Great post. We are attempting to incorporate our process as integral to our relationship with audience in the next Praxis production (can’t name it until the press release goes out). In any case, I just assigned this post as reading material for the next rehearsal. They’re probably reading this right now. Hi Cast!

“it’s NOT about the PRESENTATION. I don’t feel I’ve been clear enough about that.”

Hey, it’s a blog, not a published book.

Thanks for the concrete example of “using the NAC production of Christmas Carol as a chance for the company to work with some of the countless Ottawa groups battling poverty and homelessness”.

I can see the potential for both art and impact on the community. See Dorothy O’Connell’s “Chicklet Gomez” and “Cockeyed Optimists”. I can also see the potential for Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap). Take the example of the naive character Miles in The Drawer Boy, whose only contribution to “The Farm Show” has huge consequences for the farmers with whom he is billeted, and from whom he draws that contribution.

Sturgeon’s Law is not an excuse not to try something.

But it is a warning that art, like all endeavour, is not “so simple”.

Daisey says it well in “How Theater Failed America”. Board members, Artistic Directors, Community members are more concerned with a new theater building, than the people inside the building. Instead of getting that shiny new toilet, with a plague from a donor, how about that donor help support a resident artist who is able to live in the community, have a steady job, support a family without having to travel across the country, and give back to that smaller community.

“Engaging in process” about meeting your community on their level for the purpose of helping them reflect, grow, evolve, or otherwise serve their objectives. Imagine, for example, using the NAC production of Christmas Carol as a chance for the company to work with some of the countless Ottawa groups battling poverty and homelessness. We assist them in their cause, and by doing so, gain a better understanding for ourselves of the work we are trying to create on stage. It DOESN’T mean stopping Christmas Carol after scene three to insert a dull Mission-inspired interpretive dance about local soup kitchens. That’s the OLD paradigm, mined painfully by groups whose work makes you squirm. The participation IN community is engagement in PROCESS… finding new ways of charging an audience for things that that are boring is NOT. None of what I’m advocating involves you even BEING in a seat that you can squirm out of — it’s NOT about the PRESENTATION. I don’t feel I’ve been clear enough about that.

ART, people, is NOT ABOUT MAKING A PROFIT. Are you listening, Harper? Did you LISTEN to the LYRICS of the song you sang at the gala?

Kris and Chris turned me off until I read Chris’s salient point: Edit out the boring bits.

That’s what I detest about most of the “Art as process” stuff that makes
me squirm in my seat. Nobody’s edited out the boring stuff. Sometimes someone’s revelling in making the work inaccessible to peons like me. Often they’re just being lazy. Sometimes… Oh how the hell do I know why somebody puts boring crap up on stage?

I disagree with Chris about the final production being the sawdust. But I heartily agree about relationships. I take chances on companies and directors and actors whose work I know. Sometimes it pays off: I saw “Iron” because Margo MacDonald and Kate Smith were in it. The whole production blew me away.

And sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve told successive ADs at GCTC that there should be one play a year that I don’t like, otherwise they’re not taking enough chances.

I recently experienced what Ashworth was talking about. It was at our understudy run at the local LORT theater. It was a glorified tech. rehearsal, but since it was our only time to rehearse on stage we treated as a full run-thru, and were able to invite guests. In attendance were a group of high school acting students, theater office staff, along with my wife, and young baby.

We ran through most of the show, and only stopped when an actor had to switch roles within the same scene, to practice the other part. The high school students were into the show, and my wife commented that she really enjoyed watching the process in a low-key atmoshpere (she comes from a non-theater background).

Also, we were able to have our 5-month baby there, which would not be able to happen at a performance. My wife got to see most of the show, and a glimpse into my “process” as an actor. The students got to sit in on a professional rehearsal.