Remember this post? Mike Daisey responded to it here. If you’re of a mind to, go read that, then come back here.

Mr. Daisey accuses me of making a straw man argument, either by putting words in his mouth, or by drawing hyperbolic comparisons. (Hopefully, not as outrageous as this one.) Straw man arguments, though, set up false targets (hence, the straw man); the charge doesn’t stick when you’re hitting something relevant that is actually there. I’ll get to that part. But first, one of his responses I flat-out don’t get. He says:

“Actually, theater has been in retraction about 100 years in Western culture….”

I’m not sure what to make of this. One hundred years ago, here’s what was playing in New York theatres: a lot of revues and musicals (hm, not much has changed), as well as Molnar’s “The Devil.” Elsewhere in the land, it was either minstrel shows, carnival sideshows, or nothing. I would be astonished to think that Mike Daisey thinks this was the epitome of our theatre history, and can only conclude that he misspoke.
In response to my scoffing at his suggestion that the theatre would die, he writes:

“I reiterate, I’ve never expected, predicted or commented on the idea that theater will ‘die’. This is a straw man argument.”

It is technically true that he never said the theatre would die. However, the way he talks about it is in a way we would associate with being on life support — which often continues after brain death. So perhaps it depends upon one’s view of “death.” Because I’d rather be unplugged if I were in such a situation, to me flatline life support equals death. Supposing that Mr. Daisey feels otherwise and is entitled to his own opinion, I’ll cede the point. Where we do disagree is that he seems to feel that theatre is dying — not “going to die,” but dying, or ailing mightily — while I think that larger institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the future of theatre, a future which lies with smaller theatres and troupes immune to the economic realities he bemoans.

One last point I’m going to take the time to redress (and excuse me for quoting at length; the bold, from his own blog, is my own words thrown back at me; the itals are his response):

“Eleven years ago at the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) Conference in New York City a bunch of attendees were offering dystopian views similar to Mr. Daisey’s of what was going to happen to theatre in America and what to do about it. Many of the prescriptions, like those of Mr. Daisey, were interesting and fun to talk about and utterly impracticable. Erik Ehn suggested trading bread for admission. Here’s what I know about bread: Most of it goes stale before anyone eats it. The birds in my back yard are well-fed indeed. Meanwhile, many of us who buy tickets find it more convenient to pay with a credit card than to carry around fresh home-baked bread. You see where I’m going with this.”

Look, if you honestly equate my plans for repositioning non-profit theater development efforts to use their resources to adopt wholesale the proven university model of creating lockbox endowments for “chair” positions in order to create ensemble positions for artists with a plan to pay for theater with bread……I’m speechless.

“If the main thrust of Mike Daisey’s ideas is related to audience development, then I’m with him. If it’s about finding ways to keep local artists tied to theatres, then I’m with him again — except, all over the land, they are already (just not in larger theatres).”

Well, I don’t know if I want the artists “tied” to the theaters, so much as the theaters should provide homes and workspaces for ensembles to inhabit, and frankly I don’t talk in any form about “audience development”, though I’d argue that done correctly needs to grow out of the continuity and community of letting artists back into those buildings, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.

The model Mike Daisey is espousing is precisely one that will “tie” theatre artists to theatres at which they will reside. I’m not sure how it couldn’t be so: When you pay someone a salary, you expect them to show up for work. Even Esa-Pekka Salonen, with his starting salary of $1.09 million in 1992 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was expected to show up and, you know, conduct. The model Mr. Daisey envisions might work well in, say, Arkansas (and this is no dig at Arkansas, a state I have a fondness for, and one that offered me my choice of theatres in Little Rock if only I’d go down to City Hall and pick one out), but it is precisely in those smaller communities that the salaried resident artist will be expected to be performing. That responsibility will, in effect, tie the artist to the theatre. Which I think is an interesting model, and one I might try one day in retirement, in a small-town community.

With regard to bread and bird feed and their connection to Mr. Daisey’s prescriptions, we are talking about economic models. I’m sorry that he didn’t appreciate the comparison, but here it is again: Erik Ehn’s idea about baking bread and exchanging that for theatre performance was impracticable. So, for the most part, are Mr. Daisey’s ideas. His sole example is of he and his wife supporting themselves these past eight years as a mini theatre company (a feat for which I congratulate them, truly). I’m not sure that this is akin to the model he extols — if anything, it is more entrepreneurial, and speaks to his and his wife’s savvy as business-artists. In the main, I’m unsure that the existing large-scale regional non-profit theatre model has a future (just as I’m decreasingly confident that most non-profit models have a future). Commercial theatre is doing just fine, on Broadway, on the West End, and in major cities around the globe. Small theatres are immune to the proclivities of the marketplace. It is the mid-sized that is endangered, just as most middle players in most economies of all sorts are endangered.

I wish that I could see Mike Daisey’s show next month when I’m in New York, but it will have closed. I share his passion for the theatre and his hopes for its future, and I’m interested in learning more about why he thinks what he thinks (as I understand it so far). And I agree with him that management models need to change: If you remove the word “theatre” from the discussion, the root causes apply to every cultural form undergoing radical change, from music to movies to publishing and beyond. The most foolish mistake would be to try to hold onto a past that’s already gone.

I recently went on my friend Mark Chaet’s website to check something out, and while I was there I wound up watching the clip in his comedy section of his appearance on “Malcolm in the Middle.” I couldn’t help admiring the comic glee with which Mark character delivered the good/bad news to the harried parents that yes, they were going to have another child. I shot Mark an email telling him that, and he responded with a great little story I thought I’d share with you. Here goes.

 Lee: Don’t know if I ever told you this story, and it’s one of my favorites.  I sometimes think that the best thing about pursuing showbiz is the stories one accumulates.  This is brief, but requires a bit of lead up time.

When you shoot on an indoor set, and your set is a room with windows, and the windows are supposed to be to the outside, they set things up so that should the camera see out a window, what it sees will be appropriate.

So they’ve come up with a way to make absolutely enormous photographs, on some sort of curtain.  I mean these suckers are huge, possibly life size photos of real places.

So I’m working on “Malcolm in the Middle,” got a scene where I tell Jane Kaczmarek she’s pregnant.  I’m playing a doctor – be kind of weird if I was playing the local blacksmith, or a luggage handler.  And I walk onto this set that’s supposed to be my office and I look around a little, get a feel for it being my space.  And something draws me to the window.  And I look out the window at this street scene, and there’s this brick red wall across the street, and some sort of glass chandelier or light, and a large address number in brass, and I think that’s a Jamba Juice and I realize I’m looking at Brand Blvd. in Glendale, about 1/2 a mile from my apartment.  And I realize – hey! – I can walk to work.  I loved that.

This reminds me of the time about five years ago when I exited the subway station downtown and couldn’t for the life of me figure out where I was. For some time, I had two different offices downtown, so I got to know Central City and the Historic Core pretty well, but when I got to street level I was flat-out lost. All the signs were wrong. The one in front of me said 46th, which sure didn’t seem possible, because I should have been on 7th. Then I noticed the newspaper boxes were all wrong, too — and that the lead one said “Daily Bugle.” It was then that I realized I had walked onto the set of “Spider-Man 2.” Even with that, it was difficult to figure out where I was and get to my office.

That seems to be Maureen Dowd’s explanation for why Obama’s white support is “bleeding” in Indiana and North Carolina. I do enjoy the vision of the television caviar couple of Bill O’Reilly and Hillary Clinton seeming more “genuine” and less haughty.  Why is it usually the upper class who throw class accusations around?

Thanks to Joe Stafford for sending this in.

Three residents are suing a lesbian group for appropriating a term that they feel should apply only to people who come from their island, i.e., “Lesbians.” They just don’t like it when Lesbians are confused with lesbians. (To my knowledge, lesbians are unconcerned about this confusion.)

About 90,000 people live on Lesbos, and I don’t know any of them. But I do know dozens of lesbians, and if only 5% of the world’s women are lesbians, there are 169 million more of them. Whether or not the Lesbians prevail in court, the demographics of popular speech are against them.

My friend, the playwright Mike Folie, emailed me this interview with monologist Mike Daisey, who offers ideas on reinvigorating the dying American theatre.

A couple of quick reactions:

1. Last I checked, the theatre had been dying for 2,000 years. For God’s sake, WHEN WILL IT JUST DIE????
2. Whenever that finally happens, somebody will just start a new one.
3. Eleven years ago at the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) Conference in New York City a bunch of attendees were offering dystopian views similar to Mr. Daisey’s of what was going to happen to theatre in America and what to do about it. Many of the prescriptions, like those of Mr. Daisey, were interesting and fun to talk about and utterly impracticable. Erik Ehn suggested trading bread for admission. Here’s what I know about bread: Most of it goes stale before anyone eats it. The birds in my back yard are well-fed indeed. Meanwhile, many of us who buy tickets find it more convenient to pay with a credit card than to carry around fresh home-baked bread. You see where I’m going with this.
4. If anything, in those 11 years I’ve seen more alternative theatres pop up all over the country. They are the future. They do what they want, when they want, even in the face of great indifference or unforeseen spectacular success, and there’s no stopping them. Are the artists making a lot of money in them? No — but the actors on-stage at the Public and the Mark Taper Forum aren’t making a lot of money there, either; they tend to be movie actors on the way up or on the way down. These alternative theatres, meanwhile, have a DIY ethic that will seem familiar to anyone who produces a print-on-demand book or podcast or blog — they put product out inexpensively and often and attract niche audiences. And this is fine — because more and more, everything is a niche.

If the main thrust of Mike Daisey’s ideas is related to audience development, then I’m with him. If it’s about finding ways to keep local artists tied to theatres, then I’m with him again — except, all over the land, they are already (just not in larger theatres).

Let’s make an agreement to check back in on the state of the American theatre in another 11 years — 2019 — and see how we’re doing. I say this, by the way, on the afternoon of Moving Arts’ 15th anniversary celebration. Almost every single week of those 15 (and a half) years, we’ve been going out of business. Some day, it’s going to happen for real.

I am.

And so are you, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer.

That’s because an estimated $8.8 billion — that’s “billion” with a “b” — in U.S. dollars went missing in Iraq in just 2003 and 2004. And much of it went to militia groups with links to terrorism. If you can stomach learning more, read this article in the March issue Portfolio.

By the way, no one in our government can reasonably say they didn’t know. Because, as the article makes clear, senior administration officials — plus Congress — have been told plenty of times, including once in direct testimony by Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, who was appointed by Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity to root out malfeasance, at least until he found that most of it came too close to the Maliki government (our “allies”). Now both the Iraq government and our own has backed away from him, and the judge is living on handouts in Virginia with our State Department saying he’s a liar.

Maybe. But I prefer to judge people by their actions. I don’t know that Judge Radhi has ever lied to me. Can’t say the same for the White House.

April 24: (Yes, that’s tonight.) I’ll be giving what promises to be an action-packed and fun-filled talk about last month’s state Democratic Convention (and I’m only promising the “action-packed” and “fun-filled” part if I can finish loading photos and images in time to build my presentation). I’m speaking to the Burbank Democratic Club, it starts at 7 p.m., and you’re invited to join us. Here’s the address: McCambridge Park, Room 2, 1515 N Glenoaks Blvd, Burbank, CA 91504.

April 28: It’s the 15th Anniversary of the theatre I co-founded — and you’re invited! Moving Arts’ 15th anniversary celebration includes a celebrity reading of the show that launched the theatre, “Now This… Then What?” written by — you saw it coming — me, and directed by one of the best directors in town, Daniel Henning of the Blank Theatre. Here’s the info:

“NOW THIS… THEN WHAT?”

written by Lee Wochner

directed by Daniel Henning (The Blank Theatre Company)

WITH GUEST STARS

MARCIA WALLACE
(The Bob Newhart Show, The Simpsons)

REBECCA FIELD
(October Road, Trapped in the Closet)

KURT CACERES
(Prison Break, American Family)

Legendary Star of Westerns and Horror Films,
CLU GULAGER

(The Killers, The Virginians)
at
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90036

7pm — Reception with Silent Auction
Open Bar and Hors D’Oeuvres
8pm — Performance
followed by Coffee and Dessert

Live music provided by
piano player Brian Kinler

Admission is $50
Tickets available online at movingarts.org and by
phone at 323-666-3259.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS NOW.

Can’t make it? PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION AND SUPPORT
MOVING ARTS.

May 23 – June 1: I will be teaching at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. (As well as visiting the local pool halls and cigar bars and raising whatever ruckus is to be raised in Omaha, Nebraska.) Here’s the workshop schedule — and you’ll see that my first session is “2B,” but my final session isn’t “or not 2B” — and here’s the home page for registration and info. If you are one of the playwriting folk and coming to this conference, drop me an email.

June 1 – June 5: I’ll be in Philadelphia to see Bill Irwin’s new show, and dropping in on NYC to visit theatre friends and southern New Jersey to sponge off my mother’s cooking and to visit two important landmarks: The Black Cat Inn and Smith’s Clam Bar.

June 6th – July something: My play “About the Deep Woods Killer” opens at Studio/Stage in Los Angeles as part of Moving Arts’ umpteenth one-act festival. More about that later.

More dates and places as the summer unfolds.

In yet another example of what was once science fiction becoming fact (in this case, the science fiction being “Fahrenheit 451”), in some libraries you can now “borrow” a person. In this particular story, a woman “checked out” a gay man in order to learn more.

To me, this is another example of people living in a culture of dislocation needing alternative ways to meet fellow humans. Because I would think there’s no shortage of gay men in London, or ways to meet them. I’m looking for the human book “Neocons Who Were Right.” That will be a challenge.

Thanks to Tom Boyle for alerting me to this.

Tonight in a discussion moderated by a funny and fannish Matt Groening at the Writer’s Guild, “Sopranos” creator David Chase was hit with two recurring and predictable questions: Whatever happened to the Russian who escapes into my old stomping grounds in the “Pine Barrens” episode, and, in the words of a misshapen middle-aged woman who seems to have sniffed too much bleach, “That ending — what’s the deal with that?” (I told my friend Terence that when his play “Tangled” opens in June, we’re going to make and pass out t-shirts that say “‘Tangled’ — What’s the deal with that?”)

Chase took the bait on one of these questions, and passed on the other. I think there’s a lesson here for any writer who’s ever in a discussion with his audience.

Here is what dramatists should not do in audience talkback situations:

• In a developmental reading, do not entertain ideas from the audience about how to “fix” or “improve” your play. Let your common sense prevail: If the person offering advice could have written the play better, he already would be doing so rather than offering to do yours for free and for no credit.
• Do not explain your play. Either they didn’t get it because someone didn’t do their job — either you, or the actors, or the director — or because even though everyone did their job, they still just didn’t get it. Explaining it merely assert that it needs to be explained. It doesn’t. It needs to be performed, and that should be the limit explanation.
• Similarly, don’t fill in back story or what would have happened next. It’s in the play, or it isn’t. If it belongs in the play, then put it in. If you don’t, there’s a good reason to leave it out. Filling people in with coulda-wouldas risks making these missing elements seem like shouldas.

That’s pretty much the advice I give to students facing an audience Q&A for the first time. What should a playwright do? Make the theatre or university or foundation or whatever brought you out happy that they did so. That means being charming and funny. Maybe they’ll even have you back.

While David Chase wisely passed on explaining the ending of “The Sopranos,” I’m sad to say that he told us exactly what happened to the Russian, none of which was ever scripted or shot. Boy Scouts find him in the woods, get him back to a hospital, his mob boss gets him back to his native Russia, and there he remains, brain-damaged. I don’t know if Chase was putting us on or not, but this inelegant connect-the-dots outcome, completely lacking in subtlety and wit, will no doubt never leave my mind — and has now forever ruined my favorite episode. I share it with you as a cautionary tale. Some things are better left as they are.

1. In Sunday’s Times, Scott Timberg offers this piece about three youngish men with the audacity to launch print journals. Timberg is a good writer and someone with an eye for important details. Which to me confirms that it was a copy editor who captioned a photo of Keith Gessen on the jump page as “Keith Gesson.” The first rule of journalism: Get people’s names right.
2. Evidently, at least part of the LA Times website is on Eastern time. I say that because every night sometime after 9 PM I’m able to play the next day’s crossword puzzle. If your own website operates in a different time zone, I don’t think you’re building a strong case that your paper is that important. Sorry.