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.

The past six weeks it has been bizarre so often seeing Johnstown, PA in the news as a major campaign stop for the Democratic primary campaigns. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and for all I know Ralph Nader, have all made several stops. Until now, Johnstown was most famous for the Johnstown floods (all three of them) and for giving us Spider-Man’s co-creator, Steve Ditko.

In my family, it’s been most famous for giving us my mother.

Whenever we would visit on family trips when I was a kid, we would take in the same two Johnstown attractions: the highwater mark on City Hall downtown, which calibrated the effects of the three floods, and the inclined plane, which to me seemed slower than a nasal drip. One thing that always impressed me was the distinct local accent. Her Johnstown heritage is the reason that my mother pronounces “tire,” “tower,” and “tar” identically — “tarrrr,” like a pirate. Johnstonians also call soda “pawp” and at some point manufactured “yins” as a contraction of “you-uns.” I am not making this up. These unfortunate locutions provided fodder for my father, who told people he’d “rescued her from the hillbillies.”

I call my mother every weekend and never tarrrrr of hearing about her “wushin’ dishes” and “arrrrn’n’ clothes.” On Saturday I was unsurprised to hear that she was cooking sauerkraut and pork, although I was surprised to hear her say that she’d burnt the fish she was cooking separately. She blamed me for distracting her. Mom is 83 and that’s probably the first fish she ever burned, and I’m sure she ate it anyway. Those Depression kids are thrifty. I should have asked her how it’s felt seeing Johnstown in the news so frequently again — at my last count, about 19 people still lived in Johnstown, so the competition for votes must be fierce indeed. This will give me something new to ask her about when I visit the first week in June. And maybe by then, the Democrats will even have chosen a presidential candidate.

Pop quiz. See if you can identify what’s factually wrong with this story from the Los Angeles Times:

It used to always be the premium of the premiums. Now the cable pack’s catching up.
By Mary McNamara, Times Television Critic
April 19, 2008
REVOLUTION is a frightening, heady and often fatal business, but it’s what happens afterward that matters most. No one knows this better than the folks at HBO. “John Adams,” which comes to a close Sunday night, has devoted seven beautifully shot hours to defying the often overly patriotic legends of our past with a toothache-and-all portrait of a man who helped define modern democracy, albeit grumbling every step of the way.

In his portrayal of our second president, Paul Giamatti creates a man perpetually dissatisfied, disgusted by the preening ambition of politics even as he is infected by it. If his relentless crankiness was a bit hard for some of us to take in early episodes, in the second half of the series it makes much more sense. While exhorting angry men to throw off the shackles of tyranny offers many opportunities for rhetorical fabulousness, setting up a new government is a bureaucratic nightmare, with oversized personalities disagreeing over things both petty and fundamental. George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term. “I know now what it is like to be disliked,” he says to Adams, his perpetually disliked vice president.

I’ll bet you got it.

As most of us learned in grade school — or as one could have learned even by watching the “John Adams” miniseries this piece touches on — Washington served TWO terms, not one.

This is something evidently unknown not only to the Times Television Critic, but also to the copy desk of what claims to be one of the nation’s most important newspapers.

I recently told a friend that I’ve felt so sorry for Times employees that I’ve stopped picking on the paper. Despite its misspelling Allen Ginsberg’s name on the front page when he died. Despite the routine errors of both commission and omission. The paper has been shedding longtime employees left and right — including some friends of mine — and I do love reading the daily newspaper, so this is the cri de couer of a wounded lover. But by God, if you can’t even get right that the Founder, the “indispensable man” of American history, served EIGHT years and NOT FOUR, then perhaps you shouldn’t be publishing a newspaper.

(With all apologies to friends still writing for the paper.)

A friend recently directed me to this video, and I’m glad he did. It’s 19 minutes well-spent. In it, Sir Ken Robinson addresses the TED Conference on the topic of learning — what it has meant in the past, and why the current system isn’t built for the future. In some ways, what he’s calling for sounds like a new entrepreneurial approach. (And by that, I don’t mean privatized education; I mean consumer-based.)

I can personally relate to this as someone who was a victim of a hidebound school system every inch of the way until college — which surprisingly offered me choices I’d never realized one could have, even though I’d always felt I should have had them.

Today my nine-year-old saw the Barack Obama bobblehead figure on my desk and said, “I don’t want Barack Obama to win any more.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because he belongs to a church that hates America.”

See? Kids do learn things in school.