tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41317282448544018722024-03-13T01:55:36.783-07:00Insurgent TheoryIDEAS APPROACHING A THEORY OF REVOLUTION.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.comBlogger158125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-51595418980195632942015-08-14T15:17:00.001-07:002015-08-14T15:17:35.230-07:00Test2Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-36469062423318868872015-07-07T23:05:00.000-07:002015-07-07T23:06:00.387-07:00HateBen Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-79107332275871087732015-07-07T20:10:00.001-07:002015-07-07T20:10:49.657-07:00Hater<p dir="ltr"><br> </p> Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-31532311724237994052009-09-06T13:25:00.001-07:002009-09-06T13:30:13.820-07:00Ulysses' CrewmenHey, <div><br />I'm on the road with Ulysses' Crewmen right now. This show is in a way an experiment applying some of the ideas i've been pursuing on this blog. Its unlikely I'll post here while that's going on, but will be posting there frequently. Check it out <a href="http://ulyssescrewmen.blogspot.com">ulyssescrewmen.blogspot.com</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>While on tour I'm reading a bunch of stuff, including Douglas Rushkoff's 'Life INC' and Schumpter, and some zines about insurrectionary anarchism and nihilist communism n shit. I'm also working on writing an essay that looks closely and thoroughly at Marxist theory and where i depart from it. </div>Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-49678660524004394012009-08-19T08:43:00.000-07:002009-08-19T09:26:50.711-07:00Irony at the CourthouseA while back i was given a citation for being in a public park after close. This was a fairly humourous story, which started with a maoist souvenier and happened while i was in the middle of reading SOFT COPS by Caryl Churchill, so it's already rife with irony, i'll tell it to you some time. <br /><br />Anyway, today was the second (or perhaps third) chapter in this story. Tim and I went to the courtroom to contest the ticket. We continued our argument about whether or not No Country For Old Men is fascist propaganda (i've been convinced it is and won't relent until Tim agrees) and talked breifly about "From Riot to Insurrection" by Alfredo Bonanno, which I've just started reading (get your free copy at the CCC today!). Having such discussions in a courtroom is only a little ironic, but don't worry, there's more coming.<br /><br />After twenty minutes of waiting while a line of people with petty infractions filtered into the room, the session got underway and we watched as nearly a dozen young people pleaded no contest to our same charge and had their citation cut in half. They walked out probably feeling like they'd gotten a bargain because the state only extorted $100 rather than the $200 it originally threatened to extort without just cause. Even the court commissioner was cracking jokes when a group of friends each took their turn approaching the bench. "Expensive party, eh? Hope it was fun!" Again, her playfulness is only a little ironic. Wait for it. <br /><br />I, on the other hand chose to dispute the citation. I'm not about to pay even half of this thing without even having a chance to express either the technicality (inaccurate county website) the emotional appeal (a kid was shot dead a few blocks away while the cops wrote our citations) or the philosophical (constitutional, even) issues i have with this. I might regret this, because the second bureaucratic hoop will mess up some of my travel plans after tour, and i probably won't even be around to jump through the third, not to mention forth fifth and however many more there are. Tim took the path of least resistance, which is what brings us to the wonderfully ironic part of this chapter. <br /><br />While Tim paid his citation, the cashier waxed nostalgic about times before this law was in place, how her family used to sleep on the beach on hot summer nights. "It's really too bad, we can't do that anymore. I guess things are just too crazy out there!" If i was a bit more quick-witted i would've said something along the lines of "yeah, things sure are crazy 'out there'. We were really taking a foolish risk, being in that park after dark, I mean, a man with a gun might have come and taken our money. I'm so glad you guys protected us from that craziness by... sending a man with a gun to take our money." <br /><br />There it is you irony junkies.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-75915104558636890772009-08-12T09:41:00.000-07:002009-08-12T10:09:25.878-07:00Alternative EconomicsIt's been a while since I posted, what can I say, too busy doing shit to write blog posts. But my pal Jeff sent me this <a href="http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=9877">super interesting article </a>that I can't wait to share with others. <br /><br />It's an interview with Douglas Rushkoff and Kurt Anderson about their new books and the economy. Rushkoff's comments intrigue me greatly, when he describes the current economy as primarily value-extraction rather than value-creation and compares it to the end of feudalism where similar value-extraction gave "failing monarchs (the dying aristocracy) a way to make money by owning money." Such comparisons provide compelling evidence that we nearing the end of the capitalist age.<br /><br />Rushkoff also says that the basic market-driven political economy "can be slowly improved as we introduce alternative methods of investment and transactions" I can't wait to read more about his ideas of alternatives and to see if extends this thinking to alternative methods of production, because that's precisely what i've been experimenting with for the last 7 years. <br /><br />His prescription is not "upend[ing] the market economy. Just lots of activity outside of it." Marx and Lenin's adage that the powerful will not give up power without a fight might prove that "lot's of activity outside" the system will not be possible without at least some serious upending of the system. <br /><br />In this section Rushkoff also describes how government practices effectively shut down small businesses (not to mention radical alternatives). <br /><br /><blockquote>You are right that the (rather unconsciously perpetrated) corporate-government alliance usually can't shut down things completely. But then I remember examples like the toy outsourcing scandal, where American toy corps distributed toys from China painted with lead. New regulations were developed by industry and government "working together," which now require toy manufacturers to test any toy being sold to an American child. The tests cost upwards of $50,000, and require a hundred or so units of the toy to be destroyed in the process. Because the regulation applies to all toys, it effectively puts small companies out of business. If the regulation isn't repealed by February, that's it. The mega-corporate practice leads to problems that in turn lead to regulations that favor mega-corporate practices.</blockquote><br /><br />He uses the phrase "rather unconsciously perpetrated" but when I think of all the examples like this (<a href="http://www.polyfacefarms.com/">polyface farm's</a> open air abbatoir, backyard gardens, etc etc) i find it hard to beleive that big business, their lobbiests, and the senators in their pockets remain "unconsious" of this advantage. <br /><br />This sort of government protection of capitalism from alternative systems is the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings, which is what necessitated the capitalist revolutionary wars. Defending against such practices is where political action becomes a reasonable justified tactic. Political action (whether legitimate, extra-parliamentary, or violently revolutionary) as means to change the mode of production (see USSR, etc) is a doomed prospect. Political action to defend an alternative mode of production that is already being lived or attempted is another matter altogether.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-40245668143987278612009-07-14T09:05:00.001-07:002009-07-14T11:53:38.224-07:00What if freedom IS free?Chris Anderson has a new book called "Free." I haven't read this. I also didn't read <a href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free">this article </a>that summarizes the book, but you can if you want to. There's also a video, which i didn't watch. If I was an economist or getting really serious about working out these economic theories, i'd have to read both of Anderson's books (he also wrote "The Long Tail") but for now i've got the concepts behind them, and it's enough to go on. <br /><br />What i did read is <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell">Malcolm Gladwell's review</a>, which summarizes and critiques Anderson's idea well enough to get me started here. <br /><br />Anderson is on to something, but he's also dead wrong for the reasons Gladwell goes into (read the Gladwell if you wanna be able to follow the rest of this post). The thing is: Free does happen. Anderson is only wrong because he doesn't realize that his iron law makes The New Economy a total <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hurns">hurns</a>. Giving people what they want for free and then charging them for extras they don't want? Call me crazy, but that seems like a terrible hopeless business plan.<br /><br />Gladwell gets this, but doesn't really respond. Like Gladwell, I recognize the cheap hopelessness of the New Economy and the New Media, that these <em>New</em> things are wiping out the Old Economy and Old Media only to replace them with insubstantial, unreliable, mediocre nothingness. Like Lear's daughters (to reference a recent Shakespeare project) The New Economy is poisoning the Old Economy and then killing itself. This economic process has an entropic effect: society (art, culture, politics, whatever) are heading toward the situation of the most even distribution of energy, turning everything into bland grey colored lukewarm mush. See the concept of "existential liberalism" found in <a href="http://bloom0101.org/call.pdf">the Call</a> for the political ramifications of this, hint: there's violence, lots of it. <br /><br />Gladwell offers no solutions, seems to think the old economy will somehow persevere. But, as unsustainable as it is, the (perhas sad) fact is, Free does happen. Going with the YouTube example, Anderson thinks YouTube is free because bandwith is <em>almost</em> free. Gladwell corrects him, that <em>almost free</em> X billions = really fucking expensive, and cites the losses YouTube is suffering as an example. <br /><br />Right. But, what is YouTube supposed to do about it? Start charging? Pay for content to attract advertisers? Fold? If youtube starts costing money to use, or closes up shop, then people will simply start posting and watching videos elsewhere for free. Replacements already exist (vimeo, peer to peer, bit torrents, etc). Golly, you can even get that copyrighted content youtube is paying for, free! We live in a situation where anything digitally or virtually reproducable is or can easily be made available for free. <br /><br />How can you make people pay for it? Enforcing intellectual property rights law is one option, one which Gladwell seems to advocate. Problem is, all libertarian or punk-rock anti-authority sentiment aside, enforcing laws costs money. Lobbying the government to prioritize these laws over all the other laws is expensive, especially when other laws lobbied for by special interests with more popular support than the RIAA are easier to enforce. The end result is still that TV and Hollywood movies will continue to cost more to produce while bringing in less profit. If Hollywood passes on these lobbying costs to consumers, more consumers will watch cheaper stuff, found stuff, or archived stuff, or stuff made by producers with less overhead and profit requirement.<br /><br />So, what to do? Accept failure? Give up on art? No. There's something that'll exist on the other side of this, a post-new-economy situation is possible, and it's one i'm personally very excited about. How exchange and distribution in the post-new-economy will work is simple: producers will offer things for free, and people will pay for them anyway. <br /><br />What? Why? HOW? It's a post-capitalist relation of distribution, which befits a post-capitalist relation of production. Start by looking at the social norm that makes the basics of capitalism work. It's called "civil society" and it's sort of like Kant's catagorical imperative. The reason most of us don't steal what we want from a store is because we know that if everyone stole everything they wanted from the store, the store would have to close, nobody would be able to get what we need, and it'd be a resounding hurns all around. Granted, there are laws and security gaurds and little magnetic beeping things, but those are for the deviants, the people who don't accept these social norms and decide not to participate in civil society. Such things could not work if everyone became a shoplifter. <br /><br />When it comes to digital media, because it's so close to free, and because the RIAA are such bastards and Hollywood is so shallow and cheap, the rules of civil society no longer apply at all. Everyone is willing to be a pirate, some people pride themselves on it. Ripping the system is a political act for some: the celebratory destruction of an economy that alienates, exploits and worst of all bores them. Security systems effective against a whole population of shoplifters and pirates will cost more than it saves. <br /><br />This isn't a matter of my preferences. I'm not a theif, and honestly pre-capitalist (ie mafia) economics scare the shit out of me (and should scare you too). This isn't what i want to see happening, it's what i <em>do</em> see happening. If someone has a reasonable alternative explanation or some way to show that this isn't happening, i'd love to hear about it. Maybe i should read more of Anderson's book, but if Malcolm Gladwell can't find anything in it, i probably won't either.<br /><br />In the meantime, we should either start developing a taste for lukewarm flavorless grey mush, or start making some reverse entropy. Specifically we need a new social norm where people WANT to pay for something, not because they're afraid the store will close, but because they love and want to connect and support the person who created the something. <br /><br />How do we get there? This is the point where we can talk about spirital awakenings, new moralities, advanced ethics, pantheism, post-dualistic conceptions of self, social alchemy and any number of other quasi-religious methods of social control. But you'll have to talk to other people about that stuff, cuz it makes my head spin, and i suspect it's been talked about beyond the point of the words meaning anything anymore already.<br /><br />The question i'm more interested in answering is: what if we're <em>already</em> there? The fate of YouTube, facebook and Hollywood can't tell us this. There's no connection, no good reason to give those bastards our money. The only producers who can survive in this post-capitalist economy are ones that establish a direct connection with their consumers. A <em>genuine</em> direct connection, not facebook's mimicry of connection. <br /><br />I see examples all the time. Last saturday two friends and I went to a show advertised as FREE and dropped $20 in a "donations please" jar. I hope we weren't the only ones. I don't think we were. We stood in a room with the entire production team, talked with them, saw their peformance, loved it, and gave them some money cuz we're anxiously awaiting their next show. <br /><br />The upcoming Ulysses' Crewmen tour will be testing this hypothetical system. For many of our shows we will only succeed if a post-capitalist economy already exists, these shows are going to be free, with donations requested. The results of this experiment will be dutifully reported on this blog as the tour progresses. Because if we want people to give us money for no reason other than they think we're worth supporting, transparency is absolutely necessary. Maybe we're too early. Maybe we'll fail utterly. But we'll never make it over this grey lukewarm puddle of mush if we don't all start trying to jump sooner or later.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-89864800890494877312009-07-11T07:32:00.000-07:002009-07-11T08:07:45.961-07:00Forget Shorter ShowersSura Faraj cued me into <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/08">this article</a> by Derrick Jensen. Read it, and he's my response:<br /><br />I agree with the gist of what Jensen is saying here, but have two responses:<br /><br />1. Industrial economy is not a machine running for it's own purpose, it fuels and profits from consumerism. So, yes, me living simply has negligible direct effect, but living simply is also a boycott of all the products of the industrial economy. Businesses run their machines to produce the shit we over-consume, general reduction, toward elimination of over-consumption will leave them running machines with less profit. Which results in them needing to turn off some of the machines. Living simply has an indirect effect of slowing the entire industrial economy. We should celebrate this collapse, but we can't, cuz the collapse also hurts us, our friends, our families.<br /><br />2. Nazi Germany, antebellum US, Tsarist Russia are not comparable to "industrial economy" we're talking about fighting capitalism, a global system. This is much much bigger than those other things. "Voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting" are the equivalent of entering this fight armed with a featherduster the opponent has provided you with. Even altering or abolishing the government (which will require fighting with something A LOT stronger than these featherdusters) is an exclusively political approach. <br /><br />Jensen is buying into the separation of politics from economics. As a result he doesn't recognize how growing a garden is more than "harm reduction" it is the creation of a non-capitalist economy. <br /><br />So, he's right, we need to stop thinking of personal changes as political because of their harm reduction. We need to think of them as political because of their autonomy production.<br /><br />Abolishionists did not own slaves. Nazis thrived because they saved the German economy and were defeated by mostly non-Germans and by Germans who could expect to live in post-Nazi Germany. Revolutionaries are only successful when they are fighting from <span style="font-style:italic;">outside</span> of the system they fight against. What post-industrial, post-capitalist economy is there for us to fight for? Where is there an <span style="font-style:italic;">outside</span> for us to fight from? As long as we depend upon the industrial economy, we break ourselves when we break it.<br /><br />It is only from a position of autonomy that we can truly begin to fight, where the tactics and objectives become clear because they are based upon defending what we've built. Here we can celebrate the collapse of that destructive economy without also suffering in it's decline. It is through the personal individual choices Jensen is discarding that we build this position of autonomy. It's a herculean task, so we can't waste our time with feather dusters and directionless confrontations.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-91763024974970083572009-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:002009-07-07T10:18:25.079-07:00ACTION!You wouldn't know it if you read the journal, but MILWAUKEE THEATRE IS BLOWING UP!! HOLY SHIT!<br /><br />I'm gonna have to eat light, cuz i'm about to drop almost 1/4 of my monthly budget on seeing the gianormous slew of new and exciting theatre happening in this town this month, and i'm very happy about it. It's amazing! Check out my schedule of upcoming activities, google anything you're not familiar with, or just email me asking for details, and i'll send em your way. If you go on the same day as me, you get a special offer: the opportunity to say "hi" or spit at me (if you're one of those people). <br /><br />Don't waste your summer with nothing but lazy afternoons and bbq! THEATRE!!! SUMMER! DO IT!<br /><br />1. TONIGHT: Kick Balls resevoir park 6:30 we like it to win. (also, every tuesday hereafter) Followed by Public Enemies at the oriental at 10:10, gonna see Kish get blown away in the first scene!<br /><br />2. FRIDAY: Krapp's Last Tape at Rooms Gallery in Chicago. Preceeded by dinner and followed by To Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind at the Neo-Futurists (also in Chicago)<br /><br />3. SATURDAY 11th- David's Red Haired Death. Youngblood Theatre. NEW! AMBITIOUS! EXCITING!<br /><br />4. SUNDAY 12th- Pain in the Park (ultimate frisbee) Riverside park, 11am. Followed by Someone to Watch Over Me, cuz i'd like to pay money to see Pink Banana botch up political theatre out of spite. SPITE! at the BTC<br /><br />5. THURDSAY 16th- Sexual Perversity in Chicago at The Alchemist. Kick ASS.<br /><br />6. FRIDAY 17th- Beauty's Daughter at the BTC. UPROOTED! ALSO NEW! ALSO EXCITING! Not quite as ambitious. Youngblood is opening 3 shows in one month. That's kind of unmatchable ambition, sorry.<br /><br />7. MONDAY 20th- Savage in Limbo at The Landfill. YOUNGBLOOD<br /><br />8. FRIDAY 31st- God Bridge at kennilworth YOUNGBLOOD<br /><br />9. SAT Aug 1st- Dead Man's Carnival at Stonefly (we're performing butoh! You wanna butoh too? TELL ME!!)<br /><br />10. SAT Aug 8th Sweeny Todd at Off the Wall - Hope to get a group discount or something, cuz $25 is TOO MUCH.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-69468584274165922112009-07-03T12:24:00.000-07:002009-07-03T12:49:41.004-07:00The Coming Insurrection"The Coming Insurrection" is the book i'm currently reading. This guy is terrified of it. <br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCU4psxF_L4&feature=player_embedded<br /><br />I can't wait to see what happens when he actually reads it, cuz it's some dense philosophical shit that you need at least a passing understanding of critical theory, marxism, post-modernism, etc in order to begin to understand. I especially wonder what he'll think of the parts where they attack the left and call for its destruction.<br /><br />I don't agree with most of what the book says, a lot of it is a bourgeois complaint about alienation, romantic notions about what pre-capitalism was (or even what pre-civilization was), way too much focus on the negative and tactics that are mostly still too conventionally political (they're looking for excuses to break shit when really we need to work on building shit). <br /><br />But, i do love the way that even the pull quotes this reactionary fox news guy chose include some of the ideas i find valuable in the book. Things like "the elaboration of collective self-organized forms of life" does that really sound negative to anyone? I mean, "collective self-organized form of life" sure makes for a more reasonable definition of "freedom" than the average american is generally able to muster. What will happen when conservatives need to respond to this definition of communism? <br /><br />It's kind of like the hypothetical: what would've happened if Marx hadn't dumbed it down for the manifesto in order to inspire the masses into a premature revolution? What if all communists were smart?<br /><br />Curious? <br />Read <a href="http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/">The Coming Insurrection</a> yourself. <br /><br />Curious but too busy to read all that? <br />Read <a href="http://bloom0101.org/call.pdf">CALL</a> (which i actually like more).<br /><br />Curious but too busy to read even that?<br />Then you'll just have to keep scratching your head in bewilderment when shit like Greece starts happening everywhere all the time. Cuz this is where those people are coming from.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-49458821918139943982009-06-26T09:02:00.000-07:002009-06-26T10:52:38.494-07:00Arts Advocacy BreakfastI'm going to keep this breif, because I'm starting to <a href="http://www.artsyschmartsy.com/2009/06/my-life-literally-turning-into.html">lose my temper a little bit</a>, and i've got a <a href="http://insurgenttheatre.org/projects/uc/uc.html">tour to book</a>.<br /><br />Went to the <a href="http://www.artsyschmartsy.com/2009/06/invitation-for-some-positive-friday.html">breakfast in the park </a>that Johnathan West organized. There's going to be another one of these in two weeks, and i intend to go to that one too.<br /><br />From my experience studying and participating in political action, i offer the following reccomendations. <br /><br />There is one thing that will make this work: combined forces. <br /><br />Here's how to combine forces successfully:<br /><br />1. Connect with the remnants of past efforts. <br />2. Balance the present individual acute problem with broader future efforts.<br />3. devise two transparent processes one to develop actionable responses to acute problems and one to develop and strengthen a proactive long term presense.<br />4. hold frequent real life meetings that produce results.<br /><br />More details on these things.<br /><br />1. It was very good to see people from MARN and Arts Inc there. This kind of action is cyclical, if you're not building on the efforts of previous advocates, then you're spinning your wheels and going nowhere. MARN seems like it used to do more agressive advocacy (brenner) and now it's more network focused. This is a good thing, cuz MARN's failures in advocacy probably came from too limited a network. This is an opportunity to bring performing artists into MARN, and use the resources they've already built to pursue advocacy.<br /><br />2. Skylight cannot hyjack the proceedings. Before the next meeting the aggreived members of Skylight ought to develop and two things to present the larger group: first, a consise report on exactly what happened and why. Second, an action plan, what they'd like the broader community to do to support them. It is then essential that Skylight people participate in, make room for and listen to other greivances as well. I'm only using Skylight as an example here because it is the current acute problem, not because i think musical theatre actors are self-dramatizing divas with short attention spans.<br /><br />3. the first process has to start with what i just described above. The group needs to establish a lean, effective standard proceedure for raising issues, and recommending action. We can't spend the whole meeting time brainstorming ideas, the ideas should be prepared ahead of time and presented. To some degree, the right process was already happening today, but if we have twice or three times as big a group in two weeks, it's gotta happen more to make things effective. <br /><br />The second process also already started today, some very goal oriented stuff was discussed, both short term and long term goals. Paula mentioned building enough clout to get a seat at the table for artists when the big fancy people are meeting behind their closed doors, she also mentioned influencing elections. These are good ideas. Prioritize them and develop them into either actions (volunteering for arts friendly politicians) or demands ("Hey GMC! if you want any of these 4000 artists to help realize your fancy-pants creative development plan, you've gotta save a seat for us at your meetings from now on, and you've gotta let us elect the person who sits in that seat").<br /><br />4. If something like these reccomendations are followed, and actions are employed, this group can get results. If the procedures and discussions are made public, then this will grow. <br /><br />These are my reccomendations, as a scholar of political activism, not my personal feelings (i'm not really a fan of political activism). My personal feelings are: let the 38 people who don't know each other on the board of the skylight pay half attention while eric dillner burns the company down, and then sing and dance in the ashes. Form new companies, use new models, skip that 501c3 bullshit. But, my personal feelings aren't very useful to people who wanna do showtunes, so in the meantime, i'll help you guys do your best to empower artists within the old models. <br /><br />I am more excited about this than any of the other milwaukee artist community stuff that's been going on. This art advocacy is different than the coalition's, the CA's or the GMC's. This is transparent, personal and grassroots. When Johnathan says "arts advocacy" he seems to mean something more like "artist advocacy". This distinction is important, "arts advocacy" tends to be much more careful, shallow and empty, advocating the arts as an idea, which can perversely undermine art by empowering arts administrators who have no respect for artists. Creative coalition stuff strikes me as a bunch of meetings where people decide who should talk about making plans on how to create the outline of a map for doing things in a way that makes sure they'll not fail, cuz that might make the GMC look bad. Johnathan's is grassroots, transparent, unafraid of getting dirty, and puts the artists first.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-44886319065469762252009-06-21T08:44:00.000-07:002009-06-21T10:19:12.575-07:00Radical Practices and Basic Macroeconomics.Oh, the internet, it is a web! I touched it and now i'm tangled again. Fuck. I've got a tour to book!<br /><br />But <a href="http://piecesofplastic.blogspot.com">Kurt Hartwig</a> cued me into <a href="http://www.ratconference.com/">some cool shit</a>, which has me thinking more about this stuff.<br /><br />My initial response to this cool shit, and Kurt's assertion that what i'm doing has been done before, would be that merchantilism, that transition period between feudalism and capitalism took a LONG time. Our transition might take just as long, and be just as start-stop and bizarre. <br /><br />But, more specifically, i'd say the 90s (when his RAT example went down) were a boom time for capitalism, if the RAT happened now, during a bust, the infestation would be much easier. I've seen work from Theatre in My Basement, performed at Salvage Vangaurd, perused the Rat Sass blog, so i know at least some these groups still exist today. Lets make something happen now when the time is right.<br /><br />But, I wonder... it seems (and i might be wrong here) there's an unfortunate correlation that frustrates my central claim here. Seems like radical Theatre is strongest when the economy is also strongest. Which means radical theatre is most present when it is least likely to succeed. This makes sense; theatre (even poor theatre) is something like a luxury for audiences, and something like an expensive hobby for the artists. In hard times we're too busy trying to eat to make or see a whole lot of radical theatre. Hurns. <br /><br />But, this adversity is a challenge! An opportunity. It only means we need the discipline to aggressively pursue our "hobbies" even though we increasingly can't afford them. It'll be a tough slog, but i'm ready for it!<br /><br />BUT... there's also the flipside of the correlation, the other causal relationship that kind of makes sense. Radical artists working extra hard to succeed in bad economic conditions will, like any hard working entrepreneurs, eventually contribute to ending the bust and reinvigorating the economy. Then the mainstream theatres with funding will siphon off talent and audiences (just like corporations with investment capital siphon talent and customers off the entrepreneurs). The architects of the reconstruction will be crippled and marginalized by their own success. Hurns. Major fucking hurns.<br /><br />Well, then fuck it. Looks like compromising, communicating with, working with, or in anyway helping the establishment theatres is inherently against our interest. I withdraw my advice, the BTC can fuck off and die, the sooner and the more completely, the better.<br /><br />Sheesh! That makes me a tactless asshole, doesn't it. A bitter, curmudgeonly, negative vibe merchant. But, really, i'm not. I've met some very nice well-intentioned people who work at the BTC, people who started with Theatre X's help, and then accidentally dug X's grave. Lots of people i know or could hope might come see my shows probably also know someone who knows someone who works there. Really, only surly punks like someone who says anyone else "can fuck off and die" like i just did, and surly punks mostly spend their money on cheap beer, not theatre. Looks like I'm better off keeping my mouth shut, feining ignorance, saying "oh, Skylight, oh, BTC renters, i feel your pain" and then privately celebrating their demise, and capitalizing on their absence. <br /><br />But... that feels really dishonest. It feels like pretending i don't know my own interests. That i don't know something in order to better use my knowledge to my advantage later. I'm uncomfortable with that, cuz i might be an asshole, but i'm not a creep or a liar. (I'm fucking terrible at it). Maybe i shouldn't be. Maybe i should take a certain friend's advice and get better at lying. I mean, this is basically what the Skylight did to Theatre X to get that building in the first place, isn't it? They have it coming.<br /><br />Except maybe their ignorance wasn't feined. Maybe they really didn't realize they were fucking X over. Maybe they had good intentions and just didn't realize what the long term effects of their actions would be. Maybe they don't understand how economic necessity undermines even the best of intentions.<br /><br />So, then, seems like the proper tactic is to be completely open, lay everything out on the table. Make it so no one can pretend not to know. Maybe i oughta write an open statement to every established non-profit theatre in the country during this trying time, here's a rough draft:<br /><br />"Hey mainstream theatre establishment! I'm about to commit the next ten years of my life to rebuilding theatre in america. I'm gonna live out of my car producing theatre for free in basements, bars, classrooms and alleyways for audiences that you can't even begin to tap now but who'll probably be ready to subscribe after they settle down and squirt out some babies. I'm gonna burn myself out doing it, (i'm already 30, so i've got a late fucking start) and when i'm done, i'll have contributed some small portion to a rebirth of theatre as an art form (and a growing economy.)<br /><br />I know full well that once that rebirth happens there'll be a moment when you have the leverage to buy me out. If I've been successful, you'll be ready to buy out everyone I've surrounded myself with, you'll buy out my actors, my audiences, my techs (shit, you're already are buying them out now). If I've been really successful, you'll kiss my ass and talk about how much you love and respect me, and you'll frame the buy-out in terms that make it sound like an opportunity. But, i know that if i take that opportunity it's a devil's deal, it'll break my organization, and it'll leave me begging for scrap roles in your shitty shows. I'll turn you down, and everyone will think i'm a stubborn irrelevant shithead. <br /><br />Except that now i've written this. I've taught you and everyone else how the economics works, how your well-intentioned offers of opportunities, community, networking, are actually a bad fucking deal. I know it, and I've told you, so you can't pretend not to know it. I've also told my friends, my actors and my audiences. When these people look at your intentions and ask themselves if you're being deceitful, or ignorant, they'll know that if you're ignorant, you've chosen to be ignorant. Willful ignorance is feigned ignorance, it's deceit."<br /><br />Hmmm... seems viable. The success of the revolution depends on everyone better understanding economics. What's the best way to teach? Demonstration. By looking at Theatre X's history from a distance, in terms of how the economics played out between the institutions, the organizational structures, not how the specific individuals acted under these economic pressures, i'm able to learn things that might apply to me, that help me avoid the situations under which the bad decisions that broke that company up look reasonable. Same applies for every failed revolution of every kind. If we're always learning, learning, learning then nothing anyone has done was for naught.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-82945366015987027312009-06-19T15:47:00.000-07:002009-06-19T16:02:07.805-07:00ULYSSES' CREWENThis show has been a different process for me. We're rehearsing without a director, on three random afternoons a week, in our dining room. The cast is me and my room mate. The set and props are so minimal that it hardly feels like we're in the middle of production, except when we're rehearsing. It feels much more organic, a natural part of our lives, not something that we go elsewhere and meet with people that we don't regularly otherwise see to do. <br /><br />But it is the middle of production. Local shows are booked. Press releases sent out. Tour booking is underway. Our test audience rehearsal (instead of a director, we're showing it to a handful of friends) will probably be in a couple weeks. Tonight i'm burning silk screens for the poster. Expect to see some beautiful brown and black and white images around the city starting next week (unless i fuck something up). This afternoon Jason Hames uploaded the preview video to YouTube. This is really, finally going to happen, and i am beyond excited about it. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCwYQzt_vbw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCwYQzt_vbw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-18349958011211090582009-06-19T09:43:00.000-07:002009-06-19T10:28:26.553-07:00Advice from a Communist<a href="http://www.artsyschmartsy.com/">Artsy Schmartsy</a> is making me a liar with his great coverage of the Skylight disaster. Thanks Jonathan! Also, Kurt Hartwig's making my dreams come true with more and more coverage on <a href="http://piecesofplastic.blogspot.com/">his blog.</a> <br /><br />Check out their recent posts for details, then come back here for my perspective:<br /><br />I urge everyone who is upset about this to look beyond this individual instance and observe the broader institutional transition that Skylight's actions are merely a symptom of.<br /><br />There is a major shift in how theatre is produced underway today. Depending on how you look at it* it's been underway for decades, or it's just starting now. Either way, the dominant model of theatre production (non-profit corporations / regional repertory theatre system) is on it's way out.**<br /><br />So let's look at what's going on here, in the abstract.<br /><br />First, we have a class of big non-profit theatre who function under the obsolete model. This class needs A. new life and energy. B. a navagible route to gradually acheive radical innovations without disrupting their institutions, interrupting their services, or sacrificing their employee's livelyhood.<br /><br />Second, we have a class of upstart theatre companies functioning under new models who, like all new models, are rough, and need time to develop, work out the kinks and perfect the formula. <br /><br />Way i see it, things can go down one of two ways:<br /><br />1. The big companies can batten down the hatches, dig into their bunker boardrooms, make draconian cuts and hope they'll weather the storm. They won't. Cuz this storm (and the upstarts) will reshape the entire landscape. There will never be a good time to come out of the bunker boardrooms, and the institutions will die there. <br /><br />2. The big companies can reach out to the upstarts, bring them to the table, give them the support, resources, networks they need to experiment and develop their model. In return, they'll gain infusions of new talent and audience and have a chance to chart their own route of a more gradual carful adaptation along the trails the upstarts blaze.<br /><br />Now, as a communist, I'd call option 2 "recouperation" and "appropriation of small innovators by established institutions" and / or say that the small innovators have "sold out". I'd prefer to struggle through the figuring out new models on my own and dance on the grave that the establishment's bunkers have become.<br /><br />But, as a pragmatist i can't help but notice that option 2 sure seems a lot more pleasant, and more likely to work, at least sometime in my lifetime. <br /><br />Fortunately for the rep, skylight and the companies at the BTC, I'm probably the only communist in the theatre scene, and even i can be pragmatic at times. (and i'm going to be spending much less time in milwaukee starting this fall). Unfortunately for the big companies, they seem mostly ignorant or uninterested in option 2. Which means the communist in me stands to win some support from the other small companies, right? Lets band together, get disciplined and smash the motherfucking establishment! Right? uh... oh. okay, i guess we're not quite at that point yet. Hurns.<br /><br />*Tangent 1: My understanding of the history of this transition: The broad arch of it started decades ago, by the 60's radical practices had grown enough to challenge the establishment, but where then appropriated, absorbed, and relegated to the margins, where they exist today. But now the acute rapid part of this transition begins. Now the establishment is collapsing under it's own weight, if (when) radical practices emerge as powerful as they did in the 60's replacing these already crippled institutions will be simple. This history applies to all sectors of the economy, not just the theatre arts. It's called reasoned optimism people, catch it!<br /><br />**Tangent 2: as to Kurt's disagreement that the non-profit model is increasingly obsolete, here's some interesting stuff to look at: <a href="http://tribaltheatre.pbworks.com/">theatre tribes</a>, <a href="http://mikedaisey.com/">Mike Daisey</a>. Neither go as far as i do, but you can find more of my thoughts by perusing my blog archive.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-49917109430704581752009-06-16T10:42:00.001-07:002009-06-16T21:32:54.940-07:00Press in Milwaukee ContinuedI don't really know if you can call it "press" anymore since all the good shit is online. It blows my mind how mainstream newspaper art departments respond to their impending obsolescence by reducing their actual ink and paper coverage to only the big stuff, stuff which already advertises itself ubiquitously. I understand it from the perspective of the Big Stuff, or of the newspaper, but in the long term, it makes reading the paper redundant and superfluous. Whatever. Newspapers' stupidity in the face of adversity isn't my concern, i'm concerned about press coverage for the performing arts in milwaukee. <br /><br />And today i'm writing from my bottomless sea of optimism. If you don't know me well, you'll be surprised to know i have one of those. Anyway, everyone has railed against Damien Jaques, sent in letters to the editor, and he's about to be canned, right? No? Okay, wrong. The journal is an obsolete monolith that will not respond to any number of reader complaints (and most people i asked to write letters are probably too defeated, complacent or busy to actually do it). What now? Keep shouting? Despair? Nope, replace the whole fucking Journal, which aint' hard cuz it's mostly done already. <br /><br />There are awesome independent alternative media sources here in Milwaukee that actually do cover small scale performing arts and respond to the community. I should've pointed out how these mavericks will have the monolith torn down shortly. Artists! Use these sites to promote your stuff! Audience! Find out what's really going on in this town!<br /><br />FIRST! Third Coast Digest. http://thirdcoastdigest.com Formerly Vital Source. They were the only media to respond to our first show, published some of our best (as in critical, well written and responsive) reviews, and have always been dilligent listers of all kinds of amazing events. They even let Tracy and I write reviews for a while (until some thin-skinned whiney elements of the Milwaukee theatre community complained).<br /><br />SECOND! MARN'S new site. http://artinmilwaukee.com The Milwaukee Artist Resource Network has fought for independent artists of all types longer and harder than anyone else i know of. Their focus is on visual art, but their new site seems ready to give performing arts more attention. Looks like a great tool for not only promotion, but also networking. GET SIGNED UP!<br /><br />THIRD! Local Arts Bloggers. <br />1. Russ Bickerstaff at the Shepherd covers everything happening in performance art like nobody else. Unfortunately, the most interesting stuff rarely gets into the print edition, and the Shep's website is poorly designed, unwieldy, and barely navigable, so i haven't been following Russ as closely as i used to.<br />2. Mary Dally-Muenzmaier at http://www.crickettoes.com/ is currently the most active multi-disciplinary blogger i know of, lots of good stuff. <br />3. Johnathan West at http://www.artsyschmartsy.com/ used to rival Russ for performing arts coverage, and Cricky for analysis and commentary, until he got a square job as ED of a square theatre company (oh, how the mighty have fallen!) <br />4. Mary Louise at <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/artcity.html">Art City</a> doesn't cover the performing arts, cuz then she'd be doing Damien's job (hey, at least someone would be) but she's excellent for anything else going on in the community. Follow her!<br />5. Just discovered recently that Kurt Hartwig has a blog. It looks like it was created for chronicling his time in Prague, but he appears to be back, and writing. If this is the case, get excited, Kurt is one of the smartest theatre people i've ever met. <br /><br />FOURTH! Snap Milwaukee. http://www.snapmilwaukee.com/ This site has potential. Some really good people are involved. But be warned: it's also partially run by the Green Gallery folks. Green Gallery are clearly intelligent and active, but are also ambiguously ironic elitist shithead hipsters. (Or maybe they're just socially awkward and disorganized, you can't really tell, that's the power of ambiguous irony. Either way, i personally cannot fucking stand their whole shebang). They also don't have a performing arts editor, any film articles, and their shit loads funny, in short, the jury is still out on this one.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-59037082535138386382009-06-08T09:14:00.001-07:002009-06-08T15:31:42.052-07:00MINNEAPOLIS!!!Last week i had the honor of participating in this amazing and wonderful multi-company production of King Lear. I also had the somewhat less amazing experience of seeing the world premire of Tony Kushner's new play. The contrast of these two experiences offers insights on the future of theatre. These insights are based on my impressions and limited experiences, they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else involved in the Lear project, or even my other company members.<br /><br />1. The spaces. Bedlam is a building on the West Bank, surrounded by muslim immigrants on one side, public transit train tracks and a bike path on the other. Every inch of this building is used and almost all of it is completely accessible to audiences. The kitchen, the backstage, and the offices are the only off-limits places, but the offices are mostly located behind a transparent open wall, and the "boardroom" seems to be an open lounge with thrift couches and boardgames and a huge cardboard wall that says "DIY plan for world domination!" and holds the mission statement, long term plans, production proposals, and everything else that normal companies discuss behind closed doors pinned to it or scrawled on it. This building completely integrates a bar, a restaurant, and the grease-pit, which is a bicycle shop. The Guthrie, on the otherhand is an imposing complex, it's huge and beautiful, very modern, overwhealming even, but sometimes feels more like an airport than a theatre, and certainly feels absolutely nothing like an open transparent community space.<br /><br />2. The productions. King Lear gave 5 companies from accross the country 2 rules: make it 20 minutes long, serve a desert. They trusted us to do whatever we want, risked any of these companies dropping the ball, and presented the most diverse, incongruous, radical and bizarre shakespeare i can imagine. Kushner? He was tweaking and editing the play through the preview performances, making the ending more accessible, invited and then disinvited national reviewers because he didn't want to risk premature judgement of an unpolished play. "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with References to Scripture" does take some risks (including it's title) but it has clearly been created under a much more closed, stifling, high pressure (with the pressure coming from marketing concerns rather than artistic concerns) process than our Lear project.<br /><br />3. The audiences. Bedlam's bar/lobby filled with incredibly diverse, informal raucous and lively audiences every night. These audiences hung around to talk with the performers, watch aftertainment, and socially integrate with the theatre event however they wished. At the Guthrie, David Bohn looked like the youngest member of the audience, and our group was pretty much the only ones who didn't feel compelled to dress nice for the occasion. Granted, this was a saturday matinee, but if more than half of the student rush line has grey hair, then the Guthrie isn't attracting enough young people to sustain itself (expecially with its astronomical infrastructure costs).<br /><br />4. the plays: King Lear was one of the most exciting theatre events i've seen, let alone participated in. It was done promenade style, with a group of talented folk-singers (posing as life insurance salesmen) guiding the audience through the various spaces. Each act was radically unique, but they tied together into a wonderful whole treating the audience with great acting, stunning visuals, and dense concepts in quick succession. <br /><br />First, Bedlam's act 1 stayed faithful to the text (but edited it down to 20 minutes) led the audience from the bar to the grease pit to a bicycle-powered shanty, back to the bar, and then to the sidewalk to watch the final action take place on the roof. It emphasized Lear's violence and childishness, had audience members play France and Burgeondy, cobbled together hilarious almost post-apocalyptic costumes and imbued every possible moment with wonderful physical comedy. <br /><br />Second, trutheater theater put act 2 through a mystical prism aided by blacklight, elaborate puppet costumes, strobes, fog machines, video projection, vocal processors, shadows and psychedelic music. They present a Shakespeare in which a tenticaled one-eyed Edmund hides Edgar inside his head, where Kent carries his stocks as part of his body, Lear wears his crown upside down on his face, Regan and Goneril appear as an ornate two-headed multi-eyed riddle telling creature and Edgar does not merely disguise himself as Mad Tom, but is mystically transformed into a terrifying lunatic. <br /><br />Third, Nonsense Company started act 3 with an anthropomorphised first folio on the witness stand of a trial, proceeded into an extensive and hilarious examination of the history and study of insanity and it's treatment and ended it with a frantic attention-deficit pop-culture-on-speed eye-gouging. There is much more to say about this brilliant and bewildering act (the music, the haunting children's voices, the sodomy, the sly references to modern politics) but you really should just join me in seeing their extended version of it in the Minnesota Fringe Fest this August instead of trying to imagine what i'd describe of it.<br /><br />Forth, the "loosely affiliated with puppet uprising players" approached act 4 almost text-less through paper cuts, overhead projector slideshow, actor tableaus and awesome experimental music. Their act ended with lear as a wooden puppet / pinata that the audience was invited to break open.<br /><br />Fifth, was our meta-theatre interrogation of Shakespeare-as-cultural-institution. For more on that, join us June 20th at the Alchemist, where we'll re-present it.<br /><br />I went into the Kushner play ready for dissappointment. Any mainstream corporate play that uses the words "intelligent" and "socialism" should rouse suspicions of false advertising in anyone who's studied these things. But Kushner delivers. The play IS intelligent, and talks meaningfully about capitalism and socialism in today's world. As a result, i love and hate it. First, i hate it because it is a well-made family drama, it's all about catharis and narrative and big sets and character development and blah blah blah. This counts against it, because plays of this sort fail to get beyond shallow entertainment. On the other hand, i love it because the catharsis is aimed at characters that i'd never expect a modern american playwright would dare attempt to elicit sympathy for. Kushner also takes exciting risks like depicting multiple complex top-of-their-lungs arguments all happening at once and trusting the audience to choose which to focus on, enjoy the sounds of the competing voices, and fill in what they can't hear. This is probably what earns the play reviews of being confusing or disorganized, but i see it as one of the most exciting moments of the play, a time when the play becomes what it elsewhere describes (cramming in as many distractions complications and tangents as possible out of fear for it's own completion). To some some degree the family drama is exploded here, the exposition is wrapped up so abruptly at the end of act 2 that it's hard to not read as being intentionally dismissive of the form it knows it has to take to appease Guthrie audiences. Also there are some obvious overt theatre references (Doll's House, Major Barbara, Cherry Orchard) here that verge on meta-theatre for the informed audience member. <br /><br />Overall the play was complex and open enough to afford the following interpretation of it's themes: Communism was a worthwhile (actually THE ONLY worthwhile) project, and it failed due to a combination of compromises (unions, labor laywers) metaphysical excuses and ideological escapes from the hard truths of dialectical materialism (christian science, mysticism, existentialism etc) and distracting "liberation" movements that actually provided new generations raised in radical settings with petty distractions (or sexual fetishes) from the class struggle. I get the sense that Kushner (or at least his central protagonist) is blaming the emotionally devastating and highly dysfunctional, but also totally petty and often self-created (or at least self-aggrivated) family dramas for a missing the historical opportunity to create a fundamentally new and improved society for all of us. <br /><br />In short, the play seems to be saying: "a revolution was possible, but we fucked it up and now it's too late." I love the play for saying this, at least for saying it to me and hopefully a few others. But i hate it for not saying something like the following: "We know it is too early and also that it is too late, that is why we have time. We have ceased to wait" or even "Communism is possible at every moment." But, can i really blame Kushner for not having read or accepted the obscure anonymous tracts of the insurrectionary communists? I guess not, since if he had he'd surely not be working with anything like the Guthrie.<br /><br />In conclusion: The Guthrie is in many ways leaps and bounds ahead of other regional or corporate theatre companies (most anything we've got here in Milwaukee) but they also seem ages behind Bedlam. If The Guthrie and Kushner are the corporate regional theatre system's best bet at investing in the future of theatre, then it's no wonder these traditional theatre people are preoccupied with death and contemplating suicide. Working with Bedlam on the other hand has got be totally inspired and optimistic for the future of theatre as an art form.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-11266082991529574822009-06-02T10:39:00.000-07:002009-06-02T11:21:01.452-07:00More on Milwaukee Press.I'm done holding my tongue about the scourge of the Milwaukee theatre community.<br /><br />Damien Jaques' response to my including "newsworthy? You'd think so..." to the end of a Play in a Day announcement on Facebook was to say "insurgent needs to improve quality" before he'll even mention us. Then he wrote <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/46680322.html?c=y&commentSubmitted=y#comments">this follow up</a> to his review of Quasi's Henry V.<br /><br />Anyone who knows me knows i'm no fan of Shakespeare, i wasn't able to see quasi's show (doing multiple shows of my own right now) but the idea that the biggest theatre writer in the city is saying it maybe shouldn't have happened at all is insane. You can see my (and other's comments) on his post. <br /><br />I also wrote a letter to the editor. Milwaukee's Theatre community doesn't need to accept such lousy coverage. I'm not saying that Damien has to like what we do (i expect he won't) but if he's supposed to be a news source covering significant things happening in the theatre community, then he needs to at least acknowledge the existence of things he doesn't like. <br /><br />Here's the Journal's "letters to the editor" address: jsedit@journalsentinel.com <br /><br />Here's what i wrote:<br /><br />When are you going to replace your unqualified and terrible theatre writer?<br /><br />Damien Jaques spends more time regurgitating Broadway headlines than<br />covering local theatre. He has a narrow uninformed definition of what<br />makes good theatre. He was the bane of Theatre X (but then pretended<br />to be sad when they closed) he refuses to acknowledge the existence of<br />smaller theater companies, indeed recently advised Quasi Theatre that<br />they shouldn't have even tried to produce Shakespeare. This man is<br />ignoring or obstructing the growth and development of a new and<br />exciting theatre scene in this city.<br /><br />The Journal has recently expanded and VASTLY improved it's visual arts<br />coverage, thanks to Mary Louise Schumacher's engaged and dedicated<br />coverage of not only every gallery show, but also spearheading and<br />participating in vital discussions of relevant issues in the visual<br />art community. Why can't you replace Mr Jaques with someone who'll<br />give similar treatment to our struggling theatre community?<br /><br />Ben Turk<br />Local Playwright and Theatre Producer with Insurgent Theatre.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-11307245738810369302009-05-28T11:42:00.000-07:002009-05-28T12:02:26.565-07:00Play in a Day 4 and Press in MilwaukeeSeeing as how most of the media outlets in Milwaukee (excepting Third Coast Digest) completely ignored our press releases for Play in a Day 4 (motherfuckers) I need to post this here:<br /><br />WE ARE DOING A SHOW UNLIKE ANY OTHER SHOW DONE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD EVER THIS WEEKEND!!! <br /><br />Play in a Day 4<br />Saturday 8pm Tenth Street Theatre (10th and Wisconsin, under the big red church) $10<br /><br />The Onion, The Journal, and The Shepherd don't think it's worth you knowing about enough to EVEN LIST IT in their events listing (but the onion has space to do joke write ups about other shows). I kind of think that creating a full length play, with script, sets, cues, etc in only 24 hours is an acheivement worth staying up all nigth for and I hope you'll think it's worth seeing.<br /><br />I don't mean to sound bitter, but COME FUCKING ON! What the fuck kind of impossible feat or giant spectacle do artists in Milwaukee have to attempt in order to get any goddamn attention from the fucking press in this town? This is just one example that's got me pissed off at the moment, and yeah, Play in a Day is surely not the most serious or artisanal theatre show in Milwaukee, but it's symptomatic of a major problem. Mary Louise at the Journal is serious about promoting local visual art, but there's not even a blog anywhere (let alone at the big paper) that covers performing arts anything like that (Damien Jaques' blog of 80% Broadway Headlines doesn't even come close). There are tons of theatre's in this town, why such shitty coverage?Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-78753036950358753552009-05-20T10:43:00.000-07:002009-05-20T12:00:03.464-07:00Art.I am growing increasingly uninterested in this word. Failing galleries, the lack of viable economic models for visual art, public arts legislation, debates, subsidies, bland blind support parading as criticism, post-modern subjectivity, endless pleas and demands for funding, accumulations of deadly art, silence, cliques, cliches, intentional social awkwardness as beguiling mystery, all these things make me think that maybe this word describes something that just maybe ought to not exist anymore.<br /><br />An art that requires funding from governments or grants is an utterly clueless art that should be starved.<br /><br />An art focused on the distinction or boundaries of High Art vs Low Art, Art vs Anti-Art, even if it seeks to blur or destroy those distinctions and boundaries is a self-indulgent art that should be ignored.<br /><br />An art that says nothing more than "i like the idea of being an artist" is a deadly art that must be buried.<br /><br />An art that plays it safe and panders to it's audience is a useless art that should be discarded.<br /><br />An art reliant on irony, nostalgia, or anything short of earnestness is a disgusting art that must be stamped out.<br /><br />A society or culture that relies upon any of these arts, deserves none.<br /><br />A society or culture with no art ceases to exist.<br /><br />The degree to which our culture relies on these forms of art, is the degree to which our culture deserves to cease.<br /><br /><br />The definition of this word is profoundly problematic, to the point that we probably should stop using it. If a refined play or a symphony is art but a blockbuster movie or rock concert is not, then the art/not art definition comes from economic practices, not forms content or genres. The symphony is art because it is paid for by patrons or governments. The rock concert is not because it is paid for by tickets and merch sales. If art is art because it relies on an obsolete economic form, then fuck art. I want no part of it.<br /><br />Even if we consider blockbusters and proceniums as both being art, we still must pay attention to these economic forms. We'll notice a historical progression of these economic forms. From fuedal patronage to capitalist commodity production to an undefined future, some kind of post-capitalist communisation. This is what the grant-begging art world is utterly, stupidly clueless of. Art must live in the future. To rely on commodity production when the world will soon run on communisation is merely dense, but to rely on patronage when the world runs on commodity production is idiotic. <br /><br />Artists must seek the new economic forms. We must find out how to live communisation, and do our part to create a post-capitalist world. In the meantime, compromises are acceptable, but to <em>rely</em> on and <em>demand</em> patronage? That is starvation-worthy.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-50991494168692553382009-05-07T11:48:00.000-07:002009-05-07T12:01:10.741-07:00Things you should doI haven't had time to write on here for a while, but i wanna post about things that have happened since getting back from Tour.<br /><br />1. i've been reading and re-reading The Call. Get your free copy at the CCC and fuck some shit up. seriously.<br /><br />2. I've been rehearsing an insurgent version of King Lear's act 5 to be performed at Bedlam Theatre with some awesome companies from around the country. If you know me, you know how i HATE shakespeare, and my hatred (as well as others' boundless love) influenced our version. We wanna do this locally, but it's only 20 minutes long. If you like shakespeare and wanna go head to head with our fucked up play to make an evening of shakespeare interrogation in Milwaukee in June, LET ME KNOW!!! <br /><br />3. fixing to play some experimental music! This weekend, at the Freaks Come Out and the Borg Ward (google it), next month with Realicide and Victory! later next month with some other stuff. Bass. Feedback. Drone. Acrobatics.<br /><br />4. Booking touring theatre groups! Bedlam and trutheatertheater! Get details on insurgenttheatre.org<br /><br />5. playing frisbeeeeee and kickball! Join us! Sunday mornings at riverside for frisbee (ultimate) tuesday evenings at peirce and meineke for kickball. comment for time and details. Victory summer!<br /><br />6. rehearsing Ulysses' Crewmen. I am so happy about this.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-21278653576572231072009-04-18T11:48:00.000-07:002009-04-18T13:07:02.563-07:00Tour Report: The PHX FringeThis tour was risky, we pushed ourselves further than we had before, trying to find our limits and learn our boundaries. It was our longest tour yet, 18 days on the road, going further distances with longer drives than ever before. It was the first long trip without Peter J Woods’ musical accompaniment. It was also our second swing at the Fringe Festival circuit (after Systems at Minnesota Fringe). It was also the last run of Paint the Town. <br /><br />Some of these risks were more manageable than others, some of the expenses harder to recover. Some surprises, both good and bad, and definitely good lessons learned. Overall this tour was better than the summer run, but not as good as the winter tour. No shows sucked completely, but none were as great as NOLA on New Years or St Augustine.<br /><br />Here's pictures! <table style="width:194px;"><tr><td align="center" style="height:194px;background:url(http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/insurgent.ben/PHXFringeTour?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeoqoPmQk0E/AAAAAAAAAgA/1_TujY9dfE8/s160-c/PHXFringeTour.jpg" width="160" height="160" style="margin:1px 0 0 4px;"></a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/insurgent.ben/PHXFringeTour?feat=embedwebsite" style="color:#4D4D4D;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;">PHX Fringe Tour</a></td></tr></table><br /><br />Here’s a city by city breakdown.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeonfmSId4I/AAAAAAAAAZc/3PbqgUVkt1k/s1600-h/2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeonfmSId4I/AAAAAAAAAZc/3PbqgUVkt1k/s320/2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326112933125060482" /></a><strong>March 25th Urbana, IL.</strong> Urbana is a college town with an amazing Independent Media Center in the middle of it. Last time we were there it was winter break and we played for a small but super interested group of locals. This time, we unwittingly booked the show during the college’s spring break, so we played for a larger group of locals, including a fun conceptual music ensemble. These people were great, one woman who clearly has a problem with bio-determinism emphatically painted over the Mendel cross diagram on the set. We went to a great restaurant with super cheap late night food and talked about community organizing, political action and radical theory for a couple hours. Next time we come to Urbana, we’ll make sure school is in. <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeooiOplUVI/AAAAAAAAAZk/iyGgSQ588Nc/s1600-h/9.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeooiOplUVI/AAAAAAAAAZk/iyGgSQ588Nc/s320/9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326114077832204626" /></a><strong>March 26th Birmingham, AL.</strong> When we got to Green Cup Books the garage door leading to the fenced off alley out back was open. It was a beautiful day expecting a rainstorm in the middle of the night. Seemed like the perfect opportunity to have our second ever alley performance of the show, so we did, and it kicked ass. Definitely one of the best shows of the tour, complete with trains in the background providing a soundtrack. We played for a good sized crowd with Yakuza Dance Mob, who are a completely insane noise / absurd / jazz group fronted by a 7 foot tall, 250 pound wildman who threw himself around the alley and the audience with completely reckless abandon, and then brought us home to a large communal house for polite conversation about Birmingham’s history (coal mines, race riots) and greek and roman mythology. <br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeopZYCh9zI/AAAAAAAAAZs/qxkU1CxejiA/s1600-h/12.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeopZYCh9zI/AAAAAAAAAZs/qxkU1CxejiA/s320/12.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326115025245566770" /></a><strong>March 27th New Orleans, LA.</strong> We were super pumped to be coming back to New Orleans, site of our best show from last tour. Urbana and Birmingham had both grown in terms of audience and excitement since last tour, if New Orleans followed suit we’d be in heaven. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. I’d heard rumors that New Orleans can be fickle and unreliable, and now I’ve got personal experience backing it up. Things started out great, we got to our venue, Sidearm Gallery, a shotgun house with a courtyard beside it which had been roofed and converted into a Chinese laundry long ago, and then painted bright green and converted to a performance space more recently. Scott Heron, the proprietor answered the door in a frilly grey dress and welcomed us into his front room, a space furnished primarily with a slack-rope set up. Juggling pins and high heeled shoes littered the floor. He showed us around, introduced us to the sweetest pitbull I’ve ever met and recommended a café a few blocks away where we could get cheap food. <br /><br />Then things started going down hill. We first went to pick up Krista, a friend of John’s whose been hitching her way around the country and would be our tech in the fringe in exchange for a ride back to Denver. On this trip we took a frustrating accidental detour onto a freeway that forced us to drive over a long toll bridge out of the city and back again in rush hour traffic. Eventually, we got food and got back to Sidearm, where we set up and waited for the bands and audience to arrive. One band didn’t show, and not much audience did either. We ended up performing for a couple of Krista and John’s friends, one guy who saw us on New Years, The Self Help Tapes, and a few really cool theatre people who heard about the show from Scott. It was a good show, solid, but definitely less than we had been hoping for.<br /><br />After the show we went to a party at a bar a few blocks away featuring two European techno DJs and a 40 piece marching band. This was a good time, with dancing and a crowd of the uniquely New Orleans style of hipsters, who somehow seemed much less friendly than the ones we met back on New Years, but that’s probably based on our subjective position. Next morning, Scott made us a wonderful breakfast and sent us on our way.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeopxLcGu7I/AAAAAAAAAZ0/26g1QI8_LMM/s1600-h/15.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 216px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeopxLcGu7I/AAAAAAAAAZ0/26g1QI8_LMM/s320/15.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326115434180033458" /></a><strong>March 28th, Houston, TX. </strong>After getting dead ends and silence from venues and contacts between NOLA and Austin, I resorted to cold-calling anarchist bookstores. Last time we played such a show (in Boston last August) we performed for one woman, so I wasn’t terribly hopeful about this show. But Sedition Books exceeded these low expectations. A small, but engaged group of people came out, donated generously, and enjoyed the show. <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeoqNqb3gAI/AAAAAAAAAaY/JdbqtX_v_bU/s1600-h/16.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeoqNqb3gAI/AAAAAAAAAaY/JdbqtX_v_bU/s320/16.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326115923536871426" /></a><strong>March 29th, Austin, TX.</strong> The Salvage Vangaurd Theatre is now on my top five list of theatre companies / venues in the world. In fact, it’s the only place other than Bedlam where I’ve been that makes me think the future of theatre won't be the utter collapse of the regional theatre system followed by punks and individual artists sifting through the rubble, but rather, a smooth and easy transition where companies and venues like these simply replace the obsolete institutions one at a time. This is a smart organization, diversified, hip, well put together and super approachable and friendly. I can’t wait to get back to Austin and spend more time at this place.<br /><br />The show was great too, a mid-size enthusiastic audience, and some amazing noise bands including one remarkably self-indulgent guy dressed like a 70’s era Michael Jackson, who thinks that by hopping around and poking himself in the nuts with a stick he'll save his mom from cancer. His absolute commitment to this public display of grief and new age mysticism made for exquisitely uncomfortable viewing: you can’t take him seriously, but you get the impression laughing or walking out might like, kill his mom or something.<br />Spending the day in Austin was also a good time, we crashed with a friend who lives near campus so most of what we encountered was college-life, but it was mostly independently-owned-and-operated college life. Wish we’d been able to explore the city more, cuz it definitely gives off a vibe of being incredibly culturally diverse and exciting. We spent the afternoon in a park working out kinks and improving the second-to-last scene in the play and arguing about the hypocrisy of privileged kids like us getting food from Food Not Bombs.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/Seoqg3dFBfI/AAAAAAAAAag/jZRC66OW0Ao/s1600-h/17.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/Seoqg3dFBfI/AAAAAAAAAag/jZRC66OW0Ao/s320/17.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326116253449127410" /></a><strong>March 31st Bisbee, AZ.</strong> This is one of those little counter-culture utopia cities. It’s precariously floating somewhere between the dangerous cliffs of hippy monoculture and bourgeois tourist destination, but navigating those waters well enough for us to enjoy our time there. We stayed with John’s sister and her adorable children and played at a new café establishment for a good sized crowd of locals. <br /><br />This was one of my favorite audiences. We had a good house, probably the oldest and yet one of the most enthusiastic audiences we've had. The "lets get out of frankfurt, okay?" line got uproarious laughter, and some of the audience members talked about Big Reds that they've known (others, who looked big-reddish themselves were conspicuously silent). It was great performing with Eric Bang! and Gypsy Geoff and exchanging stories at the end of the night. Familiar Milwaukee faces were a welcome sight.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeorDItiWYI/AAAAAAAAAbE/IxTlsm-LggU/s1600-h/34.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeorDItiWYI/AAAAAAAAAbE/IxTlsm-LggU/s320/34.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326116842197113218" /></a><strong>April 1st – 5th PHX Fringe.</strong> This was our second attempt at a Fringe Festival, and it turned out not much better than the first. I’m about to go on a little tangent about Fringe Fests for a second, some of what I say isn’t going to apply to PHX Fringe, and surely won’t apply to other festivals I haven’t experienced. So bear with me as I try to get my words around my thoughts on this subject. <br /><br />The first thing I should say is that everyone we’ve ever met at either fringe festivals have been incredibly nice, well organized, professional and accommodating. These people are all clearly committed to making accessible and exciting theatre in their cities, and they should be applauded for their efforts. My complaints are not in anyway personal. It might just be that the fringe festival model can’t do what I think it oughta do, that the very idea of “fringe theatre” has been Adorno-style co-opted by mainstream capitalist culture. <br /><br />Anyway, we’d swung and missed at the Minnesota Fringe Fest with “Systems” last summer. We came away with the conclusion that “Fringe Fest” is mostly a misnomer, as most of those shows were far from “Fringe”. With a few exceptions (Deviants, Boom) the shows that seemed to walk away with the most audience and the most money from Minnesota were also the most conventional. Meanwhile the most amazing experimental work in the fest (Depth of a Moment) were clearly even more frustrated than us with their lack of audience.<br /><br />For us, Minnesota Fringe ended up being an opportunity to lose hundreds of dollars competing with hundreds of other shows who have a number of significant logistical advantages (local audience, crowd pleasing content, no day jobs) for an audience that was mostly uninterested in what we were trying to do. The festival made doing theatre feel like a zero sum game, like poker, where groups like us were dead money, feeding the pot for others to take home. I generally hate than analogy, cuz I think arts production is a lifts-all-boats sort of thing, not a zero-sum thing, but the festival made zero-sum feel (unfortunately) more accurate.<br /><br />Of course, we don’t give up easily, and we like to blame ourselves when things don’t work out. We focused on how it didn’t help that Systems turned out much less funny than we’d thought it would when reading the script. We figured next time we’d put up a different show, applying lessons learned in Minneapolis, and maybe trying at a different festival would work out better. PHX Fringe seemed like a different festival, and it was, and Paint the Town is certainly a different show, but we still ran into some of the same problems, on a smaller scale. <br /><br />There are three things I like about the PHX Fringe. First that it’s a juried festival. This means that works are selected based on being experimental, challenging or somehow different. One of the organizers explained this to me using the Edinburgh festival (the first and biggest fringe fest in the world) as an example, apparently that has the same problem MN has, lots of crowd pleasers and sketch comedy crowding out the truly “fringey” work. MN Fringe and Edinburgh are random lottery based, an idea that, on the surface is appealing, but in practice seems to not produce or benefit “fringe” work.<br /><br />Second, Phoenix Fringe is newer and smaller. There were only 30 groups, and this was only their 2nd year in existence. We figured this would mean fewer cardsharps at the metaphorical poker table. Unfortunately, it seems it also means much less audience at the festival in general. We saw as many other shows as we could and only two had more than half their seats filled. <br /><br />Third, PHX Fringe is cheaper both for audience and for artists, and a larger cut of ticket sales go to the artists. Everything added up to make us think we might be able to at least break even, or make something to recover some of the cost of traveling down here.<br /><br />Long story short, we played for houses of less than ten every show, half of whom were other artists (ie not paying) and almost all of whom loved the show and promised to tell their friends. If generating word of mouth is the way to succeed at a Fringe Festival, we shoulda been golden. Our wonderful amazing venue manager took our promotion materials to his classes, and called everyone he could think of, we hit the streets during First Fridays, we seem to have impressed our small audiences, we were in many ways the most exceptional and unusual show in the festival (being a traveling DIY group, with a large set, a longer play, radical political themes, and an audience participation painting finale) and still, momentum never caught on, the houses never got bigger, and we ended up losing at least a couple hundred bucks. <br /><br />Of course, we don’t do theatre for money, so this isn’t the end of the world, but we can’t afford to regularly lose as much as we did here. Economic sustainability is a requirement of our success, and if instead of the festival we’d done 5 more shows in the style of the rest of the tour we’d have made more, spread the driving out more evenly (or just not gone so far) and spent less. We probably still wouldn’t have made a profit, but we surely would’ve lost a lot less.<br /><br />We also had trouble finding things to do in the city of Phoenix itself. I know it takes a while to get to know a place, to find the most interesting neighborhoods populated by the most interesting people, but, after 5 days of driving around Phoenix with a map of hotspots and galleries, we left with the impression that the city is mostly an endless strip mall with very little unique independent local culture or neighborhoods, or space for people to wander and loiter in public, this impression was reinforced by many of the people living there. It sure made Milwaukee, Riverwest, and Bayview look good. <br /><br />We definitely had some good times in spite of these frustrations. We got to spend time with Tracy’s old friends and get to know them better. Saw some great interesting shows (Los Torresnos) We got to do the play in the same place a few nights in a row, which allowed us to work on it in ways we can’t when we’re preoccupied with traveling, loading in and out and meeting new people. Also, meeting and working with people like Steve and Matt is always a great experience. We’re willing to spend money on these types of experiences, but simply can’t afford to do so without eventually running out. We’re also more willing to lose money if it’s in the name of bringing theatre to non-theatre audiences, which doesn’t seem to happen at fringe shows as much as our other shows.<br /><br /><strong>April 7th, Salt Lake City, UT. </strong>This was a strange show. After a long night drive through some beautiful mountains we got to another city even more bereft of my favorite the DIY culture than Phoenix. There’s something about driving on precarious cliffs, through narrow passes and across wide dark valleys by moonlight that’s exhilarating and romantic, but there’s also something about the lack of poverty, or even much working-class environment in SLC that makes this shiny well-organized Mormon idyll feel more than a little creepy and constraining. <br /><br />Everyone in SLC was incredibly nice and accommodating, the whole city gives off a vibe of, “hey, there’s nothing to worry about, let’s be happy and c’mon, look at this big beautiful park! Or these wide clean streets with small buckets of bright orange flags on the corners to help children and pedestrians cross without being run over. Pet the bunnies and have some coffee!” The venue even accommodated their next door neighbors (a fancy restaurant) by promising not making any noise louder than soft “indoor” voices until 9 when the restaurant closed. Unfortunately, our show was scheduled to start at 6:30. <br /><br />We managed to push the start time back a few hours and only had to do the first half of the show at low volume, which was completely strange and energy-sapping. Somehow the audience loved the show in spite of the lack of projection or realistic speaking volume levels. They bought a bunch of merch and encouraged us to come back soon. <br /><br /><strong>April 8th Denver, CO.</strong> This was my personal favorite show of the tour. We played the Blast-o-mat, a punk rock garage in the warehouse district with a skate park out back. Dun Bin Had and 10-4 Elenor, a couple of great pop-punk bands played with us, for an audience of 40-50 of the counter-culture lifestyle types we’d been achingly missing since Bisbee. I realize this fashion-based assessment is going to make me sound superfiscial, but dreads and black denim seem to go well with insurgent theatre. <br /><br />The Blast-O-Mat is great. It’s a legal-enough punk venue, run by a collective, hosting shows of all kinds: noise, metal, punk, folk, with a tiny indie record store and art gallery inside. They’re looking to host more events that expand beyond standard music and parties, and responded enthusiastically to an email from a perfect stranger asking about doing a theatre show there. They also had a warm meal waiting for us, and accommodated our every request and question. I woulda liked to spend more time here, but we left for Boulder shortly after the show ended so that we’d have a whole day with no driving.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeosHfxZGPI/AAAAAAAAAeY/slxYaqqSFkk/s1600-h/36.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SJfSOfkH9WI/SeosHfxZGPI/AAAAAAAAAeY/slxYaqqSFkk/s320/36.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326118016618404082" /></a><strong>April 9th, Boulder, CO.</strong> John spent the day hanging out with old friends while Kate and I climbed a mountain. We’d been working on Ulysses’ Crewmen (doing a last-revision / first read / table work) whenever we had down time on tour. We finished this process on top of the mountain, infusing the project with the spiritual energy of the beauty and majesty of nature, or some such romantic bullshit. <br /><br />The show was at Naropa University, a Buddhist College founded by Alan Ginsburg and a couple monks. John’s friend set it up, and wasn’t able to make it an official show in the performing space, so we played a class room, which was probably more appropriate and exciting. The first classroom we’ve performed in! We played for a dozen or so people who mostly knew each other along with a couple of great experimental music sets. This audience was one of those dead silent groups that make me nervous, no laughter, no reactions, makes me feel like we’re boring them or completely fucking up, but then when you steal a glance or talk to them after the show you find out they are (for the most part) silent because they’re completely absorbed in the show, contemplative, I guess like Buddhists’ oughta be. <br /><br />After the show we hung out in Boulder (a fairly sad future vision of Bisbee after it’s crashed into the bourgeois tourist destination cliff) and talked about the play and art and ethical lifestyles with people for a couple hours. <br /><br /><strong>April 11th, Chicago, IL. </strong>The last performance of Paint the Town came after an 18 hour drive and a short nap on a fold-out couch in Todd and Marrakesh’s apartment above Room’s Gallery. Due to unforeseen circumstances out of our control (our Chicago crash pad’s cell phone malfunction) we had to ask the Room’s people to give us more than they’d bargained for. Rooms is where I’ve seen some of the best theatre I’ve ever seen (Bunbury Me, 7 Jewish Children). I respect these people a ton, and I think we’re the first out-of-town group they’ve hosted, or at least after 18 days on the road we’re certainly the dirtiest and most out-of-it. Having to call them and ask if we could show up 8 hours early and sleep in their house somewhere sucked. But they were totally gracious, in spite of having had an event and a long night the night before and feeling under the weather.<br /><br />The musicians showed up on time and set up quickly and everything was ready to go, except for audience. When we left Milwaukee almost a month earlier I’d predicted that New Orleans and Chicago would be our best shows. We’d had good shows in both cities in the past, good musicians were playing with us, we were playing great venues, on weekend evenings. Instead, they were both some of the lowest turn outs of the trip. I’m trying to figure out why. Both shows had some return audience, one or two people who’d seen it before coming back for more, so it’s not that we’re delusional about our previous shows in these cities. I think the problem is the day of the week. Big cities like Chicago and New Orleans have tons of stuff going on Friday and Saturday nights, things that a small out of town troupe with a weird show like ours can’t compete with. This conclusion is supported by previous experiences in other places. From now on, I’m going to avoid playing big cities on weekend nights unless we’re sharing a bill with very popular local acts.<br /><br />At any rate, our Chicago performance was totally weird, we were out of it, uncomfortable, low energy, confused and disappointed. I felt worse after this show than any since at least August.<br /><br /><br /><strong>SUMMARY.</strong> All in all, we had no terrible shows, but also none as good as the best shows of our winter tour. Being on the road 18 days didn’t take a very serious toll on us, no strained relations, no fights, we did a lot of good work, continued to modify the play up until the very end (this is becoming my favorite thing about theatre, you’re never finished creating a piece). Financially, we more than covered the cost of gas and food, but between renting the van, repairs, two flat tires, and what we lost on the fringe fest we’re down over $800 which is totally unsustainable. Specific numbers can be found below.<br /><br /><strong>The future of touring:</strong> Kate and I are starting work on Ulysses’ Crewmen and planning the next tour. The current plan is to be on the road for the entire month of September. To tour with Peter’s new one-man performance piece about suicide called “Pity”. To focus on the east coast and try to spend more than one day in some cities. We’ll also be taking our third strike-out swing at a fringe festival. This time in Philly, which is organized completely differently, it costs much less, but also provides much less. This is exciting because it gives performers more freedom, we’ll book our own venue, choose our own dates and prices, so the experience is likely to be closer to DIY touring than festivaling. If any kind of festival will work for us, this should be it.<br /><br /><strong>ECONOMIC TRANSPARENCY:</strong><br /><br />Clearly we've got a ways to go before we make either touring or fringe festivaling economically successful or even sustainable. We've learned a lot of lessons and have some tricks up our sleeve for future efforts. Merch and donations provide significant earnings and can be expanded. Promotion can also be improved and expanded and should get easier over time. Ulysses' Crewmen is a much tighter smaller show that should travel far less expensively. It is also shorter, less challenging, more emotionally intense and, well, should end up being just plain better. <br /><br />Here's the specific information about this tour:<br /><br />Income: $703.5<br />Door $481<br />Donations $108.5<br />Merch $114<br /><br />Expenses: -$1276.06<br />Gas and Oil -$560.98<br />Food -$94.51<br />Hardware -$25.75<br />Car Rental -$400<br />Car Repairs -$194.82<br /><br />Balance sans Fringe Fest: -$572.56 <br /><br />Cost of Fringe Fest -$335<br />Expected earnings at fringe fest: maybe $75<br />Estimated Fringe Fest loss: -$260<br /><br />Estimated Final Balance: -$832.56<br /><br />Here's a comparison with previous efforts:<br /><br />Systems at MN Fringe: loss $871.94<br />Paint August 2008 (14 days) loss $790.34<br />Paint October (4 days) loss $120.23<br />Paint Winter (8 days) gain$152.30<br />Paint Bedlam (3 days) gain $19.30<br />Paint at PHX Fringe: loss $832.56Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-37063162239857510192009-03-25T07:43:00.000-07:002009-03-25T08:02:41.520-07:00Winsome Picks, March 25 - April 11Hello,<br /><br />I'm about to pack up the USS Gerald Holiday and hit the road for 18 days. As a aprting gift, i offer milwaukee this guide to everything i would do if i wasn't gone.<br /><br />1. ALCHEMIST THEATRE'S VIRGINIA WOOLF - i saw this last weekend. Kick's ass. They did a great job with a great play.<br /><br />2. UWM's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST - i am hating myself for missing this. Dario Fo kicks ass and the fact that UWM is putting this up makes me happy for UWM students. PLEASE GO SEE THIS AND TELL ME HOW THEY DO IT!! <br /><br />3. MHSA's Spring Awakening - another play i've wanted to see for a long time and am going to miss for this tour. Hurns. I heard rumors that the administration is censoring the play, and might even cancel it. Which is TOTALLY FUCKED UP. So, if it's not cancelled, go there, and tell the students that they oughta perform the full un-censored version on the last night, and shake a dick in the face of whatever administrator or parent tries to stop them. What the fuck?<br /><br />4. ARMOURY SHOW - i haven't made it to their current exhibit yet, but i hear it's good, i'm pretty sure i'll miss it.<br /><br />5. DEAD MAN'S CARNIVAL AT STONEFLY - see people spit fire, escape from things, do carnival and vaudville tricks. Mad skills, true dedication, a style unique to Milwaukee. Probably with some music and burlesque groups too.<br /><br />6. John Mueller, Peter J Woods and Burning Star Core at Cactus Club - This will probably be the best experimental music show in milwaukee for a long long time. If you don't know or like experimental music, go see it anyway, cuz i seriously can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be blown away by what these people will do with your eardrums. I am PISSED to be missing this. Peter's got some other kick ass shows lined up while i'm gone too. Check em out at experimentalmilwaukee.com.<br /><br />Okay, that's all i know i'm missing, that i can think of now anyway. You'll have to look up the details for these shows yourselves, cuz i've been too busy planning my tour to properly plug shit.<br /><br />Oh, if you wanna come down to rooms gallery in chicago on the 11th, it's probably the final performance of Paint the Town anywhere ever. <br /><br />When i get back i'll hit the ground running. BERZERK!!! April 26th, Hosting Bedlam's Liquid Ladies on May 24th, Play in a Day May 30th (MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THIS EPIC EVENT NOW) King Lear in Minneapolis first weekend in June, and starting rehearsals for Ulysses' Crewmen, and booking that tour. i LOVE being this busy.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-75842780674385476502009-03-11T11:41:00.000-07:002009-03-11T11:51:20.882-07:00Winsome Picks Mar 11thHey! This weekend is one of those totally packed full of stuff weekends. Here's my plans.<br /><br />First: all weekend i will be regretting that (due to the following activities) i will be unable to attend Beggar's Opera at Theatre Gigante and the We're Anonymous event at The Armoury. Please go see them for me and tell me what i'm missing!<br /><br />Thursday: SDS is bringing Tom Hyaden to UWM. 7pm Zelazo. Radical politics lecture somethin somethin. <br /><br />Friday: PAINT THE TOWN at the CCC. If you don't know what this is but you're reading my blog, then you must be some kind of weirdo.<br /><br />Sat AM: Early Morning Vegan Cafe, also at the CCC 10am<br /><br />Sat evening: going to chicago to see the amazing people at the amazing Rooms Gallery do the amazing Caryl Churchill's new play, 7 Jewish Children as an looping interactive installation. Rooms kicks ass. Then we might go see TMLMTBGB, cuz it's fun!<br /><br />Sun Noon: Anarchist Discussion, topic: Paint the Town!<br /><br />Sunday afternoon: Ultimate Frisbee!!Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-60854898885575421362009-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:002009-03-03T13:56:07.240-08:00Winsome Picks Mar 3rdQuickly this time (wasted too much time on bitching about Milwaukee art scene today)<br /> <br />Last week's events were GREAT! 3Penny Opera was one of the most exciting things i've seen a legitimate "professional" company in Milwaukee attempt in a long long time. <br /><br />This week's big event is The Riverwest Follies. Look it up, i'm outa here in 5 minutes. <br /><br />There's also another Transmutative Cinema film this weekend. Another one about how wonderfully exciting and romantic it is to be in a desperately disfunctional relationship! At the Alchemist. These are sometimes AMAZING and othertimes FUCKING TERRIBLE. Kind of a hit or miss thing, but if we aren't willing to take risks on truly independent cinema then we deserve the faux indie schmaltz that the landmark's are feeding us these days.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4131728244854401872.post-61736848329419416392009-03-03T10:41:00.000-08:002009-03-03T10:56:17.913-08:00More bitching about the local art scene...I'm begining to think i need to stop paying attention to the intractable problems of Miwlaukee's art scene. I've rode a couple times through the mutually reinforcing cycle of ineffectual organizations that ignore artists and a defeatist artist community that complains about their entitlement to support and their beleif that the work they do feeds our society's soul. I know i've got better things to do with my time.<br /><br />But, i've always been drawn to apparently impossible challenges. The more intractable the problem seems the more excited i get about confronting it! Unfortunately, this enthusiasm for challenges has created a distraction from the work i've got to do (and there's lots of that: booking a tour, rehearsing for tour, workshopping King Lear, promoting the CCC show, writing essays, printing new merch, editing Ulysses Crewmen, etc etc). <br /><br />Anyway, i've already followed the current manifestation (or infestation) of art world whinery (an especially infantile discussion started <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MilwaukeeArtistResourceNetwork/message/13175">here</a>, about this <a href="http://emnben.blogspot.com/2009/02/you-call-this-art.html">seemingly irrelevant blog</a> and written the following response, so i might as well say it out loud.<br /><br />I really really don't think Emily Thomas should be brought into the art community's airing of public greivances. I do appreciate Mike's using her blog post as an example, but i see it more as an example MAM's failure in it's role as a gateway to get the millions of people like her and her children invovled in art. Should our focus now be on this one individual art-viewer, or would our time be better spent looking at the art curator who has many many interactions of this kind daily? Sure, she's much easier to attack than MAM (who are probably either ignoring this conversation or fretting about how to make it go away, depending on how paranoid they are. At any rate, i highly doubt we're going to hear from them) but what good does attacking her do?<br /><br />Seems to me what Mike's post illustrates is that we're in the present situation (underfunded arts and art-education programs) because MAM and others have failed in their responsibility as gateway to the art world. This failure happened in the past. Perhaps MAM and other orgs coulda done more and better (probably) but perhaps even if if they had, this kind of failure was unavoidable (probably). <br /><br />I don't care all that much about that, i'm concerned with the present situation: the gateway is broken, from the perspective of the millions of Emily Thomas's, the art world is an insular cluster of increasingly irrelevant and inexplicable artists and curators, doing offensive pornography. The questions we should be asking are not: who is this one individual woman, how did she come to her views on art, how can we change her mind. If we spend ten minutes thinking about it, take an honest look at the art world, it's not hard to infer the answers, and to even sympathize with Thomas. Oh, and liscensing parentage is not only an absurd joke, it's also offensive and stupid because it focuses on regulating and controlling "them" rather than on what "we" can do to change things.<br /><br />Yes, the questions should be directed at us, at artists. MAM etc failed in the past and now we're in a situation that MAM and the NEA and the CA and the GMC and the great HOPE we just elected president CANNOT fix, even if they tried (and i'm sure they are trying, however muddleheadedly). Now we can either bitch at them while it remains broken, or WE can try to fix it. <br /><br />Seems to me the question we ought to be asking is: we are YOU doing as an artist to connect with the non-art community, or accross artistic disciplines? If each individual artist can answer that question with a few successful projects, then the ineffectuality of the CA, GMC, MAM, NEA etc etc etc becomes irrelevant.<br /><br />Or maybe not... maybe i'm a naive optimist. Maybe groups like hotcakes, Theatre X, etc etc did successfully reach accross disciplines and to a non-art audience for a couple years (or decades) and then failed anyway due to lack of community and institutional support. Well, actually... that is what happened. Looks like my efforts are really just repeating their failures. Then, I am a naive optimist, but I guess i'd rather be optimistic about my and my neighbors' ability to change things than pin false hopes on organizations and institutions that i know ain't ever gonna change.Ben Turkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04838599516482103220noreply@blogger.com4