last night, and the Black Spectrum Theatre was dark, as it has been ever since Sandy first lapped at the beaches of Long Island. The theater did not flood and its power did not fail, but this local landmark sits on park land, and the one-two punch of hurricane and nor'easter means the parks of Jamaica remain closed. 

"It's snowing, you know. Winds are picking up," said Carl Clay last night. "This cuts right in the middle of our workweek."

Filmmaker, producer and writer, Clay founded the theater in 1970. Originally a traveling troop, the company settled down in 1986, to occupy a purpose-built 325-seat theater in Roy Wilkins Park, not far from the heart of Jamaica. Since its beginning, Black Spectrum has showcased the work of emerging and established black artists, reaching out into the underserved local schools to do so. This is the mission statement of dozens of community-based theaters across New York City, but few such like-minded groups have been successful enough to find a permanent home.

Since Sandy's first approach forced the city to close its parks, Black Spectrum's plum location has become an albatross. The pair of storms have forced more than a week of cancellations—abruptly ending the run of Bubba's Fish Market and upending the planned world premiere of Dumas, which was slated for a four day run that has now been pushed back to February.

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Black Spectrum's parkside home, the morning after the snowstorm.

"While we weren't flooded and no trees fell on our facility," Clay said, "we were hit in in another kind of way, which was just as damaging. With the loss of revenue for these productions that we've put money into and are now unable to recoup right now, it does mess with our cash flow, and our entire schedule."

Like many community-based theaters, a large chunk of Black Spectrum's revenue comes from doing programs in public schools. But ongoing disputes between mayor and teacher's union have held back funds for that kind of programming, forcing the theater to postpone the start of its in-school season to, at the earliest, January. With the loss of that funding, this half of the season was totally dependent on box office revenue that is now not coming in.

"This is literally the beginning of our season, so we're energized, ready to go," Clay said. "It's a little frustrating! We're not defeated or anything like that, but it is damaging."

He and his staff know that things could be much worse. What for some arts groups was a tragedy, to Black Spectrum is a frustration. Although their fall season has been turned upside down, the winds did no damage to the theater's brand new, $100,000 electronic marquee, which is designed to give them visibility beyond the park. The lost revenue from the school programs and the shuttered box office will not cripple the company. After decades in the business, Clay is too cunning to let a storm sink Black Spectrum.

"We're in our 43rd year of operation," he said, "so we know how to prepare. 

Fifty Pounds of Foam Makes For One Sweaty Actor

What kind of challenges did you face in designing this colossal suit? 

It's the biggest thing that I've had to fabricate for the stage. The fabrication of it began in July, but we've been on this project since March. As you know, without the fat suit the play isn't quite convincing. It was a long process of trial and error, because no one had really made something so big. Something like Fat Bastard, or those celebrities that go around and are fat for a day, that's always a joke. We wanted something that would be convincing, and not evoke a comedic response but empathy and humanity.

The question was, how do we make it real on an Off Broadway budget? We had to have it ready for the actor to rehearse in it almost from day one. Because everyone else's job depended on the suit being finished, it was important that we do our job way in advance.

So how did you make it work? 

It was about what worked on Shuler's body. We knew going in that we couldn't begin until we had the actor. From my research, every person who gained weight, every person who is six hundred pounds, they all carry it in different places. It was all about Shuler's anatomy. He asked us to make it heavier, so he could feel enough of the pull of gravity so it could be semi-realistic. So we had to experiment with how much foam to put on it, what kind of foam,  thicker foams and thinner foams and how to make each part move independently.

It became sculptural, in a way. We had a fitting with Shuler for four hours, putting pieces of flab in various spots on Shuler's body and seeing where it felt right.

How much does the thing weigh?

It weighs about fifty pounds. It does look like more. It probably couldn't and shouldn't weigh any more because Shuler has to sit in it for so long. It's quite hot. 

He sweats a lot during the play. How much of that comes from the weight of the suit, and how much is make up?

Some of it is him, and some of it we've added. The idea is that the play is five days in this man's life, and we made the choice to have him not change clothes. We figure, Charlie probably doesn't have access to very many outfits, and right now he probably doesn't care much about changing clothes. We have five different shirts that we rotate through the play that get increasingly sweaty and stained. They deteriorate as he deteriorates.

Was he excited to get into the suit?

He's been such a champion, so game for it. He was really collaborative with the process from the beginning. He would wear it all through tech, fifteen hours a day, and you can't pee in it. It takes two people to take it off him. It's kind of masochistic, but it's been helpful to him, to help him get some understanding of how it is to be Charlie. He did a lot of research as well, watching people of this size move and breathe. His performance is partly the suit, but it's also him selling it.

So you're pleased with how it turned out?

It was a labor of love. Everyone came into this excited and challenged by the prospect of having such a big piece on stage. Everyone involved was committed to maintaining the integrity of the character. That was the challenge—not poking fun, not making it too big, so that we could create a reality for this world. We did an incredible job—better than expected for such a small space. The audience is literally a couple of feet away, which means we had to really do our diligence and make every piece authentic. We're all very proud.

A Recipe For The Stranded: Bake, Bake, Worry, Bake

Outside the Magic Futurebox the day after Sandy—desolate but dry. 

Magic Futurebox sits in a warehouse in Sunset Park, half a block from Gowanus Bay and a short walk from some of the worst-flooded areas of Red Hook. During Monday night's hurricane, artistic director Suzan Eraslan sat in her apartment in Harlem, nervously scanning reports that a warehouse in their neighborhood had flooded and caught fire. To cope with the fear that it was their warehouse that had gone underwater, she continued to prepare for an upcoming production that was suddenly in doubt, altering costumes and baking furiously.

"I baked a lot of cookies," she said this weekend. "And yeah, I was nervous. I kept having this horrible feeling that everything was ruined by flooding or looting or that we'd forgotten to shut things down."

The cookies, whose recipe she eventually perfected, were intended to be given out during Bloody Lullabies for Brave Women, an "abortion fairytale" whose five-show run will benefit the New York Abortion Access Fund. Unable to travel from Harlem to Sunset Park, Eraslan and her co-artistic director Kevin Laibson had to wait until Wednesday to learn their theater's fate. 

"We worked as much as possible to keep from freaking out," said Laibson. "I was nervous about what the fallout would be for the show, but I was downright scared about whether we would still have a theater."

The damaged warehouse was not theirs. The Futurebox was safe. Originally intended to run just before the election, Bloody Lullabies has been postponed a week, and will now open on November 7th. Their tech week lost, Laibson and Eraslan will proceed with a "pretty bare-bones production."

"Our lighting designer is still stuck in New Jersey," said Laibson, "and our set designer is still without power and dealing with flood damage, so the director and I are here building the set and wiring some floodlights."

Because the show is a benefit, all the labor has been volunteered, and Laibson is wary of asking his crew to push themselves for unpaid work "until they can do so without incident." But because the storm has forced the shutdown of another of women's health clinics, he's hoping that Bloody Lullabies can draw enough of an audience to make a difference. 

A Week After Sandy, I Feel The City Sprawl

Last week, I walked fifteen minutes to a friend's house in Fort Greene to drink cheap beer and watch bad football. The Titans lost. The Jets lost. In short, it was Sunday.

In a couple hours, I'm going to the same friend's house to drink cheap beer and watch bad football. The Titans will almost certainly lose. The Jets have a bye, which is good news for anyone tired of Mark "Futility" Sanchez. And meanwhile, in Staten Island, the Rockaways, Coney and elsewhere, New Yorkers are cold, hungry and mad for reasons that have nothing to do (I assume) with the Jets. 

It's not original to comment on the uncanny way that the hurricane split the city in half. For most New Yorkers, life is the same as it was last week—although we're saved the headache of charging through the grocery store buying water. For a handful, well, life has turned to shit. And save for rescue workers, utility workers and the increasing stream of volunteers, reporters and disaster area-tourists, there has been little contact between the two.

The hurricane stripped New York of mass transit, gas supplies, power and Internet—it's no surprise that it's failed to bring us together. People can only walk so far, and those who didn't need to brave bus and gas lines couldn't be blamed for staying in their neighborhoods. Neighborhoods may have come together, but the city has begun to seem very large. 

Yesterday, reading this excellent Times story about the horrifying conditions inside public housing,  I was so affected by the first two paragraphs that I asked myself, "Where was this filed from? Did the reporter make it all the way to Coney Island?" I glanced at the dateline—the bit that tells you where the reporter was when he wrote the story—and realized that, of course, it didn't have one. Articles written in New York don't need a dateline, because this is our home court. But suddenly, Coney Island feels as far away as Beirut.

New Yorkers like to identify with their block, with their neighborhood, borough and city. In an idle way, we assume we have something in common with people in the far reaches of Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Sure, I've never spent much time in any of those places, but I've driven past them in cabs. They looks like suburbs, and I know what suburbs are like. Or they look like any of the dozens of middle and working class neighborhoods that stretch across Brooklyn. I've spent time in those places. I can imagine everywhere else. 

I really have spent time in Coney Island and the Rockaways. Vacation time, but still. I know the streets. I know what trains to take to get there. This storm has underlined how shallow, how arrogant, how stupid it is to think that has given me any kind of useful knowledge. I don't know a thing about life in the Rockaways—whether or not the power is on. That's a depressing thought, though hardly a surprising one, and to cope with it I'm going to keep writing as much as I can about how the storm has affected our city's theaters. I may not know much, but I know how to write about theater, and I know how to watch the Titans lose. It's time to get back to work.