Theater For The Future

It’s a revolution. Which is unsettling, but … hilarious

Thanks for the link, Lilly and Dave.

Some brief updates from the forge:

• Tech is going well. That’s the sound playback software LCS you’re seeing there. It’s pretty sweet - it’s the secret behind the complex sonic routing of things like Disney World, cruise ships, Cirque, and, well, the Goodman.
• You have like three days left to see Vivian Girls. Run, don’t walk, to Theater on the Lake at 7pm. I’m probably going to refrain from actually reviewing work on this blog, because 9 times out of 10 I have some sort of relationship or investment in the shows that I would review, but this show stands out. Dog & Pony’s opus isn’t simply a show - it’s an entire emerging genre of performance, and whether you like the show or not (you will) you’ll leave with your head abuzz with possibility. And no, you won’t be weirded out by the masks. You’ll dig it. Scout’s honor.



• The push is on for the Chicago Theater Database. Dan Granata and I have met with a number of interested parties, and it looks like the database will be beneficial to a large number of projects - and the Chicago community at large - without stepping on too many toes. As a result, I’ve taken the plunge to learn a new web development language, Ruby on Rails to simplify the development of the database. My head is swimming right now in: rake db:migrate Lions, script/generate model Tigers, and script/destroy controller Bears, Oh:My! If you’re interested in the project and less in the building of it, send a note. Why should you care? Because data is important: it helps us learn and know things for sure. Update: No, seriously, our data is important.
• The 10 scripts are in for “Cherubs,” a theater training program at Northwestern I’ve taught at for the past five years - a program that has been formative for me as a designer and a teacher. I’ll be designing these 10 shows in July with the assistance of 160 brilliant high schoolers from across the country (and sound designer/composer extraordinaire Steve Ptacek). Preproduction for 10 fully produced repertory shows built and run by teenagers is obviously an undertaking, of course. So those scripts and concepts have started swimming around in the kiddy pool of my brain with the Ruby and the LCS.
• So, as this season prepares to comes to a close, I’m finding myself knee-deep in delicious theater smoothie. Set to frappe. I’m glad I’ve got momentum as I ride around in the blender - and a full plate of projects that I think will do a lot of good for me, us, and the kids respectively. But of course it all means that posting here will continue to be spotty through June, and then blip out entirely in July as I pull daily allnighters - kind of like that period of radio silence as you round the dark side of the moon. But never fear - the summer always has this gravitational pull that flings me back out the other side with a new kind of velocity.

An update comes in from Ben at the League regarding the Promoters Ordinance, essentially, call off the attack dogs:

The vote is off tomorrow. Thanks largely to a public outcry, the committee that released the legislation decided to table the vote. To, you know, free up the phone lines again.

The League wants to clear the air a bit, since they did some preliminary work to prevent damage to theaters - apparently most theaters are meant to be exempt from the legislation even though the language itself is confusing. That’s information that certainly got lost in the uproar.

It’s true, most theaters are not affected - many fewer than I previously had thought. But some folks operating on the far fringes of theater may still potentially be affected if the legislation comes up for vote again - if not by the legislation itself than by the vaguaries involved in enforcing the law.

First, some facts from the League:

Who is not required to obtain a Promoters License?

Print and broadcast media advertising an event.

Off-premise ticket sellers dealing in advance admission to an event.

Performers or agents of performers at an event.

PPA licensees and employees promoting their own event.

Employees of a licensed event promoter acting within the scope of employment.

Not-for-profit corporations promoting their own event.

Persons who exclusively promote events at PPA-venues or performing arts venues with (i) fixed seating only, if all patrons are seated in such fixed seats; or (ii) a fixed seating capacity of 500 or more persons.

What is an Event Promoter?

An Event Promoter is a person inside or outside the City of Chicago who engages in the business of promoting amusements or events within the City of Chicago and is directly or indirectly compensated for providing that service. The ordinance requires Event Promoters to obtain a license and provides guidelines to operate responsibly in the City to ensure the health, safety and welfare of people attending these events.

I think this information is enough to relax the tension a bit. It means that venues with convoluted situations are exempt because they are performing the work themselves - I’m thinking of Gorilla Tango and the Side Project, who are PPA licenced themselves but they host for-meagre-profit and unincorporated artists. This really wasn’t all that clear from the legislation itself, and I think the council didn’t help the situation by fast tracking the legislation without educating the public effectively. Not surprising, I suppose, but also not acceptable.

It’s critical for a young or brand new company to be able to use the venue’s promotion mechanism or even name recognition, or the culture at these institutions will stifle. Without the ability to put on a show with a minimum of marketing and liability infrastructure, Chicago’s annual crop of new theaters would dry up, and the scene itself would eventually be consolidated into larger and mid-sized theaters. That might be fine for some who tire of yet another new company who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but it means that the scene would run out of the fuel that comes from new artists, new perspectives, and experimentation by fire.

So while I think the fear is gone, it’s not enough to keep me from a suspicious lookout for the next time this ordinance hits the floor. I’m certainly glad the League is looking out for us, but this is not the first time that the memory of the E2 disaster has generated half-baked political policy that threatened to depth charge some of the most important breeding grounds of theatrical and cultural work in the city. It’s not the law itself I’m worried about - it’s the fact that the venue licensing process is already so convoluted and subject to interpretation that adding another variable is all that is required to damage work that doesn’t deserve to be damaged by the municipal government.

When this kind of situation goes down, I’m reminded of how important it is to understand the licensing laws of Chicago - including how to navigate the on-the ground woodginess that occurs as the law is interpreted by enforcers and community leaders who have different understandings of laws that aren’t written clearly. And maybe this should tell us that it’s in our best interest to be proactive in setting a political agenda for ourselves. We can write - and propose to the City Council - better legislation ourselves that achieves the city’s fear-of-liability-driven goals of safety and accountability without sacrificing the frugality and creative flexibility that makes our community tick. An ounce of prevention prevents a pound of cure - and our surgeon just tried to use a battleaxe to remove the unsightly mole of irresponsible promoters and unsafe venues.

It’s hard to determine sometimes if technology is making our creative work better and more efficient or just more complicated in new and different ways. Part of the problem is that for most of this decade software and hardware engineers were moving in the direction of modular solutions.

Instead of building great dishwashers, they theorized that it would be better to perfect the ultimate cost-efficient fork washer, leaving you to buy an equally astoundingly cheap cup polisher on a separate basis. This gave consumers (and designers) CHOICE - now you could save a TON of money buying the exact modules they needed separately and find new ways of getting the modules and devices to work together - or you could opt for a simple all-in-one solution that kinda sorta did what you needed, and you’d pay for the convenience. This is one of the reasons that your local designer on a budget looks like some kind of Max Max-era hacker with wild eyes darting from side to side looking for bargains and a magical toolkit of gizmos that will, you know, suture a pants rip in 10 seconds or diagnose whether a light isn’t working because of a broken lamp or because the dimmer load is about to make the circuit box explode.

In this chaos, it’s always refreshing to find a multi-use tool that makes not one but ten things easier to do. It means by using it you’ll be dumping a bunch of extra junk out your toolkit in a giddy and impromptu spring cleaning.

Here’s what it does
Chicken of the VNC is such a tool. It allows designers to do one thing and one thing alone: remotely access and control another computer over a network. Like a wireless network.

But here’s what it really means
Sound designers can be more active participants in the production process. I can sit in the house, experiencing the play like an audience member would, and be editing my qLab show file at the same time. If the sound is too loud, I don’t tell the SM to hold the run and high-tail it to the booth to twiddle a bunch of knobs or wires. This kind of behavior, let’s face it, undermines my credibility as a designer, because I’m stopping the show at every cue.

Instead, I nod at the director, and as they react to the loud sound, I turn it down, from wherever I am in the house. The stage, the balcony, the grid, whatever. With a little practice, I’m fixing the sound and resetting levels before they become a problem.

And voila, I’ve become a designer who has the tools to perform as if I was onstage, reacting to impulses and adapting the dynamics of the sound to better match what I’m seeing and hearing from the performers on the stage. I can design each and every moment of the play - silence through transition - rather than spending the time that I have on 30% of the play. I can react and shape rather than dictate in preproduction what the sonic world feels like.

Here’s how it works
I’ve set up in the booth a sound playback computer, which runs the increasingly excellent and free-as-dirt program qLab to route all my layers of sound files to the various speakers in the room. Normally, I’d have to do my programming from the booth or run some kind of umbilical cable to a remote keyboard and monitor. That’s a lot of crap to lug around from tech to tech compared to a single laptop.

First, I set up a computer-to-computer wireless network from the playback computer - simple as pie from the Airport menu of most macs.

Then, I connect to that network from my laptop, again through the Airport menu.

Boom! I launch Chicken of the VNC. After some initial configuration, the playback computer shows up as a VNC server on my laptop. Bookmark that, and then the remote screen is always just a few clicks away.

On my current show, A Red Orchid’s Not a Game for Boys (opening tomorrow!), there’s this ongoing ping pong tournament that is seen by the performers “behind” a plexi screen that is theoretically along the fourth wall. Getting the sound of ping pong and sneakers through glass to come from behind the audience required a large number of replacement files to get the reverb and equalization just right. But it didn’t mean frequent trips into the stamp-sized booth that can’t comfortably fit more than one person without getting in each other’s business and grinding rehearsal to a halt.

Instead, I connected to the playback harddrive using the computer-to-computer wireless network…

Then after copying the replacement files over the ether, I used my CotVNC connection to replace the files…

All while the SM ran a run without stopping.

Not exactly razoring reel-to-reel tape anymore, is it?

The half-life of technology is getting shorter and shorter, and so it’s not surprising that Chicken of the VNC is already obsolete. Apple’s latest operating system Leopard has included a built-in VNC client accessible through System Preferences. I gotta say - I love Apple for the way that they integrate incredibly versatile applications (VNC, Samba, Ruby on Rails) into their core operating system. Like many technophiles, I trust that if something out there is worth running, it’ll probably show up in my laptop next time I upgrade the OS.

I only use CotVNC as an example because, like the excellent and free FTP application Cyberduck which can be used to manage your theater’s website, it’s a brilliant program that does just one thing that will help you in a billion ways. Technology doesn’t replace human performance, however… doing the work well still requires practicing and rehearsing with the tools you keep at your disposal.

I love applications named after poultry.

I’ve been going over something like 2,000 blog posts that I missed while off on my honeymoon, and it looks like Don, dv, and Scott Walters got in another inevitable scrap in my absence over whether ’tis nobler in the mind to NY-LA-CHI or not to NY-LA-CHI. I’ve played peacebroker with all three gentlemen before (not that any of them want a peacebroker, because that doesn’t lead to the kind of interesting blog conversation that they want to have) and I’ve found it interesting that having that discussion flare up created more convoluted one-note shrillness than take-away insight that could end up helping new readers. On the other hand, argument it does help those readers generate their own opinions, which is a wonderful thing.

It’s the way blogging goes, but in the interest of experimentation and continuing the growth of dialogue, I’d like to propose a meme to play with the dynamics of this regional discussion.

The meme: enlist a new voice to join the theater blogging community - someone who brings a new perspective to the discussion of theater. Preferably one that is challenging to your own perspective. Some women, maybe, since they’re underrepresented? I’ve been working on a few of my friends who find themselves too busy but I think could represent the more practical side of producing theater. Someday, one of them will buckle and we’ll have some eye-opening thoughts from these geniuses. (yeah, I mean you, Tiff and Marcus…)

I tag Scott, Don, ecoTheater, and dv… natch. (and yes, Bob… I owe you a meme and I haven’t forgotten. These past few weeks have taught me new lessons I learned the hard way, so I thought I’d wait until the dust settled on them. Sumimasen.)