November 18, 2008

Artistry in a New Century

Opening Keynote

Molly Smith, Artistic Director, Arena Stage

Teresa Eyring, Executive Director, Theatre Communications Group: Thank you so much Joe [Dowling]. So now you know about what I meant, when I said this place and the magnificence of the vision and the accomplishment is just something that I think is an inspiration to us for these next three days. I now have the great pleasure of introducing to you our keynote speaker, Molly Smith. One thing I want to say about Molly Smith is she’s cool. [Laughs]

Molly grew up in the Pacific Northwest and developed a deep love for Alaska she headed east to Catholic University in Washington, DC to study theatre as a transfer student where she first met Paula Vogel, the playwright. She worked in several theatres there before trekking cross country back to Alaska to fulfill her dream of founding a theatre deeply connected to a place and people. She led Perseverance Theatre in Juno for 19 years developing a working community of Alaskan artists. Arena Stage called her back to DC in 1998 and under Molly’s leadership Arena has devoted itself to American voices—those of contemporary writers such as Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl and Charles Randolph Wright as well as voices from the past such as Zora Neale Hurston and classic American musical theatre. We are honored to have her on our TCG board and delivering our key note address this evening Our Lives in the Theatre. Molly Smith.

[Applause]

Molly Smith: Thank you. And thank you Joe for that wonderful story about how a great theatre gets built and rebuilt. It’s just a fantastic story and I’m so pleased to be introduced by Teresa and know she’s going to be a wonderful leader for all of us.

When Gigi Bolt left me a message asking me to make today’s speech, I was in a little clapboard house in Niagara on the Lake, Canada directing Mac and Mabel for the wonderful Shaw festival. And I got so excited I sat down to calm my nerves and play a fast game of solitaire. Somehow the idea of speaking to all of my peers and colleagues friends I’ve had over the past 25 years filled me with this great sense of anticipation. I so clearly remember my first TCG conference probably 25 years ago. I went as a trembling young person representing my tiny fledgling Perseverance Theatre in Alaska, afraid no one would speak to me. Well, I was right. [Laughter…applause] Nobody did speak to me! But I learned how to navigate the TCG political waters by finding my own group. People who were in their late 20s who were there for the first time trying to figure it out what it was all about so hello to Jack Reuler from Mixed Blood Theatre, [laughter/applause] and hello to all of you here at TCG for your first time, and welcome to TCG. [Applause]

I remember being inspired by John Hirsch’s opening speech. He was in his 60s and after a long life in the professional theatre brilliantly directing classics, he found himself interested in returning to his first love, which was puppet theatre. Now, why did he return to puppet theatre at the age of 60? He said that the creation of a miniature world sparked his imagination. As a young person, I was fascinated by his story and unable to understand why he came back to his original passion. It wasn’t until I hit the age of 50 that I understood, but more on that later.

I’ve come a long way since my theatre beginnings in the 70s. But probably like you I still find that navigating my way in the world of theatre challenging. Just about the time that I settle into a predictable period, life shifts and new challenges appear. The latest challenge facing me as an artistic leader and the rest of the theatre world is the advent and resounding success of technology and the Web. Truly a meteor phhhhff has struck our landscape and we have found ourselves in a reshaped world. Technology and the Web have altered the fabric of our lives—from banking, to shopping, to communicating, to dating to, family life, to how we spend our leisure time. And of course we haven’t seen the end of it yet. In fact, the pace and rate of change is only accelerating.

The Hopi Indians prophesized over 5,000 years ago that this century, called the Fourth House, would move very fast, and that human beings would move away from the earth. They even said that this would be a time of great speed and that even the ice would melt faster. Hmmm. We get information now in bits and bytes, flashing code orange code red we want the headlines, not the information that illuminated the headlines. Gimme the numbers, 250 killed in Fallujah, not the strategies or thinking process that led to the killings. It’s almost impossible to do deep thinking because we’re bombarded by information wherever we go. CNN even blares news on elevators as we travel from floor to floor—the last bastion of privacy. And popular fiction, the best seller stuff, is often about 5 or 6 stories that converge, instead of a single story line. The world is almost unrelentingly grim these days: war, global warming, Darfur, nuclear programs in Iran, North Korea, Russia and the United States. Polarization and partisanship at home, terror alerts and patriot acts - just on and on. But I believe that the theatre offers us an antidote to the grimness of our world. The theatre answers our deep hunger for conversations that go below the surface. We need the contemplative space; oh do we need the contemplative space now. Where else but in houses of worship or theatres can we find it? Increasingly people are looking to the technological world to create an alternative—and escape hatch from grim reality. I’ve recently learned about the experience of Second Life—how many people here know about Second Life? Ok…some people… good! I was afraid I was the last one. Uh, which is an exciting, electronic, virtual world completely removed from our real world in which people get to play out their imagined lives on the internet. Log on and you will find 40,000 neighbors engaged in all of the activities of our first life world: commerce, social activities, entertainment, and politics. They’re creating their own characters, rewriting their own narratives even earning their living in these storybook worlds. Over 6 million people have created Second Life personalities spending more than a million dollars a day. Now this is in US dollars not just some virtual currency. And now film makers are even debuting their films in this medium’s virtual movie palace rather than competing with blockbusters in the actual market.

This level of creativity, engagement and participation I think tells us something very important. At the turn of the century mega-trends said audiences would no longer be passive observers. The nature of community is changing as a result of the explosion of these online communities. Now, we used to think that community meant only person to person interaction. But now many young people spend more time online socializing than in person. Through Myspace, Facebook, internet games, Instant Messaging and texting. And we’re not only, not reaching them with newspaper ads, reviews, and listings; we’re not relevant to their daily decisions about how to interact with each other. At the same time I believe that we are experiencing the rise of the amateur. Television programs like On the Lot, Dancing with the Stars and Survivor, there is an opening of doors. The golden keys to creativity are no longer held by the executives at Dreamworks or the artistic directors of theatres. They’re available to all.

Now, for many of us, this strikes fear in the heart of the profession. But I also believe that the evolution of the American theatre has always been through a convergence, indeed an explosion between the amateur and the professional. Could the American resident theatre movement, which Joe just spoke about, have begun without the hundreds of community theatres which dotted the American landscape? We live in a changed society filled with instant celebrity, online marketing and grass roots fame. Creativity is no longer compartmentalized. The creative class, a group filled by architects, musicians, engineers, painters, writers, graphic designers, sculptors and interior designers has risen to claim a prominent place in the American economy and psyche. We live in an increasingly democratized society—anyone can be a celebrity; anyone can be an artist. In the absence of social classes and a clear sense of mobility, I believe we’re at the dawn of a new American dream where the most profound thing an individual can do is contribute creatively to society. This kind of creative mobility asserts that my image is as important as your image with the distinction of professional and amateur being ripped away.

So I want you to think of the moment you first called yourself an artist, how profound that was, what a tremendous shift in thinking. Perseverance was that for me, a cross roads between the personal and the professional, the amateur and the practitioner. But what does it mean to us as theatre professionals and how can we harness this tremendous energy that’s happening all over the country, to help fuel a sustainable American theatre? I love the example of 365 days/365 plays. Suzan-Lori Parks has followed her own developing sense of herself as an artist and created an enormous impact on the field. Bonnie Metzger and her crew have built on Suzan-Lori’s tenacity of an equally audacious idea - the National Festival, built on the challenging and energizing concept of radical inclusion. This is an artful and art filled exploration of the role of theatre in the age of the amateur. At Arena we had readings in churches, schools, even a local restaurant as well as our own building. It’s inspiring us to take other projects directly to the audience. For example, we’re working now with our church partners to create concert readings of a new musical that premiers in our season. Their own choirs will sing the music to their own congregation in their own communities. Will they also come to see the full production at our place? Probably. But regardless, we will have connected in the work. A few years into my professional life at Perseverance Theatre there was a writer by the name of Dave Hunsaker that rocked our world. He came up with this idea: why not tell the story of Antigone from a Yupik Eskimo perspective?

He wanted a way to combine two ancient cultures so we set out to find the right village to incubate the project. Dave traveled all over Alaska, a state that’s a fifth the size of the United States, with a tiny population of 600,000, most of it isolated from each other, and finally we landed at Tooksok Bay, which is a subsistence village on the edge of the Barring Sea. Dave spoke to the leaders of the village through an interpreter about why Antigone was important, why she needed to bury her brother, why she decided to go against the head man of the village Creon to care for his remains. The native leaders said she was right to bury her brother and right to defy the leader of the village. And during the time we were in Tooksok there was a man who was lost out on the ice on the Barring Sea. And each night I would watch—there were a dozen snow machines that traced the ice until late at night. I could look out to the Barring Sea and watch the lights like tiny stars in the distance. Now, his body was never found, they knew he was dead, but they still searched for a month. We knew we were in the right village to tell this particular story. The story of the Yupik Antigone was told mostly in the Yupik language with Eskimo dancing, singing and storytelling. Now most white people in Alaska had barely heard the Yupik language other than I’d like a cup of coffee and here was a play which melded these two ancient cultures who both had the same understanding of how one buries one’s dead. This deep listening and responding had ripple effects all over Alaska as different native theatre groups were created. I was affected by this way of thinking and began to see Alaska as a place to paint a broad canvass with all the cultures living in it, regardless of their status as amateurs or professionals.

Think of the times when your own thinking has been profoundly changed by your own experiences. So, what’s our specific purpose in this world? I met an extraordinary 8th grade teacher on the plane the other day who told me about her students. She said they’re the most visual generation we’ve ever had—well, we all know that, right? But what I didn’t realize is what has been happening to their reading skills. Half the students find it difficult to read in the first place, many of them do not visualize when they read. When we in this room read the words, “smoke-filled room” an image fills our heads. When they read those words all they see are the words themselves.

As theatre makers I think we have a special place in the world because in our theatres we invite people to imagine in the space between the audience and the actors. We indeed awaken the imagination. The theatre is a hot medium, rather than a cool medium like film, because it’s alive and it’s about a human being, a breathing, fleshy creature who’s operating in real time, right in front of us. And we can’t really get away 'til intermission. One of the greatest things that I think that we can do as an arts community is to continue to provide places where this deep thinking can happen. Because without it, as a culture, well, we’re just on to the next thing. And we’re pretty good at forgetting. The Greeks said that we learn only in momentary flashes and then we forget what we’ve learned, and the theatre space is about memory. We are remembering ourselves to ourselves and ourselves to our communities. As artists, we’re often challenged and taught by other artists and in the past few months the seeds of change in the theatre have been sewn by two playwrights: Steven Dietz and Richard Nelson. You read one of them in American Theatre. Both are asking questions we need to examine. Dietz is advocating the over throw of the supremacy of the director and posits the idea that this structural form that was inaugurated 100 years ago needs to be radically changed to give the reigns back to the writer and actor. Well, now that got me going. [laughter] Richard Nelson is attacking new play process by saying directors and dramaturges and indeed other artists in the theatre need to stop seeing writers as artists in need of help. [applause] In a recent speech - I think we’re gonna have a lot of controversy over this one [laughter]. In a recent speech at the Laura Pells Foundation, Nelson said, ‘what’s being said to the playwright by all this ‘help’? From the playwright’s perspective it’s this: that the given now in the American theatre is that what a playwright writes, no matter how much he or she works on it, will always not be right.' This I believe is our prevalent attitude in the American theatre and this mindset is devastating. One playwright offered her experience during a recent field study. She describes the development process as "off the rack." "It's the same in every store,” she says, “and it fits just enough to say we’re clothed but isn’t tailored to anyone in truth and therefore fits no one." So my question to all of us is, if we can’t foster situations that are designed to support the need of the playwright for the project in which they’re at work, then how are we actually helping? Is the ‘culture of help,’ as Nelson calls it, harmful? As I look around the country I see examples of programs that really work and I know you can name many too—perhaps at your own theatres. Z Space in San Francisco, Sundance - an environment that’s supported idiosyncratic productions like Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife and Crowns.

The best programs adhere to Jeanette Winterson’s description of the artist and she says, "The artist is an imaginer, the artist imagines the forbidden because to her it's not forbidden. If she’s freer than most people it's the freedom of her single allegiance to her work. Most of us have divided loyalties, most of us have sold ourselves. The artist is not divided and she’s not for sale."

I’m a child of the 60s. I was born 5 years after the beginning of the American resident theatre movement watching pioneers like Margot Jones and Zelda Fichandler. I’ve spent my entire career in the not-for-profit theatre. I don’t know a world without the not-for-profit theatre and TCG. In the beginning of the movement theatres produced and disseminated the great works of the theatre and classics in whichever part of the country they were producing. And we’ve been a part of the movement which said, we want to create theatres outside the hurly burly of New York. We believe great professional theatre can be created in communities all over the country. Artists can live in these communities, have homes, families and can feed the creative life of these cities. Today the not-for-profits have become the major creators of new drama. In the last 30 years all of the Pulitzers have been awarded to plays produced outside of New York, save one. Some people now say there are no longer any Broadway producers, there are only Broadway presenters. But increasingly the lines are blurring between the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. The road between the regional theatre, the resident theatre and the New York market is a jumble of on-ramps and off-ramps heading seemingly in all directions at once and presenting a co-production is a staple of the season at most regional not-for-profits. So the question is: are we making the art better? Are we making better opportunities for our artists? Are we being better stewards of the public resources? Are we being led by our mission as we struggle to find our balance on this unstable ground? Everything around us is changing. Regardless of where we’re working in the American theatre, I don’t think we have any choice but to evolve and adapt to the changed circumstances, and the accelerated pace of those changes, even if it may mean combining for-profit and not-for-profit ideas. If we remain fixed in place we’ll be run over by change. But I have to say I am filled with hope and energized by the potential in our crazy times. We’re a living art form. Look at your lives in the theatre. Look at the moment when you knew that change had to happen.

A few years ago, I had a unique opportunity to spend nine days in Romania with Philip Arnoult and his Center for International Theatre Development. Now Philip typically takes a group of artistic directors from all over America with him in Eastern Europe, Africa and Russia to set up artistic exchanges but this time it was only Philip and I. I’ve always loved to travel. I’ve always loved to work abroad. As an American, I often understand myself and America more clearly from a distance. His belief, he is one of the great internationalists and I was lucky enough to be with him, his belief is that his work will lead to artistic exchanges. And I think that there are some of you in this room, including Jim Nicola and Chris Coleman who have created partnerships from this program. A few seasons ago two exchanges were born out of this program at Arena stage. We hosted Hungarian Janos Szasz to direct A Street Car Named Desire and Enikö Eszenyi to direct A Man’s a Man. Well my Romanian hotel was in the center of Bucharest, a city whose architecture is either communistic, salt box buildings or gorgeous ornate buildings hundreds of years old. I loved that hotel and I felt I was in the middle of medieval days with a huge courtyard and locks to my hotel room which were ancient and troublesome. My room was almost impossible to open. This was my image of Romania. Day after day I would struggle with the lock—and it was a big lock—and finally I’d draaaag somebody up from the hotel who would laughingly show me that I needed to turn it three times to the left, then back a half turn, and when you feel it in the gut of your stomach, [laughter] flip it up slightly and pull it out [laughter]. Time after time I would fail. Finally I said, ‘I can’t be the only person who can’t get into this room,’ and he said, ‘mmmmm, oh yes, Americans can’t. Neither can the Saudis. But the Hungarians and the Romanians can always open the lock.’

Adaptability, that feeling in your gut, and persistence, were all qualities I found in the artistic work of the people of Romania. I brought home from those experiences a little bit of Romanian ingenuity to unlock some doors. And today in America we need that ability to unlock doors and innovate.

I’m energized by stories coming back from Melanie Joseph’s tireless efforts to get a US artist delegation to the world’s social forum in Nairobi in January. I’ve always found tremendous personal value in connecting with artists from other cultures and connecting artists with international change agents from the world’s social movements in a global setting is truly a thrilling development. Thank you Melanie. I’m inspired by Ma-Yi Theater’s commitment to working with youth theatre SHOFCO based in the extreme poverty of Nairobi’s Kiberian slum and the hip hop theatre festival for its continuing outreach in Africa and South America. I urge you to plug into the US social forum taking place in Atlanta this summer if you’re interested in building the bridge between our field and the social movements afoot in our own country.

Like John Hirsch, coming back to my earlier story, at the age of 50 I unlocked a new door for myself as an artist with the young American musical. My first experience with musicals was watching Robert Goulet in a touring company of Camelot in Yakima, Washington. Can you imagine? Well as a 10 year old, I remember sitting in the balcony, exactly where I was, on a red velvet seat and there was so much energy and warmth coming from the stage and there was a desire burning in my heart. I wanted to be part of that magic. I was hooked on musical theatre until the 60s—the era when musicals went out of fashion for me. In my infinite 21 year old wisdom I rejected musicals in favor of drama and experimental theatre. I was a terrible child of the 60s and believed only in serious theatre and viewed musicals as light weight. Later as founder and artistic director of Perseverance Theatre in Alaska, I held firm to my youthful notions and flatly refused to direct musicals. Still clinging to the belief that musical theatre wasn’t up to my particular standards. But I could not ignore the reaction of the audiences. Adults perked up in their seats, kids ignited like fire works. Although I began to sense a shift in my perspective, I still resisted directing musicals myself. But when I began as artistic director of Arena Stage, a theatre that focuses on American voices, how could I resist the pull of our seminal art form? I changed course and directed South Pacific and I was immediately reconnected to the passionate experiences of the musical theatre of my youth and found myself deliriously happy in the rehearsal hall and theatre.

Like John Hirsch, I came back to an experience that brought me into the theatre in the first place. My body remembered what my mind forgot: that my first love in theatre was music, singing, dancing, and storytelling on a grand scale. In one fell swoop I changed my mind. That which we most reject, we’re most drawn to. Now, while audiences are naturally drawn to the gorgeous music, I was attracted to South Pacific’s controversial racial themes. Rogers and Hammerstein were masters at communicating sensitive—even dangerous—subjects through music. Ideas that would have us shifting in our seats in discomfort during a drama have more points of contact in a musical. After all, we tap our feet as the messages track through our consciousness. It is a subversive art form. [laughter] For me this robust, craggy art form is the bones of American culture. It is unpretentious, earthy, forward-looking and optimistic. American musical theatre is our own indigenous art form. America can’t claim drama, ballet or opera but musical theatre is our very own. With beginnings in colonial America, ballad operas, minstrel shows, pantomime, musical extravaganzas, burlesque and vaudeville. We marched through two centuries of American theatre toward the evolution of a play organically integrated with music and dance—the American musical. I envision a future in which the American musical is considered serious theatre. So that along with the work of O’Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee and Wilson, and all the dramatists who inherit their legacy, we equally revere Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Lesser and Hart, Sondheim as full partners in the American theatre.

Buildings and complexes are the physical manifestations of the visions and dreams of artists who inhabit them. We’ve all heard a wonderful story here today, by Joe. And today I’m leading with our excellent executive director, Steven Richard, our wonderful staff and board of directors led by Mark Shugoll, Arena Stage’s ambitious plan to create the Mead Center for American Theater, a three theatre complex in the nation’s capitol dedicated to American voices. Gilbert and Jaylee Mead are modern day Medicis by providing passion and finances to help fund the building boon so provocatively in our city. Sadly, we just lost Gil Mead last week after a long battle with cancer. But from Joy Zinoman’s excellent Studio Theatre, to Eric Schaeffer’s vibrant Signature Theatre, Gil and Jaylee’s legacy will live on with hundreds of thousands of theatre goers. At Arena we’ll keep the original theatres the Kreeger and the Arena because they were brilliantly designed but everything else for people who have been there, will be demolished. We’ll create a third theatre—just for the premiere of new American plays called The Cradle, a 200 seat romper room for experimentation research and development, a shared community lobby for all three theatres and for the 200,000 people who attend each year, a gorgeous classroom for the 20,000 young people who are part of our audiences, light filled rehearsal halls, all our shop spaces onsite, and underground parking. A glass wall will surround the whole complex and will be topped by a 500 foot flying roof designed for acoustics and beauty. I invite all of you to Washington, DC. The city is changing radically and it’s not just about politics. What has been an invisible theatre town to the rest of America is poised to become very visible. From Howard Shalwitz’ gutsy new Woolly Mammoth, Michael Kahn’s new beautiful Shakespeare Theatre, Abel Lopez’s lovely new GALA Hispanic. The Mead Center for American Theatre at Arena Stage is a place for us to look forward, a place that really celebrates the diversity of our American voices. These are the things that excite me, these are the things that get me up in the morning, that have me leaning into the challenges, producing new work, like Moises Kaufman’s 33 variations, directing Tim Acito’s new musical adaptation of Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place with the Alliance Theatre, keeping my shoulder to the wheel with fundraising, management challenges, and planning conversations. This is the continuing development of my own life in the theatre. And I can only do this because I feel strongly that we’re going to survive and thrive in the midst of the maelstrom of change.

Many of you remember when several years ago, there was an idea that was floated at a TCG conference about an audacious idea for building audiences in America from the present 30 million to 50 million—I think it was in 10 years. How could we do our own “Got Milk?” advertising campaign to advertise theatre all over the country? The idea was to do an evening of free theatre all over America, on one night. Now many thought that this would mean that audiences would come for free and then not buy tickets, others thought we would only bring in the same audience most theatres has already attracted.

Overwhelmingly the field wanted to attract more young, racially diverse audiences, who would later pay to see the theatre again. And last October, 16 cities participated with over 35,000 tickets that were given away. Many of you were part of this revolutionary idea in places like San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin. Recently, Shugoll Research, a wonderful research company in the Washington, DC area did a survey and these are some of the amazing findings:

First of all, over 20 % of the audience participated in the survey. 31 % of that audience was under 35; 26 % were non-white and 33% had incomes under $50,000. Two out of three people chose to attend a theatre they hadn’t been before and of those 32 % within a 6 month period of time have been back to that theatre as a ticket purchaser since then. 81% of those attending Free Night of Theater have gone to a theatre since the program. And next year we’ll have many more cities participating from Boston, to Philadelphia, to Sacramento, Portland to Austin. And in 2008 Chicago and New York will enter making the program national. And if your theatre hasn’t joined yet, I urge you to. I just want to thank TCG in your remarkable leadership in our field over the decades. With a fierce staff, and leadership icons like Peter Zeisler, Ben Cameron and now Teresa. [applause]

There are so many examples of evolution in our field. What’s to be learned from the Signature theatre in New York with their $15 ticket price? What’s to be learned from Minneapolis Children’s Theatre and their experiments with the younger generations on their staffs taking the lead and energizing their buildings? There are also some evolutionary concepts cropping up in other fields. What’s to be learned from the Metropolitan Opera’s experiment with going live in HD at movie theatres around the country? The Washington Opera is adapting this experiment to broadcast their programs free in DC public schools. What would happen if we as a theatre community began producing plays for television? Here’s a ripple of my own: Equity needs to figure out a way in which we can use the broadcast media to get our message across. [applause and whistling]

Good!!! I’m glad you’re with that! Now we’ve got to figure out a way to do it! Because for many years, the reason we can’t put our plays on television is because of a stranglehold of the union. We’re being left in the dust by other art forms as opera has found a way to meet the masses through the MET and now Washington opera through all the schools. No question we are working in a changed environment the question is: how are we going to react to it? Can we evolve? Absolutely. We’re theatre people. We’re always into evolution. Let’s start today, June 7th 2007 here in Twin Cities at our yearly gathering. As I reflect on my own life in the theatre and my experience of isolation at the first conference I attended I am moved to challenge each of you to make an effort to meet with someone who’s working outside your own theatre model. What will you learn? How will it change you? If you’re in a large theatre talk to someone in a small theatre, if you’re young in the field share a meal with someone with many years in the art form to gain perspective. If you present theatre in a small town find out how theatres compete in a metropolitan area. We have so much to learn from each other and our TCG conference is an ideal setting to do so. During these three days, step across a boundary that divides you from other theatre artists, whether it’s age, hometown, or models of presenting theatre, and discover our unique and common theatre challenge: turn it three times to the left, then back a half a turn and when you feel it in the gut of your stomach flip it up and the door opens. Thank you. [applause] Thank you. [applause]

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