Post 13: Social Change Performance. The Flea Theater in TriBeCa

The Flea Theater has been on my radar for innovative and groundbreaking waves in theatre practices since 2012 when I was in Sean Graney’s These Seven Sicknesses directed by Ed Iskandar (Big Fan! Drama Desk Nominated for this project and a pretty stellar person) Jim Simpson, the artistic director at the time and husband to Sigourney Weaver (See what I did there, lovely feminists!), along with their innovative artistic and design teams, have opened up the world of theatre in a way I would not have imagined previous to my exposure to the Flea and the Bats, their resident acting company.

Many up-and coming actors knew that this place was a place to make magic and to grow wings to bigger things. And the city new too, poor and rich alike:

Despite its tiny capacity, more than 17,000 adventurous New Yorkers make their way to The Flea each year. Because of the huge variety, the Flea draws students, uptown residents, downtown enthusiasts—in short, as diverse a group in age, interests, and ethnicity as lives in the city itself. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flea_Theater)

In addition to the non-equity Bats, there was an entire season of equity shows and projects hosted in their spaces. They were the first theatre I had experienced that had a QR program to save cost/waste and to offer a certain number of free tickets if you emailed quickly enough to get one (They’ve gone to significantly discounted tickets, but still a great deal). The economy in 2012 was such that non-equity houses were falling faster than anyone wanted to see and The Flea had just purchased an additional building to add three new performance spaces for future expansion of offerings. At the time, I didn’t think much of scope of what they were building, but your question made me wonder if it had expanded since then.

Sure enough, I found a few new things monetarily based, others culturally diverse, and all worth sharing.

1)    Dynamic Ticket Pricing: http://theflea.org/for-audiences/dynamic-ticket-pricing/

A small amount of tickets are sold at $15. Once sold, the prices go up incrementally depending on when you buy them, and all seats are general admission so getting there early gets you a better seat. All these rules bend when you buy a VIP ticket for significantly more. This way, more theatre goers get seats, showing up early is rewarded, and still those theater-goers who want a specific guaranteed seat, they can pay considerably more for it.

2)    They partner on projects with members and the full company of Epic Players, a neuro-inclusive theatre company https://www.epicplayersnyc.org/our-story

Classes are offered to the public for $15 per class and actors who audition and are accepted into the company can attend Epic Players classes for free. These classes hone skills in On-Camera, Musical Theatre, Finding Your Narative, and EPIC plays community ensemble. https://www.epicplayersnyc.org/classes-1

3)    “Come raise a joyful hell with us!” Perhaps this is common now and I missed the 8-ball, but their donations page takes old school giving rewarded with a name in a program (that will most likely get thrown away before the night is through), and mashed it up with a GoFundMe page to make giving more rewarding, interactive and fun. http://theflea.org/for-audiences/support/

4)    New York Deaf Theatre will present MAPLE & VINE May 11-27, 2018, using a combination of American Sign Language, spoken English, and English Captioning. The cast and production team features a diverse group of Deaf and hearing artists. http://theflea.org/shows/nydt-maple-vine/

5)    “Just a decade ago New York City boasted over 100 viable spaces for small companies to produce their work – now there are less than 25. Anchor Partners is our response.” http://theflea.org/for-artists/anchor-partners/

I’ll close with: If you are in NYC and have a minute, go hit Tribeca for a show at the Flea and then hit South’s around the corner for a great drink and some killer nacho’s (and a possible conversation with a star).

Post 11: The universal squeeze box of gender and autism.

My, oh, my. I’m in the mud with this one, “Clear as mud,” when it comes to clarity of my opinion trying to answer many of Erica’s posed questions. This is not to say that they are not all worth asking, discussing, tugging back and forth and coming to strong conclusions and plans-of-action for diversifying and expanding the conversation when it comes to gender. This is to say that from our conversations of race, to gender, to disabilities, they are all mixing into one soup of conversation. In some ways, all three have themes that I would argue are not universal but pose their own benefits and detriments. Hir is not a universal play to me. It may bring of conversations of shared experience to the forefront that one could ‘relate to’ such as PTSD, male dominance, and teenage rebellion, but it discolors each beyond stereotypical recognition, the military son coming home being the least affected, the daughter/son being brainwashed, the mother seeking disorder over order. These choices stand stereotypical universality on its head. Perhaps “universal” is a term that has been previous used to unite whereas it seems to exlude anyone that fits into the queer theory concept. Hir hurls in our face tropes of gender specific stereotypes and then mixes it up in a blender to communicate something that could be argued as universal for the sake of being universal but too difficult to swallow in too many other instances to ignore. Also, the world “universal” has taken on this generalized fog much like a large magnet that many particles have gravitated toward for its prettiness. It is endowed with the ability to smooth over hard edges or mask the harshness of a provocative statement for the sake of dulling the sense or reaction. In doing so, its effectiveness has worn off. So to me it’s like a tasteless strawberry shortcake. What’s the point if the taste is gone?

Perhaps I can look a little differently at “universal themes,” see themes that bridge gender conversations with other themes in disability or race, and investigate what exactly is universal between them. I can think of and name a piece of film worth investigating, “Temple Grandin.”  I was exposed to this gem when I was substitute teaching for a high school special education classroom because the teacher was downtown for the day with the entire districts of special needs teachers for a presentation by the real Temple Grandin. They left the movie for us to watch and I was fascinated. The HBO special was based on her real life. Claire Daines plays the title character, an autistic engineer who transforms the cattle industry and raises awareness of autism and female independence simply by being herself and never giving up. In some ways, her “femaleness” and lack of cynicism provided a buffer for which to thrive as she was making her way.  Her autism made her laughable in some populations to where, when she transformed the cattle industry by redesigning the slaughter flow to keep the cows moving and not afraid, it was as if she passed through the white male gates undetected. The workers were dumbfounded by her discoveries and their significant increase in productivity.

As a person with autism, she detested being physically touched, but she desperately needed to still be squeezed. She created a “squeeze” machine that she could operate herself. Seeing how it worked on her, she built one for cows that kept them calm in the slaughter line.  She saw the fear in the cattle when they were being groomed for the slaughter line and it made her very uncomfortable. Her own need to be “squeezed” clicked with the possibility that they might need the same. She would have never discovered the similarity between her need for compression in order to remove panic and the cows need for the same had she not spent time on a ranch with her folks, working with animals who had a different sense than people. In this case, this was a real female character, the protagonist of the story, and an innovator of the new way of herding cattle in preparation for slaughter. This particular example, before any adding to the story has something deeper, though I would argue is not a universal story. She, a female (regardless of the autism piece) was an engineer in a male dominated field in the 70’s and 80’s when women were rarely allowed, let alone adding her autism piece (which I would support was the reason she was so widely accepted, because she was different than the female norm. She was less distracting in appearance and behavior because she didn’t act stereotypically feminine nor behaviorally normal. In fact, her directness was off-putting to say the least as she was portrayed in the film.) What was liberating to me was that she brought awareness to a male dominant part of the world that women can be smart, women can be strong, women can stand their ground and be persistent in the workforce (not just the home), and people with autism should also be valued and respected. Claire Daines does not actually have autism, but represents Temple well in her portrayal based on my experiences with people who have autism and the information we have of the real woman. It seems to me that a “fake out” often can be more effective than hitting an issue head on. Perhaps, in addition to presenting solid female characters, we also invite odd side jabs, and side door tactics to outflank the army we work against (and in some cases “with”). In this case, because Temple Grandin was the outsider, she broke through. Much like we can see signifiers as a detriment or a benefit, using opportunities to our advantage, when presented, will help empower women for a more universally representational system.

Post 10: Privilege Blinds: The Movement of Improvement.

Brian Eugenio Herrera named and effectively described a concept I had not allowed my mind to fully realize before reading his article, “But do We Have the Actors for That?’: Some Principles of Practice for Staging Latinx Plays in a University Theatre Context. Although it became clearer to me through this reading and our class discussion, Patricia Ybarra is owed credit for introducing the term “Coalitional Casting” to my ears and consequently the multitudes of theatre goers and theatre makers who support the deployment of what Herrera calls, “ethnic surrogation as a strategic means of underscoring the structural gaps that exist within the American theatre.”

There are so many strong points worth repeating for the sake of exposure and further discussion. In order to limit the branches on this tree, let’s answer just a few of Osi’s questions.

1)     Herrera offers that the coalitional casting approach can effectively balance out “privilege to amplify awareness of racial and ethnic inequality rather than efface.” I don’t disagree with what I gather is his intention and motivation for saying this. However, I disagree if we are considering this balance could be attainable through this means over the course of one lifetime.

In trying to answer this question, I found myself torn by the word “privilege,” to which I found an article from the New York Times Magazine, July 14, 2015 entitled, “How ‘Privilege’ Became Provocation.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/magazine/how-privilege-became-a-provocation.html

In this article Parul Sehgal approaches privilege from several vantage points stating, “It’s the fumbling hope that acknowledging privilege could offer some temporary absolution for having it”, privilege was “intended to be an enticement to action, and it is still hopeful, if depleted and a little lost. It is emblematic of the kinds of pressures we put on language, our stubborn belief that the right word can be both a diagnosis and a cure”, and “privilege stains. Which might explain why this word pricks and ‘opportunity’ and ‘advantage’ don’t. ‘I can choose to not act racist, but I can’t choose to not be privileged,” a friend once told me with alarm.”

The most poignant picture for me was Parul’s offering of a commencement speech by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at Wellesley College where she, a highly-educated woman didn’t emphasize how the graduates had been helped by their education, but how they had been hindered by it. She told them, “she hadn’t always been alert to the ‘nuances’ of people who were different from her. ‘Privilege blinds, because it’s in its nature to blind,’ she said. ‘Don’t let it blind you too often. Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.’”

It is an unfathomable chasm from which to rebound in order to truly find equality of race and equality of the social system. It would take many lifetimes to begin to identify, name, and remove pieces of privilege as it stands currently, and that is if each and every one of us is diligent in the doing.

This does not in any way remove my desire to be a part of the movement of improvement for the sake of this generation and all generations to come. Privilege is relatively ubiquitous to the point of being “baked into the cake” [thank you Dr. Fletcher for this helpful visual] of society. To un-stir or un-bake this inequality seems impossible, though innovators like Ybarra and Herrera help the movement gain teeth by describing, naming, and offering possible solutions while presenting our obligations as much as our opportunities in this movement when we are faced with the decisions in whatever role we play (director, castor, actor, audience member, etc.).

So, I ask you: If you do not understand what privilege you currently have and unconsciously choose to entertain, how can you, whomever you are, truly find equality.

2)     It didn’t occur to me prior to this week’s readings. However, I am wrestling with directorial decisions I made in the spring of 2016. I was hired to direct the spring musical at a school that was new to me. The first decisions deal with “what musical?” That affects not only the moral and interest based on what’s popular in the school but also if students have knowledge of that particular musical or similar musicals in the same style or time period. My decision was primarily made using the pieces that are most important to me for the sake of the students.

A)     Getting as many students involved as possible (so long as there is financial and personnel support).

B)     Knowing the talent pool, hierarchy of what’s been done and why, loyalty issues, and how much you must ‘do as the Romans do.’

C)     What shows, styles, and experience opportunities haven’t been given to the students yet.

D)     Cost of rights for the show.

In considering these, I found that there was a large amount of highly talented acting men that needed to be represented and a younger level of singing ability due to average age and experience of the choral singers who planned to audition. So, I went to work looking for a large show, with lots of heavier acting male roles, but with well written music that was accessible for the beginner or intermediate (younger) musicians. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF was a unanimous hit! We got more than fifty students actively involved and there was a lot of talent and heart in the project.

Here’s the kicker: The majority of the population of the school was Hispanic. Golde was played by a very tall, talented, white girl, but beyond that, most of the cast was very different than the original Broadway cast. None of them could grow beards (which was a definite strain on our budget, trying to stick to the facial hair of the religion and culture) or speak Yiddish, nor did they understand much about the history or culture of this play though I facilitated as much as their time and patience would let me.

Did I misrepresent the show by choosing and directing it with a demographic of students that wasn’t physically, culturally, or experientially authentic? Did I imbed in them anything other than a love for a story that is worth experiencing and re-telling for an audience to experience? It in many ways is a universal story of suffering and a challenge to find what is most important to you in life, to not take anything for granted. But these articles and this conversation made me question the nuances of my choices, what I’m still proud of and what I may no longer be proud of in my casting choices, in my show choices, and in what I represent when I make any decisions. I am more aware, and for that I am grateful. I am most thankful for the continued discussion and the compassion for us to move forward with the conversation that I will name: the movement of improvement.