The Big Leap

Contributed by Rogelio Martinez

He says, “We are sexually ready.”

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and two actors are in the wings having sex.

Well, not really. It’s pretend sex. And they’re only doing it, so that our sound designer can get it down on tape. The idea of simulating sex six times a week, twice on Saturdays is less appealing than one might imagine.

In celebration of World Theatre Day I’ve decided to write about one of the more grueling aspects of theater: tech. It’s grueling but also magical. Tech is the time when the playwright’s vision makes the big leap -- sound, sets, and costumes come charging!

Wanamaker’s Pursuit was commissioned a year and a half ago by the Arden Theatre Company along with the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. The one and a half year journey from page to stage has been very fast. It’s rare nowadays when a commission actually leads to production, it’s even rarer when a play moves from page to stage this quickly.

I sit in the dark while a curtain is added realizing just how lucky I am to be here.

Fireworks

The debate now happening on stage is whether to use both sound and lights to create the effect of fireworks. The fear being that lights will read as just a wash on the back curtain. We decide to use just sound. Suddenly, the director catches the set designer sneering at the idea. Apparently, he doesn’t want any fireworks. We work on the idea for five more minutes before Terry Nolen, the director, orders to table the fireworks. Tech is thinking on your feet and ideas get tabled just as quickly as they’re introduced. It helps that the collaborators on the play (myself included) have all worked together before. In other words, sneering at one another’s work is socially acceptable.

Later in the day.

“Hold please,” exclaims Terry. “Holding” comes the response from the stage.

We’re working on one cue involving lights, sound, and set. Six months ago I used one of my favorite stage directions: lights shift. Those words always work for me during the writing process. I seldom use blackouts or fade to black. Instead, I write “lights shift.” But what does that really mean? Six months after writing that stage direction down, we’re in tech figuring it out.

I think about this a moment. A scene transition written on the page and one on the stage are two very different things. As I reflect on World Theatre Day, I mourn the few resources available to writers to learn this. Working with a mentor can teach the playwright a great deal, but eventually what writers need most is a production to complete their education. In a time that sees less and less funding and fewer new plays being produced, I am grateful to sit in the dark continuing my education.

“Ah. Look at that! It makes me happy,” says Terry. Lights shift finally works.

Dinner break. Costumes next.

END

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Rogelio Martinez is an award winning playwright whose work has been developed, and produced by some of the largest regional theaters across the country. Plays include Wanamaker’s Pursuit (Arden Theater Co.), When Tang Met Laika (Sloan Grant/ Denver Center Theatre Co.), All Eyes and Ears (INTAR @ Theater Row), Fizz (NEA/ TCG Grant/ Besch Solinger Productions at the Ohio Theatre, New Theater, Miami), Arrivals and Departures (Summer Play Festival). Martinez’s play I Regret She’s Made of Sugar won the prestigious Princess Grace Award and will be published by Broadway Play Publishing later this year. He has received commissions from the Mark Taper Forum, the Atlantic Theater Company, the Arden Theater Company, and South Coast Repertory to list a few. Martinez teaches playwriting at Goddard College, Montclair University, and Primary stages.

International WTD Message 2011: A Case for Theatre in Service of Humanity

by Jessica A. Kaahwa


Today's gathering is a true reflection of the immense potential of theatre to mobilize communities and bridge the divides.

Have you ever imagined that theatre could be a powerful tool for peace and reconciliation? While nations spend colossal sums of money on peace-keeping missions in violent conflict areas of the world, little attention is given to theatre as a one-on-one alternative for conflict transformation and management. How can the citizens of mother-earth achieve universal peace when the instruments employed come from outside and seemingly repressive powers?

Theatre subtly permeates the human soul gripped by fear and suspicion, by altering the image of self - and opening a world of alternatives for the individual and hence the community. It can give meaning to daily realities while forestalling an uncertain future. It can engage in the politics of peoples' situations in simple straightforward ways. Because it is inclusive, theatre can present an experience capable of transcending previously held misconceptions.

Additionally, theatre is a proven means of advocating and advancing ideas that we collectively hold and are willing to fight for when violated.

To anticipate a peaceful future, we must begin by using peaceful means that seek to understand, respect and recognize the contributions of every human being in the business of harnessing peace. Theatre is that universal language by which we can advance messages of peace and reconciliation.

By actively engaging participants, theatre can bring many-a-soul to deconstruct previously held perceptions, and, in this way, gives an individual the chance of rebirth in order to make choices based on rediscovered knowledge and reality. For theatre to thrive, among other art forms, we must take the bold step forward by incorporating it into daily life, dealing with critical issues of conflict and peace.

In pursuance of social transformation and reformation of communities, theatre already exists in war-torn areas and among populations suffering from chronic poverty or disease. There are a growing number of success stories where theatre has been able to mobilize publics to build awareness and to assist post-war trauma victims. Cultural platforms such as the "International Theatre Institute" which aims at "consolidating peace and friendship between peoples" are already in place.

It is therefore a travesty to keep quiet in times like ours, in the knowledge of the power of theatre, and let gun wielders and bomb launchers be the peacekeepers of our world. How can tools of alienation possibly double as instruments of peace and reconciliation?

I urge you on this World Theatre Day to ponder this prospect and to put theatre forth as a universal tool for dialogue, social transformation and reform. While the United Nations spends colossal amount of monies on peacekeeping missions around the world, through the use of arms, theatre is a spontaneous, human, less costly and by far a more powerful alternative.

While it may not be the only answer for bringing peace, theatre should surely be incorporated as an effective tool in peacekeeping missions.

U.S. WTD Message 2011: The Art of Listening

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by Jeffrey Wright

Theater reshapes reality. Emboldened by the playwright's imagination, actor and audience conspire to rethink the world.

The theater I know best is primarily aural - deferring to the playwright's word as spoken by the actor. In spite of all else, the most powerful transformative tool for audience and actor is the capacity to listen.

If we listen well and observe, the theater's gift to us is the sly suggestion that what occurs within its walls can occur without them, too - that the world is changeable.

That idea is uplifting in the face of contemporary global challenges that leave too many of the planet's inhabitants vulnerable and without pathways to free and healthy lives.

Pray the people of Japan and Haiti and North Africa, the Middle East and everywhere historic suffering can be found today will prove the power of re-imagining reality.

I haven't much directed my thoughts toward the theater during my ten years of travel to Sierra Leone, one of the poorest nations on Earth; my focus has been on economic development, still recently, I experienced there what may be the purest theatrical moment I've ever known.

Last month, a dozen or so of us traveled to the country to celebrate a road rehabilitation project our group,Taia Peace Foundation, had completed. We rebuilt the road at the request of one of the country's remotest rural communities.

During an initiation ceremony, each of us was adopted into a ruling chiefdom family-some of us were even entitled honorary chiefs-out of respect for the improvements we'd brought to the community. At the ceremony's end, the everyday citizens who perform in celebration at significant community events, were called on to play, sing and dance.

Then at some point, upon no cue I perceive, a silent, motionless figure appears - it seems to materialize out of ether - like a mystery. Childlike, a boy - perhaps the age of my 9-year old son - the huge rectangular head almost half the size of his body - shuffling slowly, like a geisha, toward the middle of the space - people clearing the way-enter the gongoli, a character, I'm later told, celebrated for his ugliness, and yet his beauty floors me.

Next month, I will again travel the dusty roads back to where I first encountered him - my backpack full of ideas, plans and malaria pills. I will seek out Lucy Jibilla - the gongoli mask was brought to her house that previous night. I will ask her who keeps it, perhaps that person made it as well and will share his story with me.

If so, I will do that thing most critical for audience and actor and those who aspire to progressive roles in the theaters of social justice, poverty alleviation, or disaster relief - I will listen.

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Why Work in Theatre?

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Contributed by Erez Ziv

About me:
I fell into theater by mistake in 1998, while on my way to a masters degree in medieval Jewish philosophy and theology and driving a horse and carriage in central park to pay the bills. I am very happy to have helped to firmly establish Horse Trade's reputation in the downtown theater scene and to create a well respected, self sufficient organization that has created and continues to create a home for some the New York City's most innovative, talented and hard working theater artists. Today Horse Trade is a thriving theater company operating 3 spaces in the East Village, and touring shows nationally and internationally. I still drive a horse and carriage a couple of days a week to help pay the bills.

About theater:
There are many good reasons to work in theater, and only one excellent reason not to. Clearly theater has not in the past, and does not in the present have the capacity to provide most of its practitioners with a decent regular income; and the future does not look much brighter. So why are there so many people coming to New York City to build their theater careers and why are so many staying to toil in an industry that, for most, requires a second and even third job? I would imagine that no one actually realized on their way here how hard the work will be and how little financial reward is to be achieved. I know that if I had known 13 years ago what I would be getting paid for running such a busy company today I would have certainly gone another route, it would have been impossible to describe the rewards in vivid enough detail to override the sticker shock.

Why not work in theater is a pretty easy question to answer, why work in theater is another story. I suppose we have all had to slightly redefine for ourselves the reason for which we work, for any kind of answer to make sense. We don’t, for the most part, see our Labor as the relationship between employee and employer they way economists regard the term Labor in our economic system, but rather as a triangular relationship between a production team the product we produce and our intended audience. Money is a means we need in order to accomplish our tasks, and sometimes it is a measure of our success but unlike with our day jobs, it is not the goal.

Many of the people in our community get very little financial compensation for our many hours of hard work, even spending our hard earned money on creating work. But until we each get to a point in our career where we are actually making a living doing what we love, and please keep in mind that this is not an entitlement it is a hard fought luxury, here are some things to remember that will help you keep you head up and your feet firmly stepping.

Theater is one of the ancient Arts that helped Man walk out of the cave and look both backwards and forwards, to get a more complete vision of the world around; it is a necessary part of our collective existence. Without the Arts our world would hardly be worth living in. Theater practitioners in NYC specifically are members of the second biggest financial generator in the city, and this city generates a great deal of money so good on ya. While we in the indie theater world do not interact much with the Broadway world which is the primary generator of this precious income, we routinely provide not only Broadway, but Television, Films, Off Broadway and other performing arts with the work they will be doing, the talent they will be using , and the direction they will be taking in the future. our work is a long term investment, but do remember, that by the time great work makes it into the commercial markets, and of course some never does, it has already had a great deal of effect on the next generation of artists, and this is only possible if there is a thriving community to work and grow in.

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Erez Ziv is the co-founder and managing director of the Horse Trade Theatre Group.


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