Life, art, and the pursuit of the statue.

In a comment to my previous post, Kootch asks the following:

Stix, so how do you feel about things like the Oscars and the
Tony awards? I heard a brief interview with some actor who'd been nominated for an Oscar today, and he said he was hoping it would happen. That seemed odd to me. Shouldn't you always strive to do your best work as an actor, and not be about wanting to be rewarded with a prize?

A good question, and I can honestly say that I don't care much for any of those award shows, for a variety of reasons. I try to tune in to the Tony's when possible, but mostly to see who's working on Broadway and to catch the bits from different shows. (Living in the Midwest, it's about as close as I can get to seeing a Broadway show.)

Yes, doing the best work possible should be enough, and I think there's more validity to an "awards" program in which winners are chosen by the average viewer, but the end goal of a performance or production should not be to bring home the statue.

There is some difference between the Oscar's and the One Act Play Competition (aside from the quality). An Oscar is supposed to be the recognition of an excellent performance by one's peers. I think that this notion has been somewhat lost, and often an award goes to what is "expected" or for a body of work, rather than a specific film. It has become, I believe, very political...in all the worst ways. The OAP contest is grading and comparing talent, with the losers going home. One shot and you're done. Even with other art forms, there are usually other contests you can submit your work to or look for some kind of publishing agreement, or a museum showing. Theatre relies on so many other people that it is difficult to keep them together (especially once they've been told they're not good enough).

Performers certainly like winning the Oscar because it increases their value -- win the award and you can expect to bring home a larger portion of the cash for each film.

The Tony Awards have become almost a joke. The Tony's represent Broadway (with one token award given out to a Regional Theatre for their work in a year), and most people in theatre these days know that the best new works come from the smaller, regional theatres today. They don't start in NY.

In the film and the theatre industries, major awards are generally seen as a cash cow. Win the prestigious award and the film/play has a better life. Not always true, of course, but that's the line of thinking. But even if there are no awards, there is still often a life.

Art as competition.

Perhaps it's just my nerves, worried, anxious for my actors and the one-act play competition coming up this Saturday, but I've been thinking about this contest, and how wrong it seems to me that we "compete" as producers of art.

I understand now why some schools opt not to compete in the One-Act Competition.

By pitting students, plays, schools against one another, are we not sending the wrong message to the students about art? Is art not worth anything on its own, but only "good" when it is successful competitively?

Whatever the outcome on Saturday, I am incredibly proud of these high school students. So many of them have grown so much through the course of these past months as we explored this abbreviated Shakespeare. Some have grown as performers, some in their own self-confidence, some in their appreciation of theatre in general and the Bard, specifically.

Wouldn't it be great, now, if we could put on two or three performances without the pressure of having to do better than another school in order to get the opportunity to keep going?

The whole idea of competition in art is incredibly flawed. Art is subjective, and what one judge likes may be just what another judge dreads to see on a high school stage.

This isn't sports where the winner is clearly the one with the most points ... the points being made in a fashion clearly determined ahead of time.

I vastly disagree with this system -- all of life, all of art is not competition -- but I understand the problems inherent with so many schools all wanting to show off their best attempts at producing "art" by way of theatre. It's too bad that it can't be done in a system similar to the "fringe festivals" -- put all the schools on stages in a downtown area -- let each school do multiple performances, and let the audience choose which shows it wants to see.

Names much?

I've written before about how I enjoy reading more than one book at a time, and really have no problem with it. It's not unusual for me to sit down, read a chapter or two in a book, put the book down and grab a different book to read a chapter or two, or a short story.

But today something strange happened. Something that has never happened to me before in my multi-book reading. I read from three books today, and two of the three books featured a protagonist named Agnes, and the other was primarily about a character named Agatha. ...and I got them confused as I was reading them!

It was definitely a weird sense of "which one is this?" I'd be reading and thinking that this Agnes isn't acting the way I remembered, and then I'd recall this was Agnes, the dead Indian grandmother, and not Agatha, aged Catholic school teacher in Staggerford.

To complicate matters further, all three are older women, two of them in stories that take place in Minnesota (the other San Francisco).

I've vowed not to use the name Agatha or Agnes in any wwriting of mine as long as I remember this incident.

We do this because it's fun!

The young man I've discussed in the previous post has now been replaced. I had a long chat with him yesterday, before rehearsal. Of course he knew it was coming. It's a small community and people talk. He didn't seem too upset by it.

For the sake of the performance, I'm still not convinced it was the right move. My second choice (ONLY choice) for one of the roles has NO experience being on stage...and he's playing "Oberon" in our production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. He's also got a complicated work schedule, preventing him from being at a lot of rehearsals the next two weeks.

The actor that I replaced was playing a double role, also performing as Nick Bottom (the one who turns in to the donkey, for those of you who don't remember the character names). At this point I do not have anyone who is filling that role (though I admit that I have a backup who is ready and willing, just not a great choice).

Oh, and did I mention that we're supposed to perform at a contest this weekend! **That would be the sound of me laughing, snorting Dr. Pepper through my nose, and then choking in to tears that you hear. And no, I didn't have these grey hairs last year, thank you very much!**

Out you go.

I was met at rehearsal yesterday by my entire cast (minus one), where I was expecting only one person. They wanted to talk about the situation with my actor who is leaving after our first competition. It seems they feel he is being selfish to stay, when it will affect some of their other performances (there will be no performance for the school if he is leaving right after our sub-section because we will not have had time to train in a new performer). The rest of the cast has asked that I remove the young man from the show and put new people in place. They came up with a number of suggestions for the other parts.

While I still feel that the young man in question is indeed the best person for the role(s), I admire the unity that the rest of the cast has, and their desire to go all or nothing with a "company" that is together.

Networking.

In the short time that I've been happily unemployed, I've been busy networking. This year already I have had a chat with the director of the Great River Shakespeare Festival, spoken with the head of the theatre department at Winona State University were we are trying to work out arrangements to teach occassionally as an adjunct, gotten a lead on a temporary position at Viterbo University, and stopped in to chat with faculty at St.Mary's University regarding my future teaching there as well.

Strange though it may sound, I enjoy the networking and the possibility of short-term work. I am just not the kind of person who can do the same grind, especially behind a desk, day in and day out. I prefer variety.

I believe that I have also already done more writing in the past week than I did the entire year I was working (which is to say that I did not do much writing last year, and not that I've written volumes in the past seven days).

For all of this, life is good.

Emotional exhaustion.

I came home from rehearsal late last night, and headed straight for my son who had forgotten to do his homework in the afternoon. We sat up until he finished what he could, and then I crashed on my couch.

I have been incredibly tired the past couple of days, but I've decided that it's not a physical tiredness, but an emotional one. The one act play is draining me. Sapping my energy. I struggle to get through it, and to not let the kids see that it is pulling me down.

Running in place.

For every positive step I take in life, there seems to be an equal amount of counterforce pushing me back.

I had a moderately successful day today finding some "missing" costume pieces for the cast of the one act play that I am directing, along with a donkey head, which I had begun to worry about. And so I went in to today's rehearsal feeling good, but before I could get in to the auditorium itself, my lead actor (who is playing TWO major roles) tells me that he is definitely transferring to another school after our first competition.

A part of me just wanted to scrap the whole thing, but there are too many kids who have worked too hard on this already, so after rehearsal I told them of the situation. They all seem a little down, but rather than give in or give up, they began to brainstorm to see if there was anyone they might know that they could ask to step in to the role on the chance that we move on in competition.

What a damned frustration, though, let me tell you!

Party in the New Year.

I've started the year well, I think, by attending a party at the home of the Dean of the Arts for the School of the Arts at Saint Mary's University in Winona. It was a relaxing party, even though the President of the university was there as well.

Mostly this was a way for me to stay in contact with these people, as I hope to be teaching one class there sometime in the not too distant future.

Happy New Year

Although there really is little difference between one day and the next, thanks to our system of time measurement and calendars, the New Year produces the psychological effect of having the opportunity to start fresh. We could choose ANY day to say, "On this date I'm going to start..." and certainly some people do, but New Year's has become the popular date for new vows and good intentions.

This is even more of a "new" start for me as I am officially unemployed again. Unemployed by my own choice. Does this mean I'll spend a lot of time blogging? I hope not. I have other goals and intentions to focus on. I'd rather not go into what those are right here, I generally don't like to discuss my projects before-hand.

I hope you all have a great, new year, and that all of your goals and resolutions come through for you.