Insurgent Theory

Ulysses' Crewmen

2009-09-06T13:25:00.001-07:00

Hey,

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 ulyssescrewmen.blogspot.com.

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.

Irony at the Courthouse

2009-08-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

A 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

There it is you irony junkies.

Alternative Economics

2009-08-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

It'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 super interesting article that I can't wait to share with others.

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.

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.

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.

In this section Rushkoff also describes how government practices effectively shut down small businesses (not to mention radical alternatives).

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.

He uses the phrase "rather unconsciously perpetrated" but when I think of all the examples like this (polyface farm's 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.

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.

What if freedom IS free?

2009-07-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

Chris Anderson has a new book called "Free." I haven't read this. I also didn't read this article 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.

What i did read is Malcolm Gladwell's review, which summarizes and critiques Anderson's idea well enough to get me started here.

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 hurns. 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.

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 New 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 the Call for the political ramifications of this, hint: there's violence, lots of it.

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 almost free. Gladwell corrects him, that almost free X billions = really fucking expensive, and cites the losses YouTube is suffering as an example.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 do 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.

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.

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.

The question i'm more interested in answering is: what if we're already 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 genuine direct connection, not facebook's mimicry of connection.

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.

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.

Forget Shorter Showers

2009-07-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

Sura Faraj cued me into this article by Derrick Jensen. Read it, and he's my response:

I agree with the gist of what Jensen is saying here, but have two responses:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 outside of the system they fight against. What post-industrial, post-capitalist economy is there for us to fight for? Where is there an outside for us to fight from? As long as we depend upon the industrial economy, we break ourselves when we break it.

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.

ACTION!

2009-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't know it if you read the journal, but MILWAUKEE THEATRE IS BLOWING UP!! HOLY SHIT!

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).

Don't waste your summer with nothing but lazy afternoons and bbq! THEATRE!!! SUMMER! DO IT!

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!

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)

3. SATURDAY 11th- David's Red Haired Death. Youngblood Theatre. NEW! AMBITIOUS! EXCITING!

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

5. THURDSAY 16th- Sexual Perversity in Chicago at The Alchemist. Kick ASS.

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.

7. MONDAY 20th- Savage in Limbo at The Landfill. YOUNGBLOOD

8. FRIDAY 31st- God Bridge at kennilworth YOUNGBLOOD

9. SAT Aug 1st- Dead Man's Carnival at Stonefly (we're performing butoh! You wanna butoh too? TELL ME!!)

10. SAT Aug 8th Sweeny Todd at Off the Wall - Hope to get a group discount or something, cuz $25 is TOO MUCH.

The Coming Insurrection

2009-07-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

"The Coming Insurrection" is the book i'm currently reading. This guy is terrified of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCU4psxF_L4&feature=player_embedded

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.

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).

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?

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?

Curious?
Read The Coming Insurrection yourself.

Curious but too busy to read all that?
Read CALL (which i actually like more).

Curious but too busy to read even that?
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.

Arts Advocacy Breakfast

2009-06-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep this breif, because I'm starting to lose my temper a little bit, and i've got a tour to book.

Went to the breakfast in the park 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.

From my experience studying and participating in political action, i offer the following reccomendations.

There is one thing that will make this work: combined forces.

Here's how to combine forces successfully:

1. Connect with the remnants of past efforts.
2. Balance the present individual acute problem with broader future efforts.
3. devise two transparent processes one to develop actionable responses to acute problems and one to develop and strengthen a proactive long term presense.
4. hold frequent real life meetings that produce results.

More details on these things.

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.

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.

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.

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").

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.

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.

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.

Radical Practices and Basic Macroeconomics.

2009-06-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Oh, the internet, it is a web! I touched it and now i'm tangled again. Fuck. I've got a tour to book!

But Kurt Hartwig cued me into some cool shit, which has me thinking more about this stuff.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

"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.)

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.

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."

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.

ULYSSES' CREWEN

2009-06-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

This 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.

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.

Advice from a Communist

2009-06-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Artsy Schmartsy 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 his blog.

Check out their recent posts for details, then come back here for my perspective:

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.

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.**

So let's look at what's going on here, in the abstract.

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.

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.

Way i see it, things can go down one of two ways:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*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!

**Tangent 2: as to Kurt's disagreement that the non-profit model is increasingly obsolete, here's some interesting stuff to look at: theatre tribes, Mike Daisey. Neither go as far as i do, but you can find more of my thoughts by perusing my blog archive.

Press in Milwaukee Continued

2009-06-16T10:42:00.001-07:00

I 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.

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.

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!

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).

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!

THIRD! Local Arts Bloggers.
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.
2. Mary Dally-Muenzmaier at http://www.crickettoes.com/ is currently the most active multi-disciplinary blogger i know of, lots of good stuff.
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!)
4. Mary Louise at Art City 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!
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.

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.

MINNEAPOLIS!!!

2009-06-08T09:14:00.001-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More on Milwaukee Press.

2009-06-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm done holding my tongue about the scourge of the Milwaukee theatre community.

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 this follow up to his review of Quasi's Henry V.

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.

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.

Here's the Journal's "letters to the editor" address: jsedit@journalsentinel.com

Here's what i wrote:

When are you going to replace your unqualified and terrible theatre writer?

Damien Jaques spends more time regurgitating Broadway headlines than
covering local theatre. He has a narrow uninformed definition of what
makes good theatre. He was the bane of Theatre X (but then pretended
to be sad when they closed) he refuses to acknowledge the existence of
smaller theater companies, indeed recently advised Quasi Theatre that
they shouldn't have even tried to produce Shakespeare. This man is
ignoring or obstructing the growth and development of a new and
exciting theatre scene in this city.

The Journal has recently expanded and VASTLY improved it's visual arts
coverage, thanks to Mary Louise Schumacher's engaged and dedicated
coverage of not only every gallery show, but also spearheading and
participating in vital discussions of relevant issues in the visual
art community. Why can't you replace Mr Jaques with someone who'll
give similar treatment to our struggling theatre community?

Ben Turk
Local Playwright and Theatre Producer with Insurgent Theatre.

Play in a Day 4 and Press in Milwaukee

2009-05-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

Seeing 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:

WE ARE DOING A SHOW UNLIKE ANY OTHER SHOW DONE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD EVER THIS WEEKEND!!!

Play in a Day 4
Saturday 8pm Tenth Street Theatre (10th and Wisconsin, under the big red church) $10

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.

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?

Art.

2009-05-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

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.

An art that requires funding from governments or grants is an utterly clueless art that should be starved.

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.

An art that says nothing more than "i like the idea of being an artist" is a deadly art that must be buried.

An art that plays it safe and panders to it's audience is a useless art that should be discarded.

An art reliant on irony, nostalgia, or anything short of earnestness is a disgusting art that must be stamped out.

A society or culture that relies upon any of these arts, deserves none.

A society or culture with no art ceases to exist.

The degree to which our culture relies on these forms of art, is the degree to which our culture deserves to cease.

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.

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.

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 rely on and demand patronage? That is starvation-worthy.

Things you should do

2009-05-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

I 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.

1. i've been reading and re-reading The Call. Get your free copy at the CCC and fuck some shit up. seriously.

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!!!

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.

4. Booking touring theatre groups! Bedlam and trutheatertheater! Get details on insurgenttheatre.org

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!

6. rehearsing Ulysses' Crewmen. I am so happy about this.

Tour Report: The PHX Fringe

2009-04-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

This 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.

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.

Here's pictures!

PHX Fringe Tour

Here’s a city by city breakdown.

March 25th Urbana, IL. 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.

March 26th Birmingham, AL. 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.

March 27th New Orleans, LA. 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.

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.

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.

March 28th, Houston, TX. 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.

March 29th, Austin, TX. 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.

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.
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.

March 31st Bisbee, AZ. 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.

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.

April 1st – 5th PHX Fringe. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

April 7th, Salt Lake City, UT. 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.

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.

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.

April 8th Denver, CO. 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.

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.

April 9th, Boulder, CO. 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.

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.

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.

April 11th, Chicago, IL. 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.

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.

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.

SUMMARY. 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.

The future of touring: 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.

ECONOMIC TRANSPARENCY:

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.

Here's the specific information about this tour:

Income: $703.5
Door $481
Donations $108.5
Merch $114

Expenses: -$1276.06
Gas and Oil -$560.98
Food -$94.51
Hardware -$25.75
Car Rental -$400
Car Repairs -$194.82

Balance sans Fringe Fest: -$572.56

Cost of Fringe Fest -$335
Expected earnings at fringe fest: maybe $75
Estimated Fringe Fest loss: -$260

Estimated Final Balance: -$832.56

Here's a comparison with previous efforts:

Systems at MN Fringe: loss $871.94
Paint August 2008 (14 days) loss $790.34
Paint October (4 days) loss $120.23
Paint Winter (8 days) gain$152.30
Paint Bedlam (3 days) gain $19.30
Paint at PHX Fringe: loss $832.56

Winsome Picks, March 25 - April 11

2009-03-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hello,

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.

1. ALCHEMIST THEATRE'S VIRGINIA WOOLF - i saw this last weekend. Kick's ass. They did a great job with a great play.

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!!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Winsome Picks Mar 11th

2009-03-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hey! This weekend is one of those totally packed full of stuff weekends. Here's my plans.

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!

Thursday: SDS is bringing Tom Hyaden to UWM. 7pm Zelazo. Radical politics lecture somethin somethin.

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.

Sat AM: Early Morning Vegan Cafe, also at the CCC 10am

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!

Sun Noon: Anarchist Discussion, topic: Paint the Town!

Sunday afternoon: Ultimate Frisbee!!

Winsome Picks Mar 3rd

2009-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Quickly this time (wasted too much time on bitching about Milwaukee art scene today)

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.

This week's big event is The Riverwest Follies. Look it up, i'm outa here in 5 minutes.

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.

More bitching about the local art scene...

2009-03-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

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.

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).

Anyway, i've already followed the current manifestation (or infestation) of art world whinery (an especially infantile discussion started here, about this seemingly irrelevant blog and written the following response, so i might as well say it out loud.

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Winsome Picks Feb 25

2009-02-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

Oh my god i have been fucking busy...

Cool shit coming up this week:

Some really interesting looking films at UWM - documents of China's industrial wasteland. Various times this weekend.

Friday 27th
- Goddard Film at Woodland Pattern
- Armoury Opening

Sat 28th
- Broad Vocabulary Benefit
- Noises Off at Carte Blanche (also Friday night, i think)
- Cream City Collectives Late Night Vegan Cafe

Sun M 1st
- Last chance to see 3Penny Opera at Off the Wall (i'm dragging a dozen people there personally on this day, so if you've ever wanted to have it out street gangs style with me and mine, this is the perfect chance!)

Tues 3rd
- 2nd MARN / CA artist listening session thing at The Walkers Point Center for the Arts

Winsome Picks Feb 17

2009-02-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late on these. Thursdays might be a little late in the week for making time for this. Anyway, this is a good week for art in Milwaukee.

1. My Name is Rachel Corrie: tonight at 5 and 7:30, at the Haefler Theatre Building on Marquette Campus, free. I saw this last night, and while imperfect, it's defnitely worth checking out. See review below.

2. 3Penny Opera - opens thursday at Off the Wall. I've been super excited since first hearing about this, and reading Dale's short essay on the show (up here: http://www.offthewalltheatre.com/)has got me even more excited! Brecht in milwaukee by someone who understands and shares some of brecht's intentions, even takes them to the next steps.

3. BERZERK!!! 15 plays all written in ten minutes. Sat at 8pm. Produced by me! The plays were written last weekend. This is possibly the best batches of BERZERK!!! plays we've assembled. It's gonna be an awesome show... if i can pull off all the tech stuff we need to get together. Buy tickets online now, cuz it'll likely sell out. Get em at the Alchemist website)

4. FTAM show at the borg ward. Great noise show, also sat at 8pm. If you don't get to BERZERK!!! get to this.

5. Present Music at Discovery World. Also on Saturday, the bourgeois version of the FTAM show. But, Present Music is finally acknowledging the existance of local experimental musicians! If it were a different night i'd be checking it out.

6. Transmutative Cinema - some really interesting looking films this week, Sat at 10, sunday at 8. Free with drink purchase at the alchemist. Support the alchemist! Support genuinely independent cinema in Milwaukee!

7. i'm too busy with my own theatre stuff to have kept up on the visual arts scene this week. Sorry. Check out Art City or Suseptible to Images, i'm sure some of the great exhibits i saw two weeks ago are still up.

Cultural Summit Progress

2009-02-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

Hello,

The cultural summit (aka the MKE Kre8Kamp) has happened, they've documented it on their blog (above) and Jonathan West over at Artsy Schmartsy is spazzing out about spreading the word about all the great work they did.

You all should take a look at all of it and make your own judgements. Jonathan's post is a good place to start. My opinion can be found in various comments on the posts.

Why i didn't vote for Obama part 4.

2009-02-07T07:14:00.001-08:00

Unrealistic Promises.

Obama promised that he'd clean up Washington, that he'd take the high road, and that he'd be bipartisan and concilliatory. His commitment to those promises has got him bending over backwards to please the most crooked and bitterly partisan reactionaries in the republican party, at the neglegence of the other "change" he gave us (well, those of you who voted for him anyway) the vague impression that you were supposed to "hope" for.

If the democrats had the balls to put up a candidate who had the guts to say "this country is on the wrong track, and i'm going to do everything i can to get it back on the right track, whatever it takes, damn the conservative critics" during the election, i might have voted for em. Instead, we're in the position where the republicans are still defining the agenda, and i suspect by the time the cabinet selection process is finished, they'll still be running the country.

Let's take a quick trip back to 2004. To the day that i swore i'd never waste my vote and volunteer time on a spineless democrat again, that is, the day that Kerry stopped counting votes in Ohio. On that day, George W Bush made a nice little speach about how, obviously this is a nation divided, and how his party is going to have to reach accross the aisle and be more bipartisan.

Two days later, he made a much more vigorous speech about how his slim, contestable margin of victory was a "mandate for his policies", and how for the next four years he'd be doing everything he could to do everything he'd always wanted to do. And then he did. And the party cheered him for it.

Now we're in a position where the democrats have actually won by a big margin, one that's actually worth calling a mandate, and because the democrats are still spineless, that mandate is being squandered on appeasing right wingers. I wonder if there's a major difference in mentality behind this. If democrats expect their leaders to be principled, to do what they say and republicans don't. Seriously, do democrats pay closer attention and hold their elected officials to a higher standard? It sure seems like it. It seems like republicans are willing to forgive their officials' indescretions and outright lies as long as they get a tax break or some fiery xtian rehtoric (depending on which kind of conservative zealot they are).

There's a tradition in American politics i learned about in school. It's called the "100 days". The first hundred days of a new president's first term, he's given some slack. He's allowed to take risks, make mistakes and to familiarize himself with the position, the dynamics and with the compromises that need to be made in that position. The media and the opposition party are generally expected to be forgiving, make some concessions, and compromise on some issues. Back in November the media and republicans whined endlessly that Obama would be coddled as the 'golden boy' forever (well the ones who weren't arleady trying to impeach him, or hanging nooses in trees, that is). Now, here, in reality, dude didn't get 20 of his 100 days.

On the cabinet appointments: All politicians are crooked. All politicians have always been crooked. Crookedness is part of being a politician, and exploiting tax loopholes and avoiding paying taxes on whatever little thing you can get away with is part of being a prominent rich American. Of course they don't know about it, Tom Daschale doesn't do his own taxes, he does the same thing every rich american does, he pays someone to get him the best deal he can get, even if it's only "close enough" to being legal. This is another example of democrats holding themselves to a higher standard. Look at the business cronies and crooks Bush packed into his cabinet, and how did republicans react to the left's accusations and complaints about these candidates? With dismissal and bitter outrage at having been questioned at all. I'm not saying that i support lower standards than Obama has set for himself, but i highly doubt that his more moderate (read: conservative) appointments, or the republicans he's putting on his cabinet (a third one this week) recieve the same level of scrutiny or criticism. The end result is going to be: a cabinet of ineffectual moderates or outright conservatives who are no more clean than dashale or geitner, but who just haven't been looked over as thoroughly.

On the stimulus package: not one republican in the house voted for it, and now it's gone through the senate, where (i haven't read the details yet) it's probably been stripped of half it's targeted programs and filled with tax breaks for the 'middle class' (ie the rich). Now, i'm no fan of stimulus packages, bailouts, and other programs designed to prop up a failing economic system. I'd like to see shock therepy, let the failing system fail, it'll be hell for a while, but the rebuilding will be actually much improved, it'll be a system and set of institutions based on present reality, not on historical precedent and obsolete theory (milton friedman). That option's not on the table, so let's look at what is: compare this package vs the opaque blank check for the financial industry that Bush passed. The democrats' package actually specifies where the free government money will go, and directs it toward sustainablity and growth programs that at that least attempt to reshape our economy into something that won't fail in exactly this same way next year.

Those republicans who supported the first but blocked the second have shown themselves as completely intellectually bankrupt, hopelessly partisan and unworthy of compromise. They clearly don't have a problem with wasting tax payer money, they supported the first bailout, so what do they have a problem with? The environment, urban children, artists, the lower class, liberals. They're so blinded by 20 years of bitter rhetoric against strawman versions of these people that somehow it seems they'd rather dump billions of our dollars into the huge sucking vacuum of crooked financial institutions than invest anything in our future.

There is no such thing as bipartisan compromise with people like this. Obama had a spine, he'd say so, he'd use his mandate and his bully pulpit to insist on getting his 100 days, and ram the plan down Wall Street and K Street's throats. But he doesn't, so he won't, and no "leftist" elected under the current system ever will. The problems with american politics are structural, and we're not going to get a new structure until we stop legitimizing the old one.

Stop voting.

Winsome Picks Feb 6th

2009-02-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Hi, i meant to post this yesterday, do it weekly, but i didn't get around to it (i'm desperately trying to book a tour, here, okay?).

First, i'd like to mention some things i witnessed that i didn't reccomend last Thursday...

The first experimental tuesdays at UWM- this was an excellent collection of experimental work in and about the arctic, not a stinker in the bunch and a few mind blowing amazing ones. Good stuff on Tuesdays at the union cinema, don't be missing it!

Handmade Nation - not that this needed help with promotion. the place was packed (as it should be!) The film woulda been more interesting had i not already seen the previews, the lecture and read the book. At anyrate, everyone should check out this film, or buy the book, or just go to some craft fairs. it's super exciting shit (in my opinion it's revolutionary) going on, and Faythe does a great job of documenting it.

Now for this week's picks... well, maybe i've been too busy booking a tour and vicariously attending the bullshit Kre8 summit, but it really doesn't look like there's a whole lot going on in this town this week.

Inova has an opening tonight.

There's a DIY for Domestic Abuse hardcore show at the Borg Ward tomorrow (also your last chance to see some great photography there)

I hear Fasten has something going on.

Is it just me or does the milwaukee art scene binge and purge? One week there's 5 different things happening all at once, next it's pretty dry. Maybe it's another thing i can blame on our alchoholism.

Anyway, go see whatever you can! if you know about something i don't, post it! This is not an excuse to stay home or spend the whole weekend in the fucking bar (not that most Milwuakeeans need a fucking excuse).

Winsome Picks

2009-01-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody.

Ima start doing weekly updates on interesting art stuff, since Mr. Schmartsy seems to have given up on doing so. These are the things i plan on doing in the next week or so.

1. The Dig at the BTC. Going tonight. Renaisance has done some of the best theatre I've seen in Milwaukee (but also some of the most mediocre). The Dig is a world premeir by a local playwright, too.

2. Visual Arts tour Saturday. If it was summer we'd be biking. Hoping to hit The Armoury, The Borg Ward, White Whale, Haggerty, Portrait Society, and the new Green Gallery East. It'll be like Gallery Night, without the bourgeois hordes.

3. Speaking of bourgeois hordes. The Rep has cheap tickets for anyone under 40, and they're doing a show that looks potentially interesting, and no, it's not the one about suburban purebred dogs.

That all i got planned for the next week. I'm looking forward to next month though. A rare treat in Milwaukee: Brecht by someone who at least claims to understand Brecht!

Tour Report: Bedlam!

2009-01-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

We returned triumphant to the even colder than here land of Minneapolis for a weekend of shows at The Bedlam Theatre. A great and wonderful experience. We performed with a short and exciting piece of "theatre of disruption" from Lamb Lays with Lion called The Little Skeleton That Could Not. This strange piece is open to many interpretations, often offensive, and quite confusing, which is to say: i loved it. I hope to bring them down to Milwaukee sometime in the near future, so i won't say more about my particular interpretation of the play. If things go according to plan, you'll have the chance to see it for yourself.

Another group we performed with who i hope comes to Milwaukee soon is To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie a great group of musicians whose songs combine ambient shoegaze with noise and psychedelic elements to create a compelling experience somewhere between a rock show and an experimental soundscape. They played with us all three times, along with their side project, Navy Wife. This is a straight-up noise two piece that builds layers of textured sound to immense complex compositions in a truly unique way. A couple of more conventional but highly capable rock bands wrapped up the night shows. Speeds the Name on Friday and The Wars of 1812 on Saturday. When these bands played kick ass music, Minneapolisites show up their Milwaukee counterparts by actually dancing, a lot, and un-self-consciously. It's too bad that Minneapolis exceeds Milwaukee in every way: including areas like coldness, distance from other major cities, and cost of living. It puts me in the position of being jealous, but unable to just move there.

The shows themselves went well. Friday night I felt anxious, first time performing for a couple weeks, but it went well. Saturday kicked ass, a large responsive audience, and energetic performances from all three of us. Sunday had the weird matinee feeling, but still at least 20 people came out, and we'd just eaten Bedlam's big delicious brunch, so there's no room for complaints. On saturday afternoon we had a sparsely attended, but interesting discussion of my Theory of Artist Revolution and Jeremy (of LLwL) Catterton's Theatre of Disruption.

Now for the transparency, we did three shows, audiences ranging from 60-20 people. We spent $126 on gas $10 on food, and $34 on a parking ticket (hurns). Made $36 on donation and merch sales and are awaiting an official check in the mail from Bedlam for our cut of the door. Will post that in a comment when it comes. Not that anyone is actually paying attention to this stuff.

Discussion at Bedlam

2009-01-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday i gave a presentation at Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis about my thoughts on art-as-revolution and theatre's role in that. Preparation for this presentation invovled first writing it out in long form, (cuz i'm a playwright, starting with writing a long monologue, somehow makes sense) then I condensing it to an outline and talked from that (so i wouldn't just be reading at people). At anyrate, this means i've got a rough essay-like document of what i said, which i will now post here for the reading pleasure of probably nobody but my own future self.

Bedlam Discussion

Our intention as a theatre company, or at least my intention as a theatre artist is to participate in and advance a revolutionary change of the global political economy, a change I've already observed in progress. Today I'm going to do four things.

1. Outline the change
2. Discuss theatre's role in that change
3. Explore how this intention impact the work we do.
4. Take questions. I plan on keeping the part where I'm talking at you relatively brief and general, then go more in depth about things based on what you seem interested in.

Objective 1: outlining the revolutionary change in the global political economy.

I need to start with Marx, since that's who I'm lifting most of my terminology from. Marx has been read many many many different ways, and I don't want to get bogged down in Marxist polemics, so I'm going to keep this as simple and concise as possible. There are two things about Marx, one is what he did right, and the other is what he got wrong.

First, Marx created a radically different and in many ways superior description of capitalism. He starts with the most basic abstract description of the relationship at the core of the capitalist system. From there he describes what happens in the aggregate, when that core relationship comes to dominate and define an entire economic system. This is where all kinds of wonderful concepts come from: exploitation, labor theory of value, commodity fetishism, worker alienation, the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Really beautiful stuff. Some of these concepts have proven more accurate or useful than others. I'd like to get into them all more thoroughly later.

The important thing is that Marx's predictions that in capitalism, the rich will grow richer and the poor more numerous, that these classes will be in conflict, and that this conflict can be seen at the root of all political conflict has been validated by history. His prediction that these trends will cause the entire system to collapse might be coming true now, with amendments to account for the unexpected craftiness of corporations, the power of advertising, and the alchemy of monetary and economic policy-making.

His prediction that this conflict and immanent collapse will result in the spontaneous mobilization of a class-conscious proletariat is where I think Marx went wrong. Some Marxists will defend his position on this. They'll say that historical examples like the USSR are a terrible misapplication of his theory, and they're right, but still, I think any approach that uses the dictatorship of the proletariat, or this kind of top-down-government-first revolution is doomed to follow a similar path.

The revolution has to start on an economic level. We need to develop a new more efficient mode of production, based on a different core economic relationship. Once we've done that, then we can let new classes, new political institutions and revolutionary actions grow naturally out of the conflict between this system and the dominant capitalist mode.

Marx considered this approach, but rejected it because he believed the ruling class wouldn't allow such a system to develop. He was unable to imagine a historical situation where something radically different can co-exist in competition with capitalism. There is a historical precedent for this though: the capitalist revolution.

Class antagonism in feudalism was between serfs and lords. The capitalist mode of production was developed by the merchant class, the bourgeoisie, who had a better way of doing things. They competed economically with and eventually politically defeated the lords, ushering in a new system. If we graph Marx's approach onto this historical situation, it the equivalent of serfs spontaneously rising up, taking the crown off the king and then designing a new society from that position. It's absurd. The proletariat can no more replace the bourgeoisie today than serfs could replace lords then, the revolution needs to come from a third class.

So, then the question is, how do we do it? How do we repeat the method of the capitalist revolution in order to replace capitalism itself? The answer is: we already are. If we look at art as a mode of production, a new "core economic relationship" then we can look at the "rise of the creative class" as the beginnings of a revolution. Punk Rockers, D I Y crafters, and independent musicians and filmmakers are building networks and institutions that function under a radically different sort of economy. As artists develop and improve these alternative approaches, we become a more powerful challenge to the capitalist world.

Capitalism responds, as Marx predicted, with all kinds of laws, barriers to entry, power grabs, bribes and attempts to co-opt the revolution even as it occurs. The creative class lives up to it's name, over the years we've worked our way around them all. Modern business practices, flex-time, profit sharing, informal work environments, and fake "independent" subsidiaries are all examples of businesses benefiting by adapting to and trying to imitate this radically different economy. Early capitalists were imitated, bribed and co-opted by the monarchy as well.

I predict that eventually, the growth of radical alternatives and the slow mutations of the establishment will result in an undeniably altered political economy. This is starting in the arts and entertainment sector, but it has the potential to transfer to other economic sectors.

Poll the audience: move on, or discuss?

Objective 2: Theatre's role in this

That last part, about innovations in the arts and entertainment sector transferring to other sectors of the economy is key. There is historical precedent for that as well. Capitalism beat feudalism because it was better at making wealth through the production and distribution of durable goods. Feudalism was all about agriculture. Capitalism rode the rise of commodities to the top, and then took over agriculture with great success and in the long term, disgusting catastrophic results like factory farms.

Revolutionary artists can do the same thing. The arts and entertainment sector of the economy has been growing faster than any other sector except for the military since the war started. Artists are better at making art than corporations, we can dominate this sector, ride it to the top, and then transfer our efficiencies to other sectors. This transfer has already started. Craft fairs are multiplying like little crocheted rabbits. Organic and community farming is growing rapidly, with results that are quite the opposite of disgustingly catastrophic.

So, lets look closer at the arts and entertainment sector of the economy, this thing we're gonna ride to the top. Different economic systems create different environments in which arts and culture themselves are manifested. Different mediums function differently under these changed circumstances. Painting and sculpture did well in the feudalism because the art economy there is based on patronage, art products are symbols of status. It's essential that they be one-of-a-kind, owned by some powerful figure and on public display, preferably larger than life. This kind of patronage continues to exist today, and it continues to fund visual arts. Under the patronage system performing arts were reshaped to fit the funding model. Theatre developed the proscenium stage, musicians assembled into symphonies. Everything was based on showing how big and glorious the art that the patron financed was.

Capitalism changed that. It created the age of mechanical reproduction, which as discussed by Walter Benjamin, greatly altered the way art is created and distributed. Within the capitalist world the art forms that best fit mass production do best. Photography, film, recorded music burst unto the scene and largely replaced everything that came before. They were easily commodified and mass produced. The biggest profits came from moving many small cheap identical replications, rather than a few unique expensive objects. This created a desert for theatre and live music, who hobbled along on the crutches of merch sales or the holdovers of patronage.

We're now entering a new system of reproduction. The age of virtual or digital reproduction is going to change the landscape just as drastically as the age of mechanical reproduction did. Now mass identical units can be created and distributed by anyone at almost no cost. This has three effects: 1. the evaporation of profit from mechanical reproduction, the RIAA will inevitably lose their war against piracy. 2. the democratization of these art forms, anyone can make the stuff, you don't need a record contract anymore. 3. a sea of mediocrity. If you've spent anytime on YouTube or myspace, you know what I'm talking about. A few diamonds in the rough, but also lots and lots of unremarkable shit.

If the profits of mechanical reproduction evaporate, then we're going to see far fewer successful big budget movies, or high profile bands. This is already happening, the logical conclusion is replacement of movies and TV with YouTube and myspace. Which means these mediums are going to drown in the sea of mediocrity, just like they starved theatre and live music during the age of mechanical reproduction.

So, if reproducible mediums become awash of mediocrity, what'll happen next? Consumer demands shift. People want something valuable, something remarkable. They can't find that in film or recorded music anymore. If they do, they don't have to pay for it, which means they can spend their money elsewhere. They'll want to spend it on an experience. And, that's what theatre can provide.

But, not theatre as it exists today. Theatre as it exists today is defined by the system of patronage that helped it hobble along for the last 100 years. It's mostly still stuck on proscenium stages, and full of snobbery, polish, and ornamental status symbols. It's a weak form, a dying art. Which means it's vulnerable. Which means the revolutionary core of the artist class can gain control of it. If theatre is now near the bottom of the ladder of art mediums, but has an opportunity to rise to the top of that ladder, and is vulnerable to an insurgency, then that insurgency can ride the rise of theatre to the top of the arts and entertainment sector of the economy, and then ride the arts and entertainment sector to the top of the economy in general. From there, we can take the efficiencies we've found and apply them to other forms of production.

Poll the audience: move on, or discuss?

Objective 3: how these intentions impact our performance technique.

So far I've been working under the assumption that "new" is better. That a post-capitalist mode of production will be an improvement. I don't want to give the impression that this is an unexamined assumption. I think the new mode of production will be like organic farming v factory farming. It will solve many of the problems created by capitalism. Most importantly, the new mode of production seems much less hardwired for gross and arbitrary inequality than the capitalist mode.

I can go more in-depth with this, but first I'd like to get through the part about how we produce and perform theatre. There are three parts of this, the organizational part, the context part, and the technique part.

The organization part is most important to me. It is essential that Insurgent Theatre be run by artists for artists. The large bureaucracies that mediate and dominate the theatre world are counter productive. The "artistic temperament" that says 'I am a creative soul! My genius cannot be encumbered by monetary of business concerns!' is equally counter productive. These set up a division of labor, a conflict of interests because the artist group and the admin group. This conflict naturally exists in any artistic endeavor, but dealing with it by making two groups of people exacerbates the problem, and privileges the admin group- who has the power of the purse, over the artist group. Mike Daisy's monologue "how theatre failed America" explores the negative effects that this division has had on theatre. I instead approach the creation and organization of Insurgent Theatre as an exciting creative challenge on par with any of our productions.

How it's organized: All profits from any production are shared equally by the people involved in the production. These profits are small. The people involved need to be motivated by the work as it's own reward. The shows are mounted with little or no budget. All advertising, design, promotion, and admin work are done either by the artists involved, or by volunteers.

We hold open auditions for most of our productions. Artists involved in one production are encouraged to take part in discussions of future productions. Decisions are made and tasks distributed by consensus and volunteering. In this way we've built a constantly evolving ensemble. People come and go, only 2 of us have been involved in every production.

Many aspects of this organization aren't radical at all. They're typical of many small theatre companies, they are the product of necessity as much as by choice. What I hope to do is to identify the virtues of this organization, the ways in which it is more efficient than other production methods, and focus on developing them in order to successfully compete with the increasingly corporate approach that big theatres take. One exciting aspect is the organization of labor. Our evolving ensemble is based on labor that is at once liquid, and empowered.

On context: this is also very important. Our versatility and low overhead allows us to produce theatre in non-traditional contexts, to connect with non-theatre audiences, often the exact demographic that traditional theatre's talk about needing to get in their seats. We were inspired to get even more ambitious with this and start touring when we met The Missoula Oblongata. Now we've performed Paint the Town in bars, basements, art centers, black boxes, a public park, an alley, and a dining room. We've performed with a wide variety of different musical acts: folk, noise, punk, metal, hiphop, experimental, pop, shoegaze, etc. Often the audiences don't know that they're coming to see a play, especially not a full length, text heavy, esoteric reference ridden one like this, and they are usually pleasantly surprised.

Organization and context are more important to me than content. What we do doesn't matter as much as how we do it. But, the more we develop the organization and push the context, the more the content reflects these processes. At least in the projects I write or spearhead.

What I'm trying to do is continue the experiments that Bertolt Brecht pursued. Creating a critically engaged audience that makes decisions and isn't merely inspired to act, but is forced to take a side in an argument and let that argument shape their life. Many of the techniques we employ come from Brecht, Grotowski, Peter Brook, and others, with our own interpretations, and punk-rock conventions. Most of us are self-taught, researching these things on our own, and those of us who have formal training, it was mostly in a much more traditional direction.

Perform for intimate audiences.
Perform on the same level as the audience seating.
Lights and tech operated by the actors themselves.
Direct address to audience.
Actively involving the audience.
Reciting stage directions while performing them.
Brechtian "distanced" acting methods
Actors prepare in the open, and mingle with the audience before performing.
Setting up the scene on stage after the show has begun
Disregard for dramatic suspense.
Presenting audience with naked exposition
Presenting images as symbolic puzzles for the audience to solve.
Most importantly: stories that serve as little more than a vehicle for an ideological argument which remains unresolved on the stage.

Cultural Alliance Invitation

2009-01-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back i worked myself up into one of my spastic little tizzies about a local art organization in Milwaukee (the cultural alliance). Apparently this outbusrt was articulate enough to get the attention of someone other than anonymous posters armed with childish insults, though I did get some of that too.

Anyway, seems like some interesting discussions followed, publically and privately. My conclusion is that there's a viscious cycle in the Milwaukee community (and probably most American communities) where big well funded arts organizations overlook many committed valuable artists, then the artists get bitter and defeated, start drinking and stop producing much art, then the big orgs see this and feel justified in continuing to ignore artists, which bolsters the artist's victimization complex and alchoholism, which feeds back into the big arts organizations isolation, etc. etc. It's a mutually reinforcing cycle of useless shittyness.

People have tried to break this cycle (most notably Mike Brenner and the other founders of MARN, but also so many others). Unfortunately, these people get sucked into the cycle, or get burned out fighting against it. If we're going to ever defeat this cycle, anyone who wants Milwaukee to be a thriving, growing art community needs to jump at whatever opportunities come about that might break a crack in it.

One such opportunity is fast approaching. The GMC, Cultural Alliance and UWM are holding a "Cultural NonProfit Forum on Creative Community" later this month. Perhaps inspired by some of the above mentioned discussions, this is an attempt to open February's "Creative Summit" to a broader selection of voices, including yours. I met with Christine Harris last week and I beleive that at least she is genuinely interested in getting representatives of all parts of the Milwaukee creative community at the table for this Summit. The dumb assholes who think Milwaukee's problems will be solved by simply eliminating the bottom third of all arts orgs will be at the summit. If the bottom third doesn't show up at this Forum cuz we're too depressed, or lazy, or hung over, then there's not going to be anyone at the Summit to counter that argument.

Here's the details, sign up ASAP! Be there! I hear there will also be one the day after (27th) in the evening, for those of us who have day jobs and use up all our vacation time touring the D I Y punk circuit. Go to one of these forums, if you don't, then the terrorists- i mean... the corporate art beaurocrats win!

THE INVITATION

On behalf of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee and the UWM Center for Urban Initiatives and Research, you are invited to participate in a dialogue with other nonprofit cultural leaders about the future of the creative community in southeastern Wisconsin.

Monday, January 26, 2009
7:45 registration
8:15AM – 11:45AM session
Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago St.
Free

This dialogue is designed as an open Forum in anticipation of the Greater Milwaukee Committee's Creative Summit, which will be held in early February, 2009. The purpose of the GMC's Creative Summit is to outline a vision for our region's creative community across the nonprofit and for-profit sectors of the economy, along with creating a roadmap to guide the way. The GMC Summit is intended to initiate a dedicated and community-wide process of fostering a stronger creative region. Invitations to the Summit will be going out from the GMC in early January. For more information on the background for the Summit, please read the GMC's Cultural Asset Inventory of the Milwaukee 7 Region as reported by the Cultural Alliance at www.gmconline.org.

The Forum will be open to the first 120 registrants who can attend the entire event. The purpose of the Forum is to ensure that those participating in the Creative Summit will have a richer and deeper understanding of the unique and powerful contributions of the nonprofit cultural arts community in a broader creative economy. The input gathered in this Forum will be directly utilized by the Summit gathering. After a brief introduction to the Summit process, Forum participants will engage in roundtable discussions around a selected list of questions along with general discussion. All information gathered at the Forum will be attributed anonymously, and will be collated for distribution at the Summit.

Please Note: This invitation is intended for the recipient only. If you cannot attend and have a strong recommendation on who should take your place, please contact the Cultural Alliance at dlubotsky@culturalalliancemke.org.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Thanks for the work you do in serving our community.

Christine

Tour Report: Down South Tour

2009-01-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

Insurgent Theatre! The triumphal return!!

General impression of last weeks tour: IT WORKS! Taking a full length, intense, esoteric reference ridden, unpolished, original work of theatre, with a mostly self-taught cast, a full set and a few totally unorthodox flourishes that can make a real mess of a venue on the road WORKS! The more we do this, the better we get at it, the more contacts and skills we build. Now we’ve just got to find day jobs flexible enough to allow us to do this more, until we get good enough at it that we can make it completely economically sustainable. See more pictures here.

I’m increasingly convinced that grants and foundations whose mission is to “promote, advocate and revitalize” the “dying art” of theatre aren’t ever going to understand or support us, even though over the last week we’ve performed for at least a couple hundred people across this country who’ve probably never chosen to see theatre in their adult lives. Young people. People who the theatre world DESPERATELY needs in their seats.

Oh well, the big theatres can have their dying art, we’re building something else, and at this rate, I think we might be able to get it running sustainably before that corpse the bourgeois theatre institutions coddle, embalm and display rots too much more.

I could write about many great and exciting anecdotes, good times and tour stories: tales of wonderful people, great musicians, swims in the ocean, Katrina damaged punk squats, New Years Eve dance parties, dumb entertainments invented on the long drives, satanic noise acts, naked people getting arrested, thrash jazz, grandmothers with dementia, long debates and revolutionary discussions. All kinds of fun stuff happened on this tour. This blog isn’t about that, though. It’s not a story, it’s a lesson! It’s about transparency, about exposing the methods of our magic and spreading the word on how punk rock theatre tours can be Done Yourself. Think of it as a miniature, ongoing “Our Band Could Be Your Life” for theatre geeks.

First, and most important is show booking. Having a good contact in the city who is excited to have you coming to town is the single most important thing about taking anything on the road. These contacts are the backbone of D I Y touring, they are amazing and wonderful people. The best way to have a good contact is to develop a relationship with them. The best shows we had were set up by contacts who had seen the show before, knew someone who had seen the show before, or even who just agreed with my side of some strange online debate about the definition of words like “noise” “revolution” and “punk rock”. Now, this isn’t always possible, especially when going new places, and even the best contacts are often incredibly busy people, who aren’t getting anything out of it other than the opportunity to share shows with their community and the promise of reciprocation should they or their friends ever come through Milwaukee with something. Good contacts are so wonderful and remarkable, that you can’t really expect people to do it, and you can’t really get upset when things don’t come together as well as everyone would like, or even if a show falls through all together. It’s frustrating, and sometimes bad contacts seem like they’re just plain flakey, but getting bent out of shape about it is pretty unjustifiable. Taking a show on the road like this is a risk, a series of risks, risks that only small, tight, no-budget, dirty, versatile, committed, theatre companies like ours can afford to take.

Fortunately, last week, all these risks paid off- sometimes amazingly, every night.

For each date I am going to summarize the relevant inputs and outputs (to the best of my memory) and share any tips and tricks we discovered. We spent money on gas, some food, tolls, and a few miscellaneous things. Attendance numbers are approximated and from memory. Peter probably kept better mental track and I expect him to correct me, he is the minister of numbers after all. Also, audiences vary over the course of a performance. It’s a pretty long play, with two intermissions, and music acts in between. We don’t believe in captive audiences and sometimes people had to leave. Sometimes they didn’t like the play and chose to leave.

So, attendance numbers listed are PEAK for the largest group watching at one time and CORE for the number who watched the whole show through. If this distinction isn’t made, it’s because the whole audience watched the whole show.

Income we kept tighter track of. It’s broke down between DOOR, DONATION and MERCH. The DOOR money is stuff collected by the venue or the booking contact, admission was often “suggested donation” but sometimes the venues charged rental or fees and admission (always less than $10) was sometimes more strictly enforced. I hope we didn’t turn anyone away. DONATION is additional money that audience members gave us by hand, usually after the show was over. MERCH is scripts, essays, and T-shirts sold.

Okay, here it is:

TOTALS:
Gas: $305.30
Food: $150.40
Tolls: $12
Misc: $10
Total Expense: $477.70

Door: $457
Donation: $122
Merch: $51
Total: $630

Balance: +$153.3

Sunday Dec 28th - Independent Media Center, Urbana, IL. 8pm.
Audience: 8-12 Door: $18 Merch $5 Drive: 4 hours
This is an example of needing to be versatile. We had a show booked in Carbondale for this date, and it fell through, we scrambled to re-schedule, thinking that any show would be better than nothing, if for no reason other than to break up the drive to Atlanta. We got a hold of Mark at the Urbana IMC (thanks to the Nonsense Company) and set this up on very short notice, right before the holidays. Then Mark got the flu. But, he still brought a good handful of very engaged people who hung around to talk about the play and political action, and theatre, for a good long time afterward. I have no idea how long because my sense of time goes out the window once the show starts.

Mark put us up, and we’re making plans to hit Urbana again, with more notice, when all the students (it’s a college town) aren’t out on winter break. We left for Atlanta at about 6 in the morning.

Monday Dec 29th - The Eye Drum, Atlanta, GA. with: Offerings and 09A.
Audience: 20-25 peak / 10-15 core Door: $26 Donation: $40 Merch: $0 Drive: 9.5 hours
Monday nights are always the worst nights on tours, if you can get something set up, you're lucky, if anyone comes out to see a show, you're even luckier. We got plenty lucky in Atlanta. The Eyedrum is an amazing space. It’s like the Borg Ward on steroids. Big gallery, huge PA, 501c3 status, projects with funding, lots of volunteers, all really cool people. We played with good musicians: distorted sad bastard music and satanic power electronics. An excited energetic audience of mainly noise folks came out. There were some nice (and some kinda shoddy) comics-inspired paintings in the gallery. I wonder what this show woulda been like later in the week.

We were invited by a young man in the audience to crash at a foreclosed condo/townhouse belonging to a former art gallery owner who was selling all his possessions and playing internet poker when we left in the morning.

Tuesday Dec 30th - Cafe 11, St Ausgustine, FL. With a TON of bands.
Audience: 75 peak / 20 core. Door: $80 Donation: $9 Merch: $10 Drive: 6 hours
When looking for venues for the tour on a noise message board, this guy Travis, who participated in the abovementioned internet debates, said he’d try to make it out to a show in Atlanta or Birmingham. I asked him where he’d be coming from, cuz maybe we could bring the show to him. He said St Augustine, Florida. St Augustine is further east than we’d plan on going, but if this guy was thinking about traveling 6 hours to see our show, we wagered he’d be pretty enthusiastic about us coming to him instead, and he was. He set up a great show: a great venue, (beachfront café) something like 8 very eclectic acts (some of whom were a bit ‘providence’ for my taste, but others totally kicked ass!). I guess there’s this weird curfew on the island Café 11 is located on, and one of the bands had an epically long sound check, so for a little while we were worried that everything wouldn’t fit in, and much of the audience was from Jacksonville so attendance dropped off as the night wore on. But we made it through and everything ended well. We started the third act of the play before the band preceding it had cleared their gear off the stage, and slammed through in record time, then asked the audience to help us strike the set. That’s audience participation!

We left St Augustine directly after the show to drive through the night to New Orleans. I wish we coulda spent more time with the Floridians, but the night driving turned out to be a very good idea. We got to New Orleans with enough time to nap on couches in the venue and be well rested for the performance.

Wednesday Dec 31th – Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Art Center, New Orleans, LA. With Self Help Tapes, Evolve, and Illusion Fields.
Audience: 80 peak / 65 core. Door: $107 Donation: $10 Merch: $1 Drive: 9 hours
This was a personal highlight for me, so please forgive a little gushing here. Our amazing Nola contact was Simon Severe. She had seen us perform Paint at the Borg Ward when Realicide, the hardcore noise punk band she was traveling with played with our homecoming show after the summer tour. Being a radical who has spent at least the last few years living in conditions not completely dissimilar to the characters in our play, Simon loved the show and invited us to come down to her home town. She works a regular job, volunteers at the Nola infoshop and anarchist library, and runs a books for prisoners program. She doesn’t normally set up shows, but for us, she found the time, and did an amazing job.

First, she hooked us up with a perfect venue. Zeitgeist hosts events at the intersection of art and activism almost nightly. They helped Simon promote, discussed tech and theatre theory with me and even read the script before we got down there. Second, Simon set up some great bands, inspiring hip hop, complex ambient/experimental, and a beautiful jazz / spoken word / film group. These elements together brought out a large enthusiastic crowd, who mostly stayed through the entire show. We were worried that we’d be competing with lots of New Years activities, but apparently the citizens of New Orleans are willing to sacrifice some party time for experimental political theatre.

This was perhaps the best performance we have ever done. No slip ups and tons of good energy to feed off of. We took New Years Day off, and wrapped the show up early enough that we were still able to go out and have some New Years fun ourselves. Saw a huge bonfire, went to a party for the Nola chapter of the Black Label Bike Collective at a small, dirty, hedonistic club with just the right space-to-dancer ratio. We danced for an hour or so with half-dressed and cross-dressed revelers, many of whom kept coming up an telling us that we’re amazing and they really love what we do. At first it took us a few seconds to realize that they had been at the show and weren’t just complimenting our dance moves. Then the sleazy hip hop got a bit dull so Kate and I went to the van and busted out the Lucky and Pozzo gear and performed for the drunks outside the club who were (perhaps fortunately) mostly too poor or too intoxicated to request many actions.

That night and the next we slept at Simon’s place, a huge punk space called Nowe Miastro with all the amenities: brownwater sink, dumpstered pizza, D I Y utilities, and rooftop access. After a relaxing New Years day of hanging out in New Orleans and doing laundry at John’s relatives’ house and another night at Nowe Miastro, we hit the road for Birmingham.

Friday Jan 2nd – Green Cup Books, Birmingham AL.
Audience: 20. Door: $60 Donation: $63 Merch: $20 Drive: 5 hours
This was definitely our worst performance of the tour. We should’ve run through the show on our day off, or at least in the car, cuz we fucked up and felt flat as hell. Also, we realized halfway through the first narration that we left a pillow and blanket used as props (and as bedding) back in Nola. Peter ran down to the car and got some of our sleeping gear to use as a substitute. Everything was thrown off and goofy after that, but the audience was really into it anyway and hung out to chat afterward. Green Cup is another amazing space, an anarchist bookstore with a performance space for punk bands and poetry readings up above. Mike, the proprietor of the store is a playwright and theatre person with few opportunities to do or even see anything but big musicals in Birmingham, so he was excited to see us come through. We talked about all kinds of great stuff. We’ll definitely be keeping in touch and hitting this place again.

But, we had the longest drive of the tour ahead of us, and we decided to repeat the success of the St Augustine to New Orleans night drive. Left Birmingham just after midnight, I think.

Saturday Jan 3rd – Robindale Concert House, Toledo, OH. With Dr Rhomboid Goatcabin
Audience: 45 peak / 40 core. Door/Donation: $115 Merch: $15 Drive: 10.5 hours
So, there’s this crazy guy named Gabe in Toledo, OH. He’s a musician, works at a record store, has a silk screen press in his house, and hosts noise artists and other performers in the middle of his nice clean dining room, right next to the mantelpiece. He lets filthy travelers, who’ve been sleeping god knows where and might not have showered for a week crash at his house. In real beds! He provides snacks at the show, and is just plain all around awesome. He saved us from a complete loss of our Nashville show and set this great show up just a few days before we left Milwaukee. He’s coming here in a couple weeks, performing with a group called KBD (I think) at the Borg Ward on the 17th. GO THERE AND SUPPORT HIM! I’ll be performing up in Minneapolis, so I’ll miss it, but it promises to be a good show, it’s Nummy’s birthday.

Performing Paint the Town in this place was weird. The set was a really tight fit, but it worked out and the crowd was GREAT, lots of young intellectuals who stayed up discussing themes of the play with me until almost 4 in the morning. A really great time, almost makes me feel, y’know, important. Also, we played with I think, my favorite musical act of the tour: Dr Rhomboid Goatcabin. Really innovative use of noise equipment, nice dynamics, and a crackpot kitchen sink spiritualist aesthetic that verged on the much hated ‘providence’ look, but escapes it. The reason I hate the providence aesthetic is because these people are half-assing something that if they did it right, I would LOVE. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what I mean by “do it right” the line between success and failure is very hard to discern or articulate due to the clouds of ambiguity and irony employed. The Butterfly Kiss Effect up at MN Fringe succeeded. Eagle Ager succeeds. Buoyant Sea failed. Baltimore mostly succeeds. Providence fails utterly. Some of the Darling Hall and Green Gallery stuff succeeds, but some of it fails. Alejandro Jodorowski blows em all out of the water.

Anyway, we slept in real beds at Gabe’s for a couple hours in the afternoon before the show, and for a couple hours afterward. Then drove home to Milwaukee. We left a second pillow and blanket pair (the last of our sleep gear, cuz Peter and John forgot to bring anything from Milwaukee in the first place) behind. Fortunately, we could get replacements from home before the Stonefly show.

Sunday Jan 4th – Stonefly Brewing Company, Milwaukee, WI. With Fahri and White Wrench Conservatory
Audience: 130 peak / 80 core. Door: $51 Donation: $0 Merch: $0 Drive: 5.5 hours
After a harrowing summer of abysmal audience attendance in our hometown, the fact that we have to pay Stonefly to have a soundman and door guy, and that we’d be out of town and couldn’t very well promote ourselves had me honestly quite skeptical about this show. But Milwaukee really came through for us, in spades! It made me significantly less bitter about living here. I’m very unsure about the high numbers listed above, too distracted to get a good look at the crowd, but Stonefly was quite full. After only a few minutes of shouting over some conversation and background noise (it’s a bar, people are used to performers having a lot of amplification) we had this large group of people watching silently and attentively. It felt strange performing for familiar faces, and John and I both feel like we were pretty flat. No big mistakes, but just not feeling it right energy-wise. But Kate looked great. Her performance in the last few scenes at this show was, I think, her best.

The bands kicked ass, the staff kicked ass, the audience kicked ass. Maybe we’ve just been performing in the wrong places in Milwaukee. Our Borg Ward show in August was also a decent turn out, but I’ve mostly attributed that to Realicide, who has quite a following. It’s really too bad we can’t get more of these people to go to the Alchemist, or more theatre people to come out to these non-traditional venues. I didn’t get a sense that many theatre people were coming to any shows we’ve put on anywhere in the country, though. Seems a large majority of the theatre world won't dare leave the hall of mirrors they live and work in. Oh well, looks like we don’t need em anyway.

In two weeks we perform at Bedlam, who are a great example of theatre artists who don't sequester themselves in the theatre world. This will be our first show returning to an out of town venue we've already performed in, with our reputation preceeding us. Also, we're playing with Lamb Lays with Lion, who saw one of our rehearsals. With these contacts, i'm figuring we don't need anyone to wish us luck up there, but, do it anyway!

Handmade Nation

2008-12-13T05:58:00.000-08:00

Faythe Levine of Paper Boat Gallery has put togehter a book and documentary film that wonderfully introduces readers and viewers to the D I Y craft scene. The film isn't out yet, but the previews look great. I got myself a copy of the book and thoroughly enjoy it.

This book is really wonderful cuz the authors (Cortney Heimerl co-authors the book) leave the makers to speak for themselves. It offers glimpses into the variety of motives, methods and mediums being explored in this movement, as well as a handful of informative essays from various participants. There's also a great timeline that visually outlines the rapid growth of the "new wave of craft".

What this book might mean for the theory of "artist's revolution" i am attempting to develop:

1. Art vs Craft - The ideas and actions contained in this book indicate a new relationship between the individual 'maker' and the art world. Many of the interviewed subjects come from an art school background, often with regrets. These people are often hesitant to call themselves artists and almost uniformly skeptical of "fine art" and all it's institutional trappings. The fact that they've abandoned the word "artist" and replaced it with "crafter" or even "maker" amplifies my suspicion that the word "art" must be either eschewed or carefully redefined for use in my theory.

2. Economics of Craft - There is a hole in my theory. A major peice of my argument is that the growing arts and entertainment sector (especially experience based mediums) will empower the radical creative class in the same way that the growing importance of commodities empowered the early bourgeoisie. That this empowered creative class will usher in a new mode of production on the wave of A+E demand in the same way that the bourgeoisie ushered in capitalism on the wave of commodity exchange.

The hole in this theory comes from the difficulty of seeing how musicians and theatre producers might create innovative modes of production of find efficiencies that can transfer to other sectors in the same way the capitalism transferred from commodities to agriculture (feudalism's strong suit). How is what's going on today in the punk rock scene going to change the way that my kitchen utensils my meals, or my car are produced? In terms of agriculture, food coops and the rise of organic farming offer some support, but what about commodities?

Well, the craft movement isn't making cars, or flatware, but they are making clothes and various other utilitarian objects using something like the modes of production and exchange that started becoming popular in the punk rock and indie music scenes. I still think the new mode of production will be most thoroughly developed in mediums of live performance first, and then transfer to other areas, but when it does, Handmade Nation indicates that there's an army of people already trying to stitch a patch over this hole in the theory.

3. Craftivism - many makers are overt with their political motivations, and this has potential to bolster the poltical aspect of the revolution more than traditional political action. The medium is the message. A theatre peice, a painting or a song about sweatshop labor can't make a statement anywhere near as clear and complete as the maker who hand sews an alternative to the sweatshop product.

4. Technology and craft - the new wave of craft is held together by internet connections. Websites, message boards, emails, online shops, all establish the initial network (and generate many of the sales) that lay the groundwork for the huge explosion of craft starting in the late 90s. This is a wonderful example of creative people using the internet the right way: to coordinate and dissiminate real world physical objects. The internet as a platform or medium for content (you tube, video games, online stories, webcomix, and especially social networking sites like myspace) can only provide distractions, estrangement, and highly mediated entertainment or information. The internet as organizational tool to connect people trying to build something in real life, is immense and revolutionary.

5. The Church of Craft- I often neglect the "spiritual" component of a revolutionary change. I have huge problems with the terms used to talk about this level of human experience. But i have to admit that it is important. If the protestant work ethic and the capitalist mode of production were mutually reinforcing developments that helped birth capitalism, then the "artist revolution" needs it's own mutually reinforcing spiritual component. There are many examples and articulations of this kind of thing, but Handmade Nation includes an essay by Callie Janoff, founder of "The Church of Craft" which is a full blown religious institution that meets regularly, builds things together, and even officiates crafty weddings. There is no doctrine, no moral code, just people who feel the most divine when they're creating something.

TOLD: Storytelling at the Borg Ward

2008-12-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

I told a story at FTAM's first (of many, hopefully) storytelling nights. It was a very good time. A video of my story (missing the first minute or so) is up here.

But, if you'd rather read it, i wrote it down too, here:

I’m going to tell the story of one of my greatest accomplishments. Something that I call a “complete experience”. It happened summer of 2007, the best summer of my life. That summer was full of experiences that approach completeness. It was the summer of Play in a Day 2, the summer of Made in the Mouth, the summer I met Kate, and the summer of magical Sundays which almost every week started with fambly breakfasts, moved to a Frisbee field and ended with theatre workshop. But, most relevant to this story: it was the summer we did a lot of Lucky and Pozzo.

A “complete experience” is a phrase I made up while laying post coital in bed and discussing JP Sartre’s Nausea. Great pillow talk, I know. This book is one of few things I consider the closest I’ll ever get to a “sacred text”. You can keep your holy books, your ancient traditions and your afterlives. If your belief system doesn’t have a futile gut wrenching disgust with your own existence at its very core, then you might as well worship by sucking on a big ole gold leaf pacifier, far as I’m concerned.

Another text pessimistic enough to approach sacrament for me is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It’s a play about people waiting for a lord and master who never shows. Lucky and Pozzo are a couple or pitiful side characters in this play, who seem even more senseless than the waiting protagonists. Pozzo is the decrepit remains of an arrogant aristocrat and Lucky is his half-dead indentured servant. They travel the countryside, Lucky on a noose at the end of a rope carrying all Pozzo’s worldly goods. They occasionally encounter the main characters, hijinx ensue. So, when I say we “did Lucky and Pozzo a lot that summer” I mean we dressed up as them and wandered the streets of Milwaukee.

For you to understand why we do this (or at least why I do) you’ve got to understand what a “complete experience” is. Which means I’ve gotta talk about Sartre some more. We start with the assumption that there is no meaning or purpose in life, that Godot will never fucking show up. Which is to say that all systems or ideas that require belief are a lie. God, spirituality, love, existence, everything: a big steaming pile of holy horse shit that we bury ourselves in like a security blanket to feel comfortable and ignore the fact that we are actually miserable lousy failures every one of us. Now Sartre says that even atheists, people with the full knowledge of futility and meaninglessness, even those of us who can smell the stink of our own bullshit, we still choose to act like our lives are predetermined, like we are objects and aren’t obviously free to do and be anything we want all the time. We keep waiting even after we know waiting is fruitless. He calls this Bad Faith.

This brings up an interesting thing about Lucky and Pozzo, something I hadn’t thought of until putting this story together. How Lucky and Pozzo works: I’m Pozzo, Peter’s Lucky (put noose on, perform) anything you want, ANYTHING. And see, I now realize that at this point in the Lucky and Pozzo gimmick, what we are doing is denying Bad Faith. We’ve given people absolute assurances that Lucky can breathe fire, levitate, leap over tall buildings, sing songs he’s never heard before and do backflips, lots of fucking backflips. Of course the results are mostly disappointing, but for a second there we offer a random stranger the whole fucking world for one dollar.

But anyway, back to Sartre: in Nausea he explores a couple examples of ways that even atheists will practice bad faith: adventures and perfect moments. An adventure is when you invoke an energetic euphoric approach to some otherwise unremarkable set of activities. You go out, you take a walk, but you imagine that it's special. You make yourself feel like you're in love with something. This, like any love amounts to suspending your agency, to not being responsible for your actions, and in a way, escaping yourself. You become an object, a pinball, bouncing willy-nilly through the night. Drugs and alcohol often assist.

You all know what i'm talking about?

Perfect moments on the other hand, are an almost opposite thing. Here you create a specific situation and insist that everything in that situation goes perfectly. When one little thing is misplaced or poorly timed, when some insensitive slob comes through and clumsily insults your careful arrangement, the perfection is lost forever. You've done this too, right?

So anyway, I'm in bed with Kate, I don't remember exactly when, maybe even on the first night we spent together, which followed the first time Kate played Lucky to my Pozzo, and I'm talking about how she seems to be an adventurer, whereas my past relationships tended to prefer perfect moments, with me playing the insensitive slob. She asks me the obvious question: what is my bad faith? If all belief systems, ideals, relationships, drug use, nostalgia and even things like adventures and perfect moments are bad faith then so is everything else. You can’t escape it and life is really just about choosing which bad faith you'll pitifully submerge yourself into. That night, I realized that my bad faith of choice is "complete experiences".

Lucky and Pozzo is a fine example of organizing the possibility of a complete experience. There is the potential for this one act to simultaneously advance me toward my goals on every dynamic variable, this is what makes an experience complete. Financially, artistically, philosophically, physically, mentally, politically, socially, the action moves all things forward and none back. Lucky and Pozzo encounters strangers with the unexpected and absurd while also earning some DIY money, challenging myself body and mind, meeting people and promoting insurgent theatre, which exists not only to create theatre, but more importantly to participate in the way DIY approaches are reshaping our society. I can go on about that forever, but I don't need to, cuz now I'm finally ready to tell you the story of my most complete experience.

It was Ian Clark's first time playing Pozzo, I was Lucky. In the first ten minutes we met someone who I consider one of Milwaukee's greatest cultural assets, someone who I really respect and who for various reasons will likely achieve my goals better than I ever will, without even trying. Faythe Levine. This was the first time I'd met Faythe, and well... unfortunately, she was kicking us out of Art vs Craft.

See, Pozzo doesn't need permission for anything! Lucky and Pozzo never ask permission, we'd been kicked out of MAM, and been surprisingly tolerated at Vogel Hall, and we’ve had various other experiences at various other art institutions. Besides, Lucky is a master of the performing arts, surely Art stands no chance against craft without his support! Or so we figgered.

As it turns out, Faythe didn't think letting us in would be fair to her fee paying vendors, Ian was too green to plead our case, and I was mute at the end of the rope. We were out on the curb before performing a single stunt for a single dollar. They did give us our admission money back though. We went back to the east side, hit Brady Street, and then made our way up Farwell. I don't remember many of the stunts we pulled, but I do remember feeling pretty good in spite of the set back, which leads to the climax of the story.

We're outside the Oriental theatre and this young couple, late high school / early college age I'd guess, are getting out a dollar for Pozzo and the girl, she asks: "will he hang himself from that stop light?" I'm Lucky, so on auto pilot. I'm not there, a bad faith object. Lucky sighs and walks over to the stop light, stands on the crate, tosses the end of the rope over the metal bar, grabs the other end and kicks the crate out from under me. I don't pause to think about how in most hangings it's the snap of the neck in the rope, not the strangulation that kills. Luckily the fact that I'm holding the other end of the rope means some of my weight is distributed to the arm, and the initial shock is reduced. But, I'm there, hanging. A few seconds later I realize that I can't breathe and that my throat's really beginning to hurt. I let go of the end of the rope, which slips loose and I hit the ground.

The girl who requested this action was horrified, her boyfriend was puzzled, even Ian was standing agape as I wedged my fingers into the rope so I could get a breath. She was a kind of heavy set young woman with an eccentric sort of arrested development fashion sense. bright clashing colors, lots of pins, and I seem to remember stuffed animal parts sewn onto her hoodie somehow, maybe even barrettes. She started to cry and asked Ian if she could hug me. He didn't charger her another dollar. I assured her I was okay and walked away massaging my layrnx and talking with a frog in my throat for a week.

The greatest thing about Lucky and Pozzo is that when we open up any possibility, when we offer the opportunity to see someone do anything you want, you put a little bit of yourself out there when you respond. Lucky performs, and sometimes you get yourself reflected back at you. You get what you want. I can't think of another work of art that I've done where I get to show someone something so powerful. This girl walked away knowing something that she didn't before. She realized, in a deep and true way, that sometimes at least, her first impulse on meeting a stranger is to want to see them dead.

The Art Community as an Immanent Shipwreck.

2008-11-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

Jon Mueller, an amazing musician and very positive voice for the arts and innovative businesses in this city recently held an economic group therepy session for artists and small businesses. I was unable to attend, due to rehearsals, but he sent out an email with a PDF by Diane E. Ragsdale, called Surviving the Culture Change (google it). This has a lot of good advice for big non-profit arts organizations, even some things that i can use. It also had this anecdote:

"About 3 years ago, I attended a retreat with leaders of a dozen orchestras, at which one lamented, likely reflecting the sentiments of more than a few in the room, "I feel like I'm the Captain of the Titanic, and there's an iceberg ahead, but rather than being on top steering the ship I'm in the bowels shoving coal in the furnace. I'm afraid if I stop shoveling coal we'll run out of steam, but I know
that if I don't start steering the ship soon we're going to hit an iceberg."

I like this metaphor, it seems appropriate. If the art community (either locally or nationally) is the Titanic with these people at the helm, then i think it's too late to dodge the iceberg without breaking the ship to peices anyway. So, I'm up on the deck building a lifeboat, or maybe even a pirate ship, to come pick through the ruins after the crash. I'm also shouting at the crew of the ship to stop following the captain's commands and help build lifeboats with me.

This puts me in a weird place. For example, I'm one of the only people willing to publically mouth off at the Cultural Alliance (read my last post and the comments) because I don't want their money. Mary Louise Schumacher, and Jonathan West are trying desperately to get other artists who might have more of a stake in the Cultural Alliance's offerings to join the conversation, and so are even the folks at the CA and the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

Unfortunately, most of those artists are hangin out in bar getting shitfaced most nights cuz they've already given up. If you want to prove me wrong, Milwaukee artists, if you're not just a bunch of lazy drunken whiners, READ THE REPORT HERE NOW watch the videos on GMC's site, and comment! Join the fucking conversation, even if it's just to throw verbal stones at the out-of-touch sycophants.

This is really frustrating, i think the elitist attitudes of the funders and the funding orgs have reinforced the defeatist attitudes of the small artists, which then reinforce the elitist attitudes of the funders. It's going to take a long time and a lot of work to break that mutually reinforcing system up, work that should've been started years ago, before the artists gave up.

I'd like to take an active role in this, watch all the CA videos, and read all the commentary and blog posts, rant for days on end, even though i suspect very few people are listening, but I'm aweful busy over here building my lifeboat, and i'm pretty sure this lifeboat is going to carry me out of Milwaukee (i know, i know, i've heard it before: "good riddance, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out"). At any rate, if i don't get to work booking and promoting the winter tour, my lifeboat will never be seaworthy.

Milwaukee Cultural Alliance

2008-11-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

I think the Milwaukee Cultural Alliance is a prime example of why Milwaukee will fail to become a genuine "Art City".

Jonathan West's discussion of this topic got me interested. To summarize: it seems that donors are giving money to the cultural alliance, who are doing nothing with it ("The Cultural Alliance folks talked about how in their initial impact as an organization could be characterized as inert.") Then the donors aren't giving to other more active artist-led groups like MARN, leading to Mike Brenner's great frustration and eventual "retirement".

This creates an environment of inaccessibility for new artists and organizations. New groups or individuals are unlikely to connect with a viable support structure when The Alliance has a monopoly on what is considered "legitimate professional art". If the Cultural Alliance groups were making art, this wouldn't be such a problem, but what they produce is generally more of a bourgeois status symbol than a meaningful artistic expression, a mirror for our society, or a currently relevant cultural object or experience.

That these groups are the only ones getting funding leads me (and others) to believe that the donor base in Milwaukee do not actually support or beleive in art, they only want to look like they do. As a result, the big organizations live in a very inefficient closed loop, where donors give them the money needed to maintain the appearance of legitimacy, they waste most of the money on administration and fancy new buildings and occasionally squirt out incredibly safe inoffensive art. It's like a feedback loop for crap, and the press dutifully plays their part.

When a city has this sort of self-perpetuating deadly arrangement sitting on top of its art scene, that city's audience, talent, and entire art community are negatively impacted. This kind of feedback loop for crap reinforces the anti-art mentality in audiences, who then reject all art or any cultural event because they associate it with the snobbishness that accompanies bourgeois status symbols. It stunts the growth of new art organizations who are unable to access support from philanthopists because they've already given to do-nothings. It also encourages artists to leave Milwaukee in droves, and those who stay, stay with very limited expectations, and with a tendency to spend more time drinking than art-making. Which drives me crazy.

I need to point out that I'm not whining here. I know that the responsibility for fixing this problem is mine, Mike's and everyone else's in the art community. We need to do a better job of inspiring people to look through the smoky alchoholic haze of the bars, past the Cultural Alliance's deadly offerings, and focus on the talented artists who are producing worthwhile challenging work. I'm not asking the Cultural Alliance to do better, or even for the bourgeois donors to get real. I'm encouraging the people who are real, who are genuinely interested in supporting art to not let their donations be lumped in with all the frauds and fakers who support the Cultural Alliance, UPAF and similar groups.

Maybe the best way i can do that is to get out of the way and leave the job up to others who are more charasmatic, positive, friendly, tolerant and otherwise just plain more attractive than Mike and I. People like Peggi Taylor, MIGA, or Cedar Block. If Milwaukee is going to become an Art City it will be through the efforts of those kinds of groups, not the Cultural Alliance.

But, i happen to think that every movement needs an uncompromising asshole to demand more and tell it like it is, regardless of toes stepped on, or bridges burned. I seem to fit this role naturally because when i look at things like the Cultural Alliance, i get really angry, and i'm no good at hiding it.

But more important than my anger, or my sanity (at least to anyone but me) is the future economic health of the City of Milwaukee. Which brings me to the subject i really want to talk about: The Cultural Alliance's report on Milwaukee's cultural assets. This report doesn't say anything new or unexpected, but there are some indications here of just how far the Cultural Alliance's heads are up their asses.

Somebody somewhere convinced Milwaukeans that we should want to be an Art City. This should be a good thing. Unfortunately when the task of actually becoming an art city is trusted to organizations that run like The Cultural Alliance (or UPAF, or MAM, or Visit Milwaukee, or The Journal Sentinal) the project is doomed to be a boondoggle.

The Cultural Alliance's report is an excellent example of this. It discusses the importance of the creative sector to economic growth, but it completely misunderstands what it's talking about. The leading voice for "creative class cities" is Richard Florida. If Milwaukee genuinely wants to be an Art City, and genuinely wants to attract the economic benefits of a thriving art scene, we need to look closer at what Florida has to say.

The creative class can be thought of in two different ways. A broadly defined creative sector and a "super radical core" of the creative class. The broadly defined creative sector includes, to quote the Cultural Alliance's source "* The core creative industries include R&D, publishing, software, TV/radio, design, music, film, toys/games, advertising, arts, museums, architecture, crafts, video games, fashion. Source: John Howkins, The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas, 2001." These people are highly valued, have lucrative jobs, and create much economic growth. The super radical core, is a much more limited group of more purely creative people, that is: artists. Artists are starving, scraping by, working day jobs, living under the radar and not making money from their art. As such, they do not directly create economic growth.

The goal according to Florida is to attract the broadly defined creative sector to your city. This is where the super radical core comes in, the best means of attracting innovation and growth-causing creatives is to encourage the super radical core to cultivate a "street level culture". To put it simply, punk rock bands and starving artists don't make economic growth, but they do attract good software designers who do make economic growth.

The most important cultural assets to look at for Milwaukee's art city growth are assets creating "street level culture" and this is where the Cultural Alliance drops the ball. When their report says "In depth surveys... including the largest and best known... as well as medium- and small-sized nonprofits" they are totally out of touch with the meaning of the word "small". I know Milwaukee theatre better than other cultural areas, and the smallest theatre companies on the list of those surveyed by the Cultural Alliance are Chamber and the now defunct Milwaukee Shakespeare. From my perspective, those are two of the biggest theatre companies in this city. If you're standing on the "street level" The Rep and Skylight are giants. Chamber, Mke Shakes and other UPAF members are "big" companies. Groups like The Boulevard, Off the Wall, and Windfall are "medium sized", and folks like the Alchemist, Pink Banana, Insurgent Theatre, and Dead Man's Carnival are "small". The Cultural Alliance is unable to recognize the value of even medium sized companies, let alone the small ones, and it's the medium and small companies who produce the most street level culture, who are most likely to attract anyone other than retiree's to Milwaukee.

Now, i personally have a problem with Florida's ideas, he's encouraging cities and communities to use starving artists and punk rockers as bait for creative sell-outs who are more willing to be exploited by corporations. But that's a tangent. The more important point is: The Cultural Alliance, whose job it is to "strengthen, advance and represent the arts and culture sector as an essential asset for growing a vibrant, attractive region" is either unwilling to challenge Milwaukee's obsolete establishment or else they aren't even aware of how the creative class relates to economic growth. They focus all their attention on UPAF members and big organizations, as though these are the only existing relevant cultural assets, when, in reality from the creative class perspective, they are the least relevant.

CRAFTIVISM!

2008-11-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Whenever I talk about the revolutionary potential of art as a mode of production, I start by talking about live performance. I talk about how music and theatre have transformative potential. How these artists can come to dominate the growing arts and entertainment sector of the economy, and then transfer the efficiencies and different value systems to the material rather than experiential economies, in the same fashion that capitalism started in the material goods and eventually transferred to the agricultural economy.

People doubt the possibility of such a transfer. They say, okay, if musicians and theatre artists take over those industries (and very few will grant me that much) then who is gonna make my clothes and my food? Well, food is a whole nother thing. I can talk your ear off about co-ops, urban farming, buying local and organic trends, etc etc etc. Clothes? That’s when I bring up Faythe Levine.

Faythe has observed and is documenting the growing craft movement in America. Her book and forthcoming movie, Handmade Nation explore this subject and many artists and crafters participating in this movement, often with overt political intentions. I have yet to read the book, but I’ve gone to her exhibits, pecha-kucha presentation, preview screenings and last night a lecture on the subject. It’s really exciting stuff, and one of the increasingly rare things that makes me happy to be living in milwaukee.

Faythe’s lecture and slideshow presented much of the same material I’ve already seen, but to an older and more mainstream (by the looks of em) audience. The bitter curmudgeon in me initially observed the fact that Faythe’s gallery openings are often crowded with pabst drinking hipsters, but when she’s actually giving a lecture about her art and the community, without beer, it’s sparsely attended. But, then, most people who attend her gallery openings assumably already know everything she talked about at the lecture and had no reason to attend. All is not lost. I'd really like to see the DIY arts and crafts community get together for a serious group discussion at some point. Maybe that's just cuz i despise mingling.

Anyway, afterwards, Peter asked Faythe if she thinks the craft movement can challenge, compete with or replace the mass production status quo. She said no, it’d be great if it did, but that’s not realistic. Peter himself is also skeptical, as is anyone I talk to regardless of where they’re coming from. I see it as my job to figger out how this unrealistic thing might happen, and then encourage people like Faythe to be more optimistic. Toward that end I need to outline a simple argument for the process by which this revolution may occur. I have rough drafts in my head, and the conversation after Faythe’s lecture exposed a seeming contradiction.

Here’s a very simple outline of the general argument:

Capitalists make commodities better than artists do.
Artists make art better than capitalists do.
Art is becoming more valuable than commodities.

Therefore:
Artists can beat capitalists in open competition.

That gets us half-way to revolution. All we’d need is open competition. Which is a political cause, that artists will have to tackle once they become more numerous, more unified and more class-conscious (as in conscious of ‘artist’ as a class).

But first, the problems with those initial premises, cuz if they don’t hold true, then my argument is shit:

First, Peter has a problem with collectibles. In the noise scene there are some artists who create limited numbered runs of tapes and sell them on ebay, they end up going for $50 or $100. Peter doesn’t like this because the people buying these tapes don’t value them as music, but as extremely limited-edition music. What they’re purchasing is artificial scarcity and the social status that goes with that. They might as well be purchasing diamonds, or Picasso paintings at an auction. Peter avoids this problem by using recorded music as 1. promotion and 2. cheap souvenirs. So he’s putting the music he records on the internet for free, and selling it at shows for cheap. It’s supplementary to the live performances.

He asked Faythe and Cortney Hiemerel (co-author of Handmade Nation) about this, because the craft movement seems even more vulnerable to this collector problem than the music scene. Every hand-made thing is a limited edition, often a one-of-a-kind. Cortney’s response was that she didn’t think craft was more vulnerable to the problem, because craft itself is more accessible than music. Anyone can learn to crochet in an afternoon, music involves talent and nuanced training. She brought up examples of crafters exchanging patterns, kits, and other information, either for free online, or for sale at low profit margins.

This is excellent. The exchange of information and viral spreading of not commodities, but the knowledge necessary to create things yourself has revolutionary potential. But, it creates a problem with my argument above, which isn’t Cortney, Faythe’s or Peter’s problem, because they don’t subscribe to the possibility of this revolution anyway. But, here, specifically is the problem...

First, if I phrase Peter’s problem with collectability in economic terms, and abstract it to the system wide level I get something like the following. If art escapes commodification by virtue of scarcity and collectability, then it falls into the trap of patronage, a mode of production that pre-dated and was replaced by capitalism. Premise 3 (art is becoming more valuable than commodity) is jeopardized because art is becoming something less valuable than commodity (once you get to the aggregate).

But, art can escape collectability AND commodification if there’s a large enough number of people and each of them produces by hand, a small number of things. This situation can be brought about by Cortney’s solution: creating greater access through information sharing. This solution is based on the idea of crafting being simple and easy to learn. The problem now is, and this might be a wrong assumption, but, if a crafter learns how to make a scarf in an afternoon, it’s hard to imagine that scarf being higher quality (in terms of durability, sophistication of design, or lack of flaws) than a scarf mass produced by a corporation. Premise 2 (artists make art best) is jeopardized.

But, on further discussion, back home, Peter, Kate and I concluded that this could be a transitional period. That following Cortney’s examples to the end result, in the aggregate, you’ll find more and more people making scarves. The more people we have trying to make scarves, the more likely we’ll find a few that are really good at it, the more likely they’ll find valuable innovations, and even if most crafter-made scarves are shoddy, or plain, the few made by the most talented, will be better than any factory-made scarf. These scarves will then likely be valued as collectables. Collectibility is inescapable.

But that’s only for right now. In the future, as more and more of the things we own are handmade and therefore can qualify as “collectables” scarcity itself will no longer have importance. If everyone I know has one-of-a-kind potholders, then my one-of-a-kind potholders are valuable as potholders, not as one-of-a-kind potholders.

Another way to look at it is to admit that all values are socially ascribed values. That even corporate potholders aren’t really valued as potholders (cuz if they were everyone would just use thick plain heat resistant rags) they are valued as an attractive decorative thing in your kitchen that also helps get hot shit out of the oven. And so, when we talk about the value of art over the value of commodities, it’s a matter of this sort of social or highly subjective value, not practical use-value. Under this framework a distinction should be made here, between collector value and ethical value. For collectors, my hand-made potholder is more valuable than a store bought commodity potholder because it’s rare. This sort of value system tends toward patronage as an economic system, ie: feudalism. For ethical consumers, my hand-made potholder is more valuable than a store bought commodity potholder because, in buying it, I supported someone doing something they love, rather than someone reaping a profit on the sweat of exploited laborers. This sort of value system is what has revolutionary potential.

Art being valued based on love for the artists, is different than art being valued based on its scarcity, AND a different thing than commodities being valued based on identicalness, sexiness, and commodity fetishism. So, under this framework, what I am proposing - to reference Che’s famous quote – is an economy based on love.

How wonderful. Now that both my inner curmudgeon and my inner hippie have come out, let’s get to reality. This is scary stuff, because to some degree the viability of the revolutionary economic system depends upon rightly understanding and promoting the correct consumer intention, as well as the correct producer intention. When looking at consumer intentions, there’s a lot of overlap and ambiguity. So artists, even overtly political DIY artists are currently walking a very fine line between collectorism and commodification, sometimes dipping into and profiting from one or the other. If we can keep on the right general path, and promote consumption based on supporting artists (or farmers, or whatever producer) rather than fetishizing scarcity, we may be able to swamp the later with so many different one-of-a-kind potholders that no rare potholder will have significance as a collectable. Patronage will have been dodged and capitalism overcome.

Why I didn't vote for Obama

2008-11-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

Before he even gets in office the democrats are pushing their real adgenda: sending a big pile of tax payer money to big business.

The auto industry is in big trouble because their business plan failed. The business plan: make and market high ticket gas guzzling SUVs. This strategy fell apart when gas prices spiked and demand for these monsters (and cars in general) went down. A bailout for this industry assumes that the auto-industry is a victim of circumstance, that nothing else could have been done to prevent this random act of god. That's an absurd assumption. The fact of the matter is, any high school econ student could predict the long term result of their business plan after half-paying attention to one lecture on supply and demand. People have been shouting about the stupidity of SUVs for decades, the auto-industry stuck their fingers in their ears and shouted.

The auto industry, like the credit industry made this bed for themselves, and now they're insisting that the american people sleep in it, and pay them for the favor. It's bad parenting. The auto industry is acting like a spoiled child, and supporting this bailout is enabling bad behavior and environmental irresponsibility on their part.

The auto industry and oil independence are conflicting interests, and Obama is already making it clear where his priorities lie. The blue collar union worker democrat imagines that the bailout will save their jobs, but the track record of free money to industries producing job growth (or preventing lay-offs) is dismal.

I say nationalize the industry. Yeah, it's socialism, it sucks and it's dirty, but i'd much rather see tax payer money going to overtly and transparently running an industry and taking the long term public good into account than to propping up short sighted profiteers who've come to expect free money when the obvious consequences of their bad actions come to pass. If the auto industry is too big and important to let the companies fail and die when the owners act like irresponsible fuck ups, then the auto industry is too big and important to be run privately.

I love Ralph Nader

2008-11-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

The fact that the guy has to make statements that he knows will be misrepresented in order to include ANY mention of corporate interests, single payer healthcare or poverty in our national election dialog exposes just how absurd our "democracy" has become. He's even got Fox News playing the role of the politically correct thought police, one which they wear very awkwardly. It's beautiful.

The Election

2008-11-05T09:16:00.001-08:00

I convinced a handful of people to boycott the election with me. We celebrated at Art Bar and stonefly, surrounded by hipsters who, like their suburban counterparts only think about political action once every four years and then think about it as an excuse to go out drinking. That's milwaukee though, if something isn't an excuse to go out drinking then it just isn't done.

There were televisions, and i watched them. They made me angry. Barak's acceptance speech said: "this isn't the change we want to see, this is the opportunity for us to make the change. There's a lot of work ahead." 5 minutes later the TV people were saying "Obama was very modest, i think THIS IS the change america has been waiting to see!" which of course implies that the actual substantive change is undesired. The disengagement of the american populace started an hour after the election was decided. Five minutes before Obama's speech the TV people said "america has proven to the world that we CAN do great things and make history!" No. When Nelson Mendala became president of South Africa, that was historic. In america, we shot all our Mendala's and then elected a minority decades later. That's not exactly historical.

There was bar trivia, and one of the teams that won called themselves: "this is a mandate for socialism" Really? the election of someone who shies away from that word is a mandate for it? how's that exactly? between now and january the american left is going to beleive that everything will be solved as soon as obama walks into the white house. 100 days later, the american left is going to be sorely disappointed, and will give up. That is, if Obama isn't shot.

Review - Six Characters

2008-11-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

I just want to quickly state that the UWM labworks production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is definitely worth seeing.

These students might not have the training or the polish that UWM mainstage productions have, but some of them have more rawness and passion than i'm used to seeing out of UWM actors. Especially noteworthy are Tommy Stevens, Callie Eberdt and Max Hultquist, but singling them out is a bit unfair, because others' roles were much smaller or intended to be less passionate. These students have committed more deeply to their characters and to this challenging play than most of what comes out of UWMs programs, and it pays off, making this a truly effecting and successful adaptation of Pirandello.

Ben Wilson's inclusion of Milwaukee-specific lines in the script also rung true to frustrations with the arts in milwaukee. It gives me hope that at least some students going through UWM's program won't be so easily carved into banal clones for shakespeare and broadway. It's really too bad that the staging of this over 100 year old indictment of bad theatre is still relevant today, and that UWM's choice to produce it stinks of hypocrisy.

Tribes - by Seth Godin

2008-11-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am an impatient heretic and I got myself an “uncorrected proofs – not for sale” copy of Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes. It’s supposed to be confidential, but it was really easy to get, and I plan on buying at least one “real” copy and borrowing both out to anyone who wants em. The wider this thing is circulated, the easier my life and the lives of everyone who’s work I admire will become.

That said, I don’t want to overstate my adoration of this book. It is a marketing book, written by a marketing guru, a 150 page pep talk that’s definitely hard-selling an idea. But I think there’s something behind the idea, and the sell is at least uniquely organized and interestingly stated. There’s not a lot of hard evidence here, but there is a lot of anecdotal and informal case study research. It’s a quick read that presents challenges and leaves me feeling optimistic and enthusiastic.

Godin is doing a handful of things with this book. First, he’s aggressively promoting a new sort of leadership. Second, he’s gunning pretty hard against the people who resist his new sort of leader. Third, he’s describing new social and business arrangements that make his ideal of leadership not only powerful, but desperately necessary.

His new form of leadership is interesting and inspiring. I don’t want to talk too much about it, other than to say he’s definitely on to something. He’s describing in many ways the kinds of people I like to work with, or compete with. There are also a number of good relevant lessons for me, messages I need to take to heart and challenges I need to face in my efforts. You want to know more, read it yourself. It’s more effective than getting it second hand.

The second thing Godin does, I’ve got more of a problem with. He’s trying to get regular mainstream businesses to understand and accept these new leaders. Many of his examples are of businesses who, by embracing some crazy person’s idea, benefited in the marketplace. This comes awful close to the co-opting radicals complain about. This is the process by which revolutionary forms and ideas are watered down by the establishment. For example, if one of the big record companies takes Godin’s suggestions and somehow succeeds with them, it will be to the detriment and delay of the revolution that I see going on in the music industry. We need the big guys to stay clueless a bit longer so we can better pull the carpet out from under them.

The third thing he does is the most interesting. I’m trying to piece together a world view out of these many anecdotes and fragments, and find ways that it jives or clashes with my own world view. For now, I’ve just got a few examples. My “not for sale” copy might not be identical to the official published version, so if I misquote, or have the wrong page numbers or something, I apologize for my impatience.

Godin repeatedly says things like “individuals have far more power than ever before in history” and “Many people are starting to realize that they work a lot and that working on stuff they believe in (and making things happen) is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired (or die)” or “many consumers have decided to spend their money buying things that aren’t factory-produced commodities... instead [they] spend time and money on... things that matter, and on things that they believe in.” It sounds to me like he is talking about a radically new set of economic mores and norms. He’s finding examples of consumers with post-capitalist demands, and producers with post-capitalist ambitions (quotes from page 9-10).

He also describes the effects of these norms on the present mode of production:
“Welcome to the age of leverage. Bottom-up is a really bad way to think about it because there is no bottom. In an era of grassroots change, the top of the pyramid is too far away from where the action is to make much of a difference. It takes too long and it lacks impact. The top isn’t the top anymore because the streets are where the action is” (page 75). He describes a new sort of non-hierarchical organization, what he calls a “tribe” in which “everyone – not just the boss, is expected to lead” (page 12) and in which leaders are risk taking, initiators of action who are uninterested in personal gain, ego-boosts or glory. These are organizations arranged around passionate empowered individuals who embrace criticism and aren’t afraid of failure. This vision of an organization is beautiful, progressive, and at its very root, anti-capitalist. When you eliminate the bosses, empower everyone in the tribe to network and initiate projects, and remove the profit motive, you aren’t just getting away from factorycentric production, you’re getting away from capitalism. When you replace investors with tribal leaders, you are replacing capital with what Godin calls “faith” but what I’d rather call “passion.”

The fact that Godin sees this enough in his travels and research to write a book about it indicates that there is definitely something going on. Godin’s conclusion that “

Now, there are two interesting examples where Godin and I disagree about more than terminology. First, in the section on sheepwalking. Godin describes an MBA student “who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company” where she’ll “get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems.” (p 99) This makes me think about slacker jobs, because I bet this student, if she’s actually worth mentioning in Godin’s book, realizes how little work is involved in herr new job she’ll “start her own gig” on the side while still working there. See, most of Godin’s tribal leaders are doing things that our society doesn’t value enough to reward them for. In order for these passionate individuals to make ends meet, they’ve got to put in time at a paying job. This MBA student isn’t sheepwalking, she’s like an artist clocking in to a day job in order to buy her freedom for future endeavors that she’s more passionate about.

Not enough young people realize this option. Everyone thinks you’ve got to go to school, rack up debt, and get stuck in a career, which hopefully will be something fun and exciting, where you can make a difference. In actuality, Godin is most likely to find leaders among people who either didn’t get through college, or who went to school for something totally impractical, but interesting to them, got unrelated slacker jobs, and pursued their interest outside of work (or even better, while at work, on the company’s dime). This is one way that tomorrow’s leaders are navigating the transition out of the capitalist world.

The second thing I need to call Godin out on is the music industry. On pages 92-96 he takes record companies to task for failing to innovate and switch from “manufacturing CDs with a 90 percent gross margin... to a blended model of concerts and souvenirs, of communities and greeting cards and special events and what feels like gimmicks.” I think he’s being too harsh on these companies, because from where I sit, they don’t have the option to make that switch. They’re too busy competing with independent artists and tiny labels who have made the switch themselves and (on the whole) are doing it more genuinely and effectively than any middle man record company would ever be able to. How can a record company get money out of fans who are have access to deal directly with the artists they love? The recording industry is dying because artists are forming tribes that make the entire concept of a music company obsolete. One thing Godin and I agree on “the guys who ran it in the old days... won’t be welcome”.

Tour Report

2008-10-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend we did a short regional tour with Paint the Town, hitting Chicago, Madison, and Minneapolis. These were the last shows Jason Hames will be able to do with Paint the Town. When you see him next, give him a pat on the back for good work. He did these shows with a broken toe.
Special thanks also go out to Ed and Rachel, Ron and Jeff in Chicago, Tim, Ester and other coop members in Madison, John, Maren, Thor, Kat, and everyone at Bedlam or Kat's house in Minneapolis. These people kick ass. They're doing the often tedious and sometimes risky work of maintaining a space, promoting a show, and otherwise enabling our anarchist and DIY art to happen. They're clearly motivated by a love for art and artists. They should be applauded and emulated by anyone claiming to share that love.

Reports:

Thursday October 23rd, Chicago
We performed in the basement of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, a gallery and studio space in Bridgeport run by Ed and Rachel from Lumpen Magazine. Our enthusiastic friend Ron helped organize and promote this show. He also dragged some friends to help us load in and take care of everything. Ron is great.
We left Milwaukee at around 5, after Hames got out of work and hit some ugly traffic on the way down to Chicago, not making it there until after 8.
We used the basement because Ed didn't want us painting his gallery floor, basements look awesome and fit the setting of the show so well, and there is a whole punched in the wall, Kool-Aid man style which we incorporated into the set (Ron took this picture of it). The ceiling was too low so we had to put the set up sideways, which works fine. Hooray for versatility!
John Kuehne who will be taking over the role of Arthur Pratt in future productions came down with us, and familiarized himself with our process. He had a good enough time that he almost came with up to Minneapolis, but couldn't get out of work.
We performed with two musicians. First was Cecil, an good ambient/drone guitar and laptop guy and second Instinct Control, who does something very dangerous and impressive with a broken reel to reel machine. Basically he takes the back off the machine, plugs the auxiliary output into a PA and then touches the circuitry to generate and control the static and noise, achieving amazing control, range, and composition without accidentally touching any of the exposed components which could seriously electrocute him.
Our first performance with a live audience since the end of August was really quite rough. Having only done a few pick up rehearsals, swapping some props and needing to accommodate and adapt for Hames' broken toe (with one of those big plastic boot things on it). But, we pulled it off well enough that the audience remained thoroughly engaged and very complimentary when it was all over. We had at least 15 people throughout, peaking at 25. This was the best turn our and most lucrative show of the tour. Having Ron on the ground, drumming up support harassing radio stations and bringing people out obviously helped. Jeff Grygny also helped spread the word down there.
We drove back to Milwaukee after cleaning up and making plans to come back in January. Got home with enough time to get a few hours sleep before going to our day jobs.

Friday October 24th - Madison
We were back on the road heading toward Madison by 5 am the next day. Hit traffic again, but made it up there with enough time to be ready to perform at 8:00. Unfortunately, Madison wasn't ready when we were.
The show was at the Nottingham Coop which is a great big house full of hippies and punks located right on fraternity row. The city lived up to it's reputation as the kind of town where people are too busy living in a liberal community college town to actually go out and see or do art.
Eventually, a few of peter's friends showed up, just stopping in to see if they had enough time to grab some food before the show started. Since they were the only audience, we all walked down to state street and got some food, walked back and started the show about and hour and a half late.
When we got started a half dozen or so coop inhabitants came out and we ended up performing for a small but impressed audience. Peter's friends left after he played the first intermission and then Tim Morgan, the booking contact at nottingham played an amazing prepared guitar percussion piece for the second. He put a cymbal on the strings of an acoustic guitar and beat the strings and body of the guitar and the cymbal with drumsticks and various other objects. he was damn good at it too. Seeing this alone made the stop in Madison worth it.
After the show we sold some merch, chatted with co-op denizens and repaired or replaced a few faulty props. I got the kind of impression i get after many of the more poorly attended shows, regret on the part of the small audience that more of their friends and community didn't take the chance on coming to see theatre from an unknown touring group. I don't know what i can do to prevent this situation in the future, other than coming back to cities we've already played so we'll have some reputation.
Kate and I wandered state street for a bit, getting some great food from one of those little cart booths, best tacos and quesadillas i've had since visiting Oaxaca. We sold some merch and got donations from our hosts, crashed in "the study" and were on our way to Minneapolis after a cheap meal but decent meal at a diner near the willie st coop.

Saturday October 25th - Minneapolis
We rolled into Bedlam, and found everyone very busy in the midst of their huge barebones Halloween spectacular. This is a giant puppet show version of Jason and the Argonauts with hundreds of performers, a flaming undead Greek army, and huge fire breathing puppets, staged in an inner city park. In other words, Bedlam is amazing. Minneapolis is amazing. I love this city.
I wish we hadn't been in competition with such a great show, especially since most of the people from the venue were out in the park and encouraging everyone else to go to the park throughout our show. Our friend Kat managed to round up a handful of audience, and a couple other people came out. So it was another small audience, but enthusiastic.
There must have been some miscommunication with Terricide, because they never showed up. Ice Volt more than made up for it though. He is one of the most commited and otherworldly performers i've seen. Attempting to describe what he does would be a disservice to anyone who hasn't seen it, let me just say it was remarkable and incredibly effective, musically and as a piece of movement theatre.
The puppet show did leave us a spare tech assistant. A great guy named Thor, who was very helpful and friendly, turns out he and Peter have some mutual friends. If we make it back to Minneapolis while he's still there he promised he would work it out so we'd get to use the paint.
We hung out at Bedlam with Thor and at the hard times cafe (Minneapolis' equivalent to Fuel) until two AM, then crashed on couches at Kat's house, much to the chagrin of an adorable German shepherd puppy who whined about Hames' snoring away on her couch almost as much as i wanted to, until i moved to the basement and got some real sleep.

Sunday October 26th - Minneapolis again
We grabbed some grub at The Wienery, another good cheap diner, with great hash browns and home made bread, and made our way back to bedlam for our 2pm matinee. We played mainly for the band (a great power pop band, with members originally from Milwaukee, The Liarbirds) and Bedlam staff (who missed the 3rd act because they had to go to the park to work on the barebones thing) This performance was one of our most energetic and just plain fun. A great note to go out on before heading back to rehearsing and workshopping the script with John.
Overall, it was a great weekend, and same as august, i hate being back in Milwaukee. The touring thing is rough, there's a lot we need to work on to get better at it (mainly promotion, booking and networking, but also with the play itself) but, even with poor attendance, we managed to cover gas costs and the company bought a couple of our meals without going bankrupt. Touring like this is difficult, but i think we can only get better at it. Once we do, we'll be much more fully realizing the insurgent theatre mission than ever before. At any rate, the prospect of perfecting a DIY tour seems more likely and much more exciting than perfecting a local Milwaukee production.

Financial Report
I've been thinking about expanding the online transparency of the company for a while, making information about our finances, our successes and failures, our trials and celebrations available to anyone who cares to find them out. Radical theatre is a very difficult thing to produce and promote in the US today, so I hope this information might help others with the same aims as us. This tour brought in $74 in at the door donations (mainly in Chicago) and $70 in merchandise sales (this is total sales, not net profit from sales, it doesn't take in the cost of the blank shirts). So that's a total income of $144. We spent $132 on gas, and $84 on food, for a total of $216 spent. That's a net loss of $72.

Of course finances are only one (and not a very important one) of the measures of success. I think $72 is a perfectly acceptable cost for the gains we got in terms of lessons learned and contacts made. I also prefer to measure success by the faces of the audience members as they watch the show. Ron describes the Chicago audience like this: "the most rapt audience I have ever seen at any Chicago production. That was something that continually impressed me through the night. Our audience of 25 or so, including house managers, was totally quiet and attentive. " Considering the informal setting, the fully lit house lights, and the lack of any pre-show requests for people to silence their cell phones or unwrap their candies, or even remain in their seats, this attentiveness is more impressive.
When we get to the final narration, when i sit up and look at the audience and see a group of people, no matter how big or small, whether they're the friends of the musician who mainly came to see him perform, or the artistic director of Bedlam, sitting on the edge of their seat (or leaning forward while sitting on the floor) mouths open and eyes unblinking, not absorbed in cathartic suspense, but puzzled, with furrowed brows, actively working to figure out exactly what it is this play is communicating to them, i see a success that is far more valuable to me than any monetary reward, shining review or accolade. The possibility that we are transforming audiences into critical engaged participants, not just passive entertained punters reaffirms my commitment to making the kind of art that can escape commodification and produce a revolutionary change in our society.

I Love This

2008-10-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves

Read it! Read it NOW! it's short and funny and TRUE!

here's my reactions to each of them.

1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. Yes! Please! Thank you for making this number one. Get his fucking corpse off of us!

2. Tell us something we don't know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Every play in every Insurgent Theatre season has always been a world premiere and always will be.

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. This is a little trickier. There's a limit to how much of this you can do. We found it last summer, and it's damn near killed us.

4. Get them young. This seems self evident.

5.Offer child care. This is ingenoius advice for the companies that have parents in their audiences. We don't have that problem so much.

6. Fight for real estate. When you lose that fight, perform illegally.

7. Build bars. i wish i wish i wish they weren't right about this, but the fact of the matter is, if americans (especially milwaukeeans) aren't able to get trashed, they aren't interested. I especially like the last line: Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

8. Boors' night out. This is another great idea, and one that we could actually use. For some parts of Paint the Town, every night should be Boors' night out.

9. Expect poverty. Sad but true. But, if we do these things, then poverty will be a temporary condition. Theatre can become sustainable art form providing economic stability for artists again, but we've got to tear it down and rebuild it to make that happen.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Not just grad school. Drop out of any and all theatre programs. They've got nothing to offer but debt and the opportunity to work for zombies. Get together and learn to act the way all the people your professors and classes romanticize, by experimenting in a tight-knit self-guided workshops, and by producing shows.

Review- Mike Daisey's If You See Something, Say Something

2008-10-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

As i walked into Mike Daisey's show at the MCA I told Kate that as much as I've been looking forward to seeing him perform, i was a little concerned about what the show would actually be. I've heard Mike described as a "populist voice" which, i've grown to translate into "anti-intellectual whiner". After spending an hour and a half sitting 20 feet in front of him at eye level while he ranted and raved, taught me a thing or two about Herman Kahn and all but accused the audience of selling our democracy out, I can assure you he was mis-described. This guy's incredibly well structured, thoroughly researched and informative monolouge places far to high a value on individual freedom, honesty, and radical autonomy to be populist. Christ, he's sometimes downright misanthropic, complete with childhood dreams of nuclear anihilation. Populists are all about telling people what they want to hear and making promises no one could keep. Mike Daisey tells the audience that our founding fathers were terrorists, that our "security" is absurd, and that "if you think either candidate in this election will change everything, you're a fool."

Hell yeah.

A not so quick word about the economy.

2008-10-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

From a Marxist perspective the only thing unexpected about these events is the fact that they didn't happen 100 years ago.

Marx's prediction is that capitalist business cycles will grow increasingly severe until they reach a point of such violence that the system itself collapses. This prediction didn't come true for two reasons. 1. government used some unexpectedly ingeneous controls to buffer capitalism's excesses and restrain those cycles. 2. new products (like the automobile) create a wholly new economy, which kind of re-sets the self-destruct clock. These are the most convincing "capitalism can survive" arguements i've heard. I can't remember the sources though.

So, a decade or so ago it could be argued that capitalism can maintain itself through a combination of more aggressive socialism when things get ugly and creating innovative technologies to re-set the cycles.

But, recent events counter this argument. First, with the tech bubble we discovered that capitalist business cycles can become so violent that new technologies, rather than re-setting the self-destruct system can actually accelerate it. The PC and the internet promised much more as far as building a whole new economy than the automobile did. But the economy was already too unstable when these things were invented, and instead of creating long term growth in new industries and new markets, the internet and the PC created a severe short term spike, a bubble. Then investors, hungry for something to invest in, became addicted to bubbles and artificially created a housing bubble, which burst even more quickly and violently. New technology didn't save us.

We're left with creative governance, then. Problem with that is, it seems economic cycles fit within political cycles and these political cycles grow more severe over time as well. When the ups and downs of the market become severe enough to create a major crash or depression, the government can swing more aggressively socialist to get things back under control. Once things are more stable the government loosens the reins and we get more growth, more pro-business government, and less of the ugly things associated with socialism (waste, corruption, entitlement programs). This continues and periods of socialism and laissez faire ideologies occilate regularly. Theodore Lowi has chronicled trends to support this idea in his books "The End of Liberalism" and "The End of the Republican Era". Since the 60s the american government has been on a steady deregulation track and it's no wonder economic instability has accompanied it.

So it's time for this political cycle to swing back the other way, right? Unfortunately that doesn't seem likely. With the democrats continuing to pander to "the center" rather than leading from the left and the republicans debating over expanding the free market or just bailing out corporate cronies, I don't see any chance that any politician will have the guts to use the word "socialism" positively.

I suspect that capitalism's political cycle is as unstable as the business cycle. Our political systems are so controlled by businesses (the media, the lobbiests, the parties) that a swing back to socialism just isn't in the cards.

This concerns me, not because i beleive in socialism. I don't. Socialism is not a complete system, it's merely capitalism with comprmises and redistribution of the wealth. It concerns me because while i want to see capitalism replaced, i do not want to see it go down in a fiery wreck where i'm liable to get burned.

I need capitalism to stick around long enough for a viable replacement to get up on it's feet. A more aggressively socialist policy has the best chance of getting us there. Trouble is, such a policy is anathema to American politics. This is an ideological question and the ideological structures in American politics are totally fucked. The reason laissez faire capitalism appeals to so many on an ideological level is because it is a set of principles that in the imagination of it's proponents will create a utopian society. Regardless of how far off the actual results are from this prescription, free marketeers are at least giving us a prescription. Socialism offers nothing at all in this area. It's not a system, it's a compromise. It might be based on simple moral ideals, but that only makes it seem impractical and naive.

I don't think the economy can be fixed, i only think it can be buffered, and i think the buffering of it requires not only a drastically different set of government policies, it requires an ideological shift in the american population. We need to stop beleiving in the broken system that free marketers and libertarians keep selling us, and unfortunately, we have to replace that ideology with an uninspiring compromise. In other words, america needs to grow up and stop beleiving in itself.

I hate the way that sounds as much as i'm sure everyone else does. But the fact is we're facing a choice between a self-destructing system (capitalism), a compromised slower version of that system (socialism) or a new replacement system that hasn't yet emerged organically and would have to be forced prematurely with disasterous results (communism).

Review - I am My Own Wife

2008-10-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

I've decided to stop writing reviews of the theatre I see. Milwaukee's theatre community doesn't seem to be mature enough for honest criticism, but the show I saw last weekend was such a good example of a potentially great story being compromised by the prevailing norms of America's failing theatre institutions that I can't pass on this opportunity for analysis.

I am talking about "I am My Own Wife" at the Milwaukee Rep. So many people have recommended this show as this season's "if you see anything at the rep, make it this one" show. The first red flag that I may have been misdirected came when i saw that the playwright, Doug Wright had also written "Quills" a film that i thought managed to make the Marquis de Sade boring. Most of my problems are with the script. Wright makes three choices that turn a compelling character and situation into something banal enough to succeed in the current theatre environment.

First, he reduces some of the most complex situations in modern history to a simple personality drama. A play that could have been about East Germany is instead about a celebrity scandal surrounding Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and her furniture. The play even climaxes on a television talk show. Wright's American perspective, his unthinking commitment to anti-authoritarianism causes him to see this period in simple black and white, and he misses many interesting questions (questions that can be turned back on us in America today). What is it like to live under an idealistically ambitious, but deeply flawed regime? What kind of compromises does such a life demand? Instead, Wright quit writing the play when, after reading his subject's Stasi file he discovered that Charlotte had made such compromises.

This brings us to the second flaw in the script. After six years, Wright resumed work on the play with the tactic of writing himself in so his own struggle with Charlotte's integrity could take center stage. This decision allows him to write emotional lines like "I need to believe in her story, I need to believe that someone can survive in a life like hers" (paraphrased from my memory) but, in doing so it robs the audience of an opportunity to encounter that struggle ourselves. Rather than watching the contradictory facts of von Mahlsdorf's life unfold and engaging our critical capacities to understand this character, we're allowed to passively watch Doug Wright vacillate on stage.

Or, an actor playing Doug Wright, that is. The same actor who plays Charlotte von Malhsdorf and some 40 other roles. Which is the third flaw with this script. I can't find any compelling creative reason that Charlotte's story (or actually Doug's story) is best told by one actor playing all the roles. It could be argued that this choice mirrors the many lives Charlotte herself played in life, or that somehow the transvestite themes are aided by all the characters (mostly male) being played by a man in a dress. Actually, my experience is the opposite. Having one actor play all the roles dulls any edge that transvestism might have. Every time the actor switches character we are reminded that this person is onstage and wearing a costume. The potentially transgressive image of a man in a dress is constantly replaced by the perfectly acceptable even traditional image of an actor cross-dressing for his role.

I believe these decisions are motivated by economy not creativity. Wright secured the financial success and marketability of his play when he decided to make it a one man historical biopic.
When economic necessity leads a theatre artist to write, perform and otherwise create a solo show because the show is self produced and rehearsal time is shared with a day job, a job whose vacation time is spent taking the play from fringe festival to fringe festival, then the one man show is a testament to that artist's dedication to his work. When a one man play is clamoured after by large cost-cutting mismanaged regional theatres it looks a lot more like exploitation.

When politically charged content like Nazism, Communism, East-West relations and transsexual identity are replaced by a historical biography of a "greatest generation" figure, it looks a lot like pandering to the aging population of traditional theatre patrons.

When a playwright puts a character, himself even, on stage as a tool for talking about themes rather than simply portraying them, he's lazily spoonfeeding an audience he assumes is to unsophisticated or inattentive to critically engage with the characters.

Producing "I am My Own Wife" chases theatre's aging audience when what we need to do is lead or even drag new audiences into the theatre medium.

So, here again, like Endgame and Gilbert and George, we have Milwaukee's artistic establishments paying lip service to presenting politically relevant, challenging or potentially controversial work. The Rep also makes a number of design and direction decisions that exacerbate my problems with this play. Michael Gotch's performance in the show is encumbered by unnecessary sound and light cues for his character transformations. He is certainly well trained and talented enough that his voice and body alone embody the diverse array of characters for all but the most deaf and nearsighted of audience members. The light cues are like making him carry a crutch he doesn't need. The Rep also throws literally hundreds of superfluous props at the show. I must admit their production looks modest compared with the pictures from Broadway, and the props are likely in the script, but that doesn't make them any less useless. I guess a play that requires only one actor but allows the company to fill the stage with half their prop storage is just about perfect for our declining theatre world.

Flight of the Creative Class

2008-09-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Richard Florida's The Flight of the Creative Class. I read Rise of the Creative Class a few years ago. Richard Florida's conclusions have influenced and bolstered my arguments. His work as an urban planner / demographer / consultant is a different scope than the more abstract philosophical issues I'm dealing with, but crossing the two is interesting.

Florida has observed great economic growth in cities that foster a lively street level culture. He's found a strong correlation between growth and creativity. From Florida's perspective the most creative people (artists) primarily serve to attract high-quality laborers. These artists create street level culture, which attracts people and benefits to cities and the individuals and corporations within cities.

I am interested in what might happen when the most radical members of the creative class instead work for themselves. What if we stopped letting our culture be co-opted, packaged and sold to encourage growth for cities and businesses and instead create a culture and economy for ourselves? Artists are not receiving anything like a full return on the economic benefits we create. Why don't we find a way to maintain a hold on these benefits? If we can direct the economic growth we stimulate inward, back to the artistic communities, rather than allowing capitalist institutions to direct them into investor's pockets, what changes will that bring, not only in how we work, but also in how we effect the rest of society?

Florida goes beyond merely saying that street level culture attracts the best people to cities, he considers many of these professions creative in themselves, and tracks the economic benefits that creatives (whether they be artists, software designers, or hairdressers) produce. His conclusions are based on extensive sociological and demographic research (p 29).

He describes the rise of the creative economy:

"Like a turbocharged engine... in search of the institutional and social
arrangements that can unleash it's full potential. The real challenge of our
time... is to complete the system we have given rise to - to build the full
creative society that can channel the creative economic energy we have
unleashed. The potential is immense. Today, for perhaps the first time in human
history, we have the opportunity to align economic and human development.
Indeed, our future economic prosperity turns on making the most of each and
every human being's talents and energies (p 241)."

There are many challenges Florida associates with the new creative economy. Primarily finding ways to include more people in the benefits: "creative economy is reinforcing economic inequality producing a greater divide between regional haves and have-nots and also generating greater inequality within the leading creative centers" (p 20). I'd argue that this inequality is not particular to the creative economy and not the fault of the creative class. It is the fault of the capitalist class. Increases in inequality result from any economic growth in capitalism, the more rapid the growth, the more severe the inequality.

Florida suggests a number of policy solutions to answer this problem. He compares the current challenges to the industrial revolution and calls for a sort of new deal, one that's tailor made for the current situation (p 242-243). A New Deal is one option, but the social welfare and Keynesian aspects are not particular to the industrial age, and other New Deal projects, such as unionization won't apply well to the creative age at all.

Part of why the New Deal succeeded is that it altered the labor market by empowering the manufacturing class through unions and public works projects. But, more than any of these projects World War Two met the needs of the transition to an industrial economy. By removing many laborers from the system and increasing factory-based production, WWII opened up opportunities for the labor force who had been left out of the boom. It's hard to imagine something having a similar effect on the creative economy.

Florida's other solutions are more generic; the typical ways capitalism averts impending class warfare. Government regulation, Keynesian economics and Bismarkian social welfare to appease the poor are old tricks that grow less effective over time, and have been gutted by ideological attacks in the past few decades. Even if we did resurrect these policies, i doubt they'd handle the expanding class divide and heightening class antagonism.

If we look at this situation in terms of class dynamics, a more radical solution presents itself. I think our current economic transformation is more like the rise of capitalism than the Industrial Revolution, and the "political solution... required to fully realize the potential of a new economic and social order" will be more like the American and French revolutions than the New Deal (p 229).

There are three classes involved: the Bourgeoisie, the Proletariat (or maybe more appropriately, the Service Class) and the Creative Class. Currently creatives are allied with the bourgeoisie. Creative output is mediated and legislated by the ruling capitalist class, and so it is feeding into and exacerbating capitalism's inherent tendencies for inequality, instability, and alienation.
If creatives shift their allegiance to the lower classes we may see a rapid change. The rise of capitalism presents a historical precedent for such a shift. The bourgeoisie (then the insurgent class) initially allied with, but eventually betrayed the nobility, after running up against the monarchy's obsolete political and social systems. The bourgeoisie responded with a new ideology (Locke's right to life liberty and property). They sold this ideology to the serfs, as a political cause and then staged a revolution.

Florida describes similarly obsolete political and social systems. He says "neither party seems very well positioned to describe, let alone harness, the postmodern value system that comes with the creative age (p 216)" and "we can count on neither trickle-down economics nor conventional social-welfare programs to save us (p 193)". Our elections and other political system's utter failure is self evident. It's only a matter of time before creatives recognize the barriers these obsolete and failing institutions create and set to changing them.

Florida anticipates my thoughts and responds: "I'm not saying capitalism has got to go. Far from it: What i argue for is a new kind of market-based society, one that fosters human creativity more broadly, more directly, and across all social and demographic strata. (p 77)". But, such a society is not compatible with capitalism, he's looking for a paradox. Florida's descriptions match Marx's predictions very closely.

Marx predicted that capitalism would over time, tend toward ever greater inequality. Florida describes many ways that "inequality has consistently worsened (p 186)" and that "social mobility is decreasing (p 192-193)". Capitalist markets are based on price, profit and a particular sort of labor relation. According to Marx, these markets will always produce a situation in which owners who maximize their profits by minimizing their labor costs will win out. Florida's description of a minority of creative workers who "download stress and anxiety" onto themselves and "depend on a veritable army of [low paid, unfulfilled] service workers to tend to the things they don't have time for (p 203, 187)" is consistent with Marx's prediction. Capitalists would rather squeeze all the work they can out of a small group of workers who then have to spend their earnings on restaurants and house cleaners, than pay a larger number of people for a more reasonable time commitment. This is in the bourgeoisie's best interest, and will always result from a capitalist society. But, when everyone's interest is taken into account, it is much less efficient, and it works against the creative class, as well as the service sector and lower classes.

Fortunately, the paradox lies in Florida's overbroad definition of capitalism. It is but one type of market based economy, one defined by certain social norms and labor and property relations. It's possible to have a market without capitalism, indeed Florida's "new kind of market-based society" is, by necessity non-capitalist.

Florida's presciptions for change are also in common with Marx's. Both thought that change is not a "top-down or centralized endeavor, but needs to emerge organically (p 246)." Florida has studied changes of this type. He describes many instances when the traditional labor relation that (in my opinion) actually defines capitalism has come under question. In Flight of the Creative Class he describes how "people love to do creative work (p 27)" with many examples, from musicians (p 89) to industrial designers (p195) of alternative labor relations proving superior. I remember a seemingly endless list of empowered workers changing the workplace in The Rise of the Creative Class (citations forthcoming). In Flight, Florida sums up his and many others' data: "the majority of research on the subject finds that intrinsic rewards are far more effective in motivating creative people than money alone (p 77)". Workers are demanding not only more fulfilling and exciting work, but also more benefits, including profit sharing, flex time and radical workflow rearrangements. They prefer free agency and sub-contracting to solid employment. At what point do these changing relationships stop being capitalism?

The changes in labor demands go hand in hand with changes in consumer demands (trends toward citizen-consumers) to indicate a changing mindset society-wide. Florida mentions how Max Weber's "protestant work ethic... helped to usher in modern capitalism" (p 68). If this is true, then Florida's discussion of Ron Ingelhart's "postmaterialist" culture (p 40), the rise of irreligiousness, and how today people have "redefined the idea of morality itself (p 216)" indicates that there is a new ethic ushering in a replacement for the now obsolete capitalist norms.

Meanwhile, Florida has identified inequality is an inefficiency (p 188) and concludes that "it's impossible politically and economically to build a fully creative society when just 30 percent of the workforce reaps the full rewards of that economy's productivity (p 217)." He also demonstrates that "our society is not engaging even a fraction of the creative capital at it's disposal... doing a poor job of motivating the 30 percent of the workforce fortunate enough to make up the creative sector... [and] systematically neglecting the creative potential of the 70 percent of the population that lies outside the creative class (p 36)." If this wasteful inequality is built into the capitalist mode of production, as Marx claimed and history demonstrates, then it seems natural that capitalism will either have to change so much that it stops being capitalism, or it will be replaced by a radically new mode of production.

We are existing in a marketplace based on very different assumptions than the marketplace described by traditional economics. We can either call both these markets "capitalism" or we can say that we're entering something new. It depends on how broadly you want to define capitalism. The difference is merely semantic when describing current economic trends, but it becomes a defining assumption when looking into the future. Florida's hesitation to look outside of capitalism closes off the most creative and revolutionary approaches to "the great challenge of our time" leaving him to focus on goals and projects that are either too vague and unrealistic or too particular and small-scoped (p 246-266).

Chat with Chad

2008-09-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Last night i discussed all this theoretical stuff with Chad Van Schoelandt. Chad is a philosophy grad student at UWM. He's studied many of these things far more thoroughly than i have, from a philosophical angle. The discussion was very useful. We surely didn't agree on things, but Chad's opinions and responses, mostly skeptical, helped to redirect my thoughts. These are my impressions / conclusions, cuz i like to have all this stuff in one place at one time. Chad is largely responsible for many of the ideas contained here, but i may be misrepresenting or mistating them, and i am definitely taking them out of context, so don't expect it to make a lot of sense.

Process: tell a story, non-capitalist system discovers benefits and efficiencies and applies them. Mindset adaptations, not moralizing. The intentions of the producers do not matter, the results matter. The results, per Marx's predictions are that if artists are developing a new mode of production, it will either become capitalism, or will exist alongside but subordinate to capitalism.

Becoming capitalism: artists compete for resources, those that attract and earn the best talent, most fans, highest donations, most downloads, etc etc will succeed economically, regardless of their intentions, and those that do not attract or earn such things will fail. The failing artists will then have no choice but to work for the succeeding ones, or work with them under an arrangement of unequal returns. Any idealistic band that resists this stands to lose in the long term. The market does this automatically. You could avoid it by forcing fans to like and fund everything equally.

My response is that a truely radical mode of production can resist this tendency. That new social norms will allow a less competitive arrangemet. This required much discussion on the definition of capitalism. Chad maintained that capitalism is defined by private property ownership, and a free market. I tried to define capitalism based on a particular labor relationship. Chad cautioned against using Marx's term "exploitation" to describe this relationship, because that word carries technical baggage and is more specific than i want to be. I agrued that Chad's definition of private property was over broad, and didn't leave room for non-private property arrangements. Various examples were used, which got rather absurd and humorous. There's a boomerang collective in washington state somewhere that just makes boomerangs and gives them away, cuz they love making boomerangs and don't need to get paid to make them. But, while they're working on the boomerangs, the half-finished boomerang is "owned" by them under private property rights, so they're still capitalist. capitalism then becomes monolithic and there is no allowance for "not capitalism".

We got into a discussion of social norms. Capitalism maintains itself because private property rights are socially accepted. Capitalism requires "civil society" in which a vast majority of people do not shoplift, or swindle, or bribe, or otherwise con the system. Post-soviet russia and poland are examples of people adapting to this mindset. Shoplifting is possible. The police cannot enforce or prevent shoplifting on a grand scale. The reason most people do not just take what they need out of a store isn't because they're scared of the security guard, it's because that is not done. When you look further at this mindset it's a socially ingrained acceptance of the idea that if everyone stole from the store, then there'd be no store anymore. Therefore i ought not steal from the store. This kind of thinking is automatic and ingrained in social norms.

I propose that a different mindset can be automatic and ingrained in social norms. The post-capitalist mindset can involve the recognition of the system on a broader scale. I shouldn't shop at walmart because when everyone engages in the capitalist mode of production, unpleasant things happen, ie: externalities, inequality, crime, pollution, big government, etc etc etc. or even, I should donate money to this artist even though i could get it without paying, or download the songs for free because i want him to be able to live off creating art, because i want more art created. The post-capitalist mindset includes a solution to the free-rider problem. Not only do we not steal, we pay for things that we could get for free. Or even give away things for free with the knowledge that, if everyone gives things away for free, then i can get whatever i need.

This line of argument is uncomfortable for me, because it's impractical. I don't seek to alter the mindset of everyone, it's more important to discuss how we can get there. Chad also insists on this. Now, it seems to me that mindset shifts of this sort grow out of habits and develop in a mutually reinforcing process with new economic practices. Chad doesn't see these practices developing systemically. he admits that it is within human nature to adopt this sort of mind set 5% of israelis do it in kibbutz. But, kibbutz is not an independent self-replicating system, first of all, and secondly, if it was, that doesn't make it a replacement for capitalism.

This gets into the "alongside capitalism and subordinate" problem. If artists acheive and maintain an alternative mode of production, along with this new mindset, then all we've done is what churches and kibbutzes have always done without at any point challenging or threatening the capitalist mode of production. Replace "religion" with "art". Obviously, this is not what i want. At all.

For art to do more than religion, to actually challenge capitalism, we need to have an amoral reason that we are more efficient or otherwise superior to capitalism. I need to define efficiency quickly here, cuz people often get caught up on this. Efficiency is creating greater value with less resources (materials, equipment, labor, time). In the capitalist approach to efficiency, lesser value is created, but with much less resources, especially less of the most expensive resources: time and labor. Also, capitalism ignores many costs, steals the materials, and creates externalities. So, in today's society "efficiency" is associated with factory production of low quality objects. This does not have to be the case. The post-capitalist mode could be more efficient than the capitalist mode by creating much greater value, at the same or slightly more resources, or a shift of resources: more labor, less materials. As materials become more scarce, such a shift seems likely.

This goes back to the rise of capitalism. When the feudal property relation (divine right of kings) became a fetter on capitalist production, and the capitalism proved more efficient, the capitalists replaced the feudal system in revolutionary wars and created a new legal system based on their property relation (private property). Chad argued that a post-capitalist class won't become revolutionary until they encounter private property as a fetter on their more efficient mode of production.

I disagree. it is possible that the private property relation becomes, rather than a fetter or roadblock to post-capitalist production, simply a competitive disadvantage. It is possible that a transition will not require severe violent over-through, but a slow take over in open competition, given our more open and adaptable political and social systems. It's also possible that our political and social systems will become more rigid on this subject, that new much more prohibitive laws protecting the capitalist property relation will be written, as capitalists recognize that they are being threatened. The RIAA and intellectual property rights law seems to indicate tightening of this sort. Also, in history (i need to check this out) i kind of doubt that the divine right of kings was enforced as a law until merchants became wealthy enough to try and own land. Similarly, an alternative property relation could become outlawed once it is potentially practiced by artists.

Actually, this is kind of happening to some degree. Many artists squat in abandoned buildings, or rent out unwanted buildings for low cost and turn them into studios or performing spaces. The government then comes in and kicks them out or forces them to get an occupancy permit. Street art is another example. Squatting in an abandoned warehouse and transforming it into a vital space, creating events or experiences of value, is sort of like the other side of the free rider problem. Capitalism creates empty spaces on the train and doesn't allow people to put them to use. This is ineffcient. Punks exploit this inefficiency, put the spaces to use, hop the trains and otherwise become free riders. But at the same time, punks create communities that voluntarily support themselves, communities that don't fall victim to the free rider problem, or that manage to sustain themselves inspite of the social acceptance (even celebration) of free ridership. I suppose chad would just say that these punks are free riding on goods that capitalists create. But i think it merits further investigation. The fact that these punks are exploiting the free rider problem whenever they can (dumpstering food, hopping trains, sneaking in to concerts) and still creating small economies, means that there is a significant portion of the population who is actively confronting the free rider problem from both sides. If a solution comes, it seems likely to come from this group. My guts say part of the answer is in connection between consumer and producer.

This connection between consumer and producer is an important part of my theory. This rising consumer demand is, i think, anti-capitalist. The fact that more consumers want a connection, an understanding of where their purchases came from, especially favoring buying directly from the producer, as in hand-made craft fairs, or merch sales at concerts, indicates a distrust with the capitalist producers, and a rejection of commodity fetishism. Chad warns against using the phrase commodity fetishism because it holds a precise meaning for Marx. But i think, in this case it holds. people no longer think of objects as independent of people, as doing things on their own. Consumers today are increasingly curious about who is behind the objects and what that person's intentions and ethics are.

This demand itself gives post-capitalist producers, especially artists, a significant competitive advantage. I beleive there is objective evidence to suggest that:

1. artists are begining to develop a truely non-capitalist mode of production
2. the artists' mode of production taps the above-mentioned, and other competitive advantages
3. these competitive advantages are strong enough that they grant artists leverage to threaten and eventually replace the capitalist mode of production, either through peaceful transition or through violent response to restrictive laws.

Chad does not agree that there is any such evidence, but if there was, then he acknowledges that this is a process through which a revolutionary change could occur.

a quick list of other potential competitive advantages:
- non alienated labor, cooperation can be more efficient than competition.
- less hardwired tendencies for inequality
- fewer externalities (pollution, crime, stress related health problems, etc)
- greater attractiveness for most talented individuals.
-

Towards a Practical Revolution

2008-09-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

This document is now available online.

It's a general outline of the theory this blog is designed to explore and develop. My current primary goal is getting the research and supporting evidence for these ideas together to make a more solid argument for this theory.

Here's the basics, if you find this interesting, check out the longer document, and the rest of the blog.

1. The revolution is already beginning, i am not aiming to instigate it, only to describe it and participate in it.

2. The Proletariat is not a revolutionary class. The revolutionary class will be a third class radically different from both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (as the bourgeoisie was radically different from both serfs and nobles) The new class is developing a radically new form of economic relationships.

3. These new economic relationships will prove to be more efficient and are begining to grow a new economic system to rival and replace capitalism.

4. Political action (violent or peaceful) will be a part of this revolution only when the capitalists use state power and force to maintain their obsolete system by attempting to outlaw or inhibit the growing power of it's replacement.

5. The new economy is based on creativity. The revolutionary class is the creative class. Art is the new form of economic relations.

6. This new economy will begin in the growing art/entertainment sector of our economy, but will spread to other sectors as it proves superior to the capitalist form.

7. Live performance (theatre, live music) is the most revolutionary (and will shortly be the most popular and important) art form. If we (artists) can gain control of the live performance section of the entertainment industry, we can kick start the revolution.

Art in the Alleys

2008-09-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

There's something patronizing about this project. How can we simultaneously endorse and encourage street art of this type without also acknowledging that the origins of "street art" are in illegal graffiti?

There's something about the process by which gang tags and territory markers have become first poseur immitations then artistic statements for middle class kids, and now organized neighborhood endorsed projects of revitalization and beautification, that makes me very uncomfortable.

It becomes exceedingly clear that the laws exist not because we don't want writing or painting on walls, but because we don't want a particular class of people engaging in these or possibly any other activities.

Not a fan.

Don't Vote!

2008-09-10T18:26:00.001-07:00

I've had it with the election, in the same way that everyone else has had it with the election. Except there's one difference. I'm not going to turn around and legitimize the election by following the tired adage that "you've GOTTA vote!"

If ever there was a time when Emma Goldman's assertion that "if voting could change anything it would be illegal" was true, it is now. Recent election cycles have become a make-up slathered sham designed by tacit agreement for the mutual benefit of the parties, the media, and the campaign contributors and against the american people. This election epitomises the trend. The manufactured drama, personality based, and down-to-the-wire nature of all electioneering since media houses and parties struck it rich on the 2000 election has disenfranchised the whole American populace. It has to stop and the best way to stop it is a boycott.

The automatic responses to vote boycotting: ie "if you don't vote then you have no right to complain" or "this is america, we're a democracy, vote damn it!" are stupid populist dogmas with no content that create a closed loop of system-legitimizing circular logic. The strongest indicator that our democracy is broken is low voter turn out. If you doubt this, simply think back to all the election reform discussion that used to happen in the 90's when turn out was less than 50%. So, the result that best represents the issue positions of disatisfied citizens who want our democratic process back more than anything else is a "no" vote. Any other vote legitimizes the process. Voters validate McCain's policies by pretending that Obama represents a real response to them (or vice versa, to keep a thin semblance of non-partisanship).

Speaking of thin semblances of non-partisanship, there's a local project that needs to be addressed here. My Vote Performs is In:Site's newest project of performance art encouraging voting at all of Milwuakee's polling places. I think this is a wonderful project, anything that will get local artists to work together for a political cause on a highly visible city-wide basis makes me very happy. I love In:Site, and Peggi Taylor is awesome. But there are a few things about My Vote Performs that, well-intentioned as it is, i've got a bone to pick with.

First, "non-partisan political art" is an oxymoron. The raison d'etre of political art is to express a political stance, if you take issues, ideologies, values and everything partisan out of politics, how can you not end up expressing only empty platitudes and trite aphorisms? I'm really very curious to see what the various groups Peggi has recruited present. My Vote Performs could have escaped this problem by recruiting a wide variety of different groups and encouraging them to express whatever they'd like, presenting Milwaukeeans with a plurality of distinct and impassioned views. This might get messy, but at least it'd contain truth and genuine feeling. Of course, doing such a thing in close proximity to polling places is illegal, and it would also likely result in nearly unified pro-Obama performances. He's obviously the favorite of most artists. McCain is anti-culture and pro-censorship, so this should be no surprise.

Second, raising the voter turn out by luring people to the polls, rather than by fixing our electoral system enables politicians and officials to skirt real reform. My Vote Performs is the local grass roots equivalent of MTV's Rock the Vote. These vote promotion campaigns support the unquestioned conclusion that low voter turn out results from apathy, not disgust. Thanks to such efforts we've reached a political climate where almost EVERYONE is disillusioned with politics, but we all feel compelled to participate.

Impressions from Tour Part One: Appropriation!

2008-09-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of posts, in which i recap recent experiences and put them into a context from which relevant conclusions can be drawn. The main purpose here is to create a record of these events and my reactions to them for my own future reference. This is not the whole story of our tour, many good times good people and simple yet inspiring events or banal frustrations aren't mentioned.

To summarize: After performing with some great noise acts in Boston, we went out to a party and then a bar, and managed to have some very interesting conversations about the play, post-modern philosophy, political aesthetics, and what-not with Karl Heinz (not Karlheinz Stockhausen, khznoise) and Mike from Sharpwaist before people got too drunk. At the Lemp Arts Center in St Louis, Kate and I got into a great argument with Mark Sarich (who runs the place), and Max Woods (Peter's little brother) about everything from creative economies to social determinism. Peter had been waiting all tour for this showdown, and it met his expectations.

This group of events has given me a better handle on what is required to realize and empower the DIY artist class against capitalism. This is largely a reaction to Adorno and Horkheimer's assertion that the revolutionary opportunity has passed. I don't think it has. I think a combination of DIY production methods and ethos, "corrosive unacceptability" and content-driven, intellectually stimulating work can come together to create a movement which cannot be co-opted by the capitalists.

Lets start with Karl Heinz . Karl is a very precise and exacting musician. He's rumored to have been working for over a year on a single piece of music. He's known on "the noise board" for vitrolic comments and devastatingly honest criticism. He had a number of very specific questions and comments about the play, but soon our conversation spread to the subject of noise. I mentioned Theodore Adorno's "corrosive unacceptability" idea. That some forms or experiments in the arts could be too harsh and dissonant to be assimilated into the bourgeois entertainment machine.

If you're familiar with Adorno and this idea, skip this paragraph. For the unininitiated: Adorno is among the most pessimistic of the anti-capitalists. He and his associates claimed that "advanced capitalism had managed to contain or liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it into socialism, had passed" (Wikipedia). He believed this containment was achieved through the culture industry, that bourgeois society re-institutes itself through the forms and formulas of art, especially narrative structures, catharsis, etc. He was a musician and inspite all this pessimism he did hold out that certain music: "only through its "corrosive unacceptability" to the commercially-defined sensibilities of the middle class could new art hope to challenge dominant cultural assumptions." (wikipedia). This earned him a reference in Paint the Town.

Karl Heinz and the other musicians that we played with (indeed Peter J Woods, who we traveled with) are noise musicians. Noise has got "corrosive unacceptability" in spades but, when I brought up the possibility that noise would remain artist-owned and not be co-opted by corporate capitalism, Karl asserted that it was already happening. He's not alone in this assertion. Peter has also been known to complain about PBR swilling douchebags showing up at his noise shows. This empty hipsterism is the first stage of mainstream assimilation of an art form. Also, lets face it, many noise musicians are tapping young white male angst more directly than metal, punk and hardcore ever could. In doing so they're also tapping a huge marketing demographic, the one Hollywood lusts after with every lame comic book adaptation film they churn out. Noise might not have much life left.

But, not if we can do anything about it, and we can. First, now more than ever, independent musicians have access to the equipment and networking necessary to produce and distribute their art without the industry. Secondly, it is possible to make art unappropriateable. Karl Heinz believes that capitalism always appropriates only the surface of an art movement, not the content. I think this nexus of corrosive unacceptability, DIY empowerment, and content driven work might allow artist/revolutionaries to thrive outside of capitalism. If not today, then in the future, as these trends continue.

Unfortunately, these trends might not be continuing. Fast forward to St Louis. Mark Sarich, who has run the Lemp Arts center for 8 years, and has been an active member of the DIY punk community and experimental music academia for i don't know how long, has a much more pessimistic perspective. Over the course of my approximately 10 years of involvement with underground art, i've witnessed an expansion. I've got the impression that we're more empowered and radical today than we were when i got started. Mark, on the other hand sees us as steadily worse off.

Mark's pessimistic conclusions are supported by other older members of the theatre and arts communities i know. John Manno and John Schneider have both also described a steady decline in ambition, quality, and popularity of avant-garde or experimental art. They seem paralyzed and alienated from society, avoiding art that they automatically assume will either piss them off or dissappoint and depress them. Now, it could be that these different perspectives have more to do with our individual attitudes and lives than objective reality. I see potential and reason for optimism because i'm still young (though 30 is kinda old for naivete) and haven't yet been defeated. They despair because they're getting older, are having a harder time connecting with new talent, and are nostalgic about the past.

But, i don't think that's entirely the case. Theatre X (John Schneider's company) used to travel the country and the globe. They had much more support locally and had a good sized group of people who were able to commit fully to the company in ways Insurgent has not been able to recruit or inspire. A large part of their success (or at least sustanance) came from university gigs, and grants. These options are not available today.

The optimist in me wants to believe that things like this swing on a pendulum. That yes, in the 80s we saw a great closing of the art world on all levels. The NEA and regional theatre movement saw their budgets slashed, the grassroots hippie culture burned out and experimentation ran up against a brick wall. But the pendulum swings back. The experimentation of the 60's and 70's were a rebirth out of the mediocrity of the 50s. The 40's and 50's were a clamping down on the dada-ists and flappers of the teens and twenties. By this logic, we're in for a strong resurgence of art and experimentation.

This resurgence might be even more powerful because it is not dependent on governement money, grants, or the university system. We're building a complete network and infrastructure that is artist controlled on every level. If we succeed, our opponents won't have a rug to pull out from under us the way Reganite's gutted the NEA during the culture wars of the 80s.

But, for us to acheive this more thorough and independent success, we need to be better, work harder, and stop short-changing ourselves. The capitalists and traditionalists are getting better and better at cutting off new movements before they can even start, and many within our communities are making choices that make us vulnerable.

There are three problems: First, we're too eager to participate in the capitalist entertainment machine. Second, we sell ourselves short, trying to make our products less radical and more palatable. Third, we like irony too much.

The first two problems are simple. We go see shit like The Dark Knight and forgive it's commercialism and excess and exaggerate it's few virtues. Then we hold ourselves back from fully realizing our work for fear that it'll be too dense or inaccessible to "the commoners" we want to attract to the audience.

The local run of Paint the Town has provided good examples of this. Paint the Town is an unapologetically intellectual play. It is dense with philosopher and artist names and concepts, characters name drop everything from "the Frankfurt school" to Genet to Hegelian "determinations of the will" and Nietzsche's "slave morality." After Russ Bickerstaff (local reviewer) saw the show, he gave me a warning: "I get some of those references, but most of your audience isn't going to know them at all" and he went on to write a review that, rather than judging the piece on it's own terms, reads like an apology to the audience, who Russ assumes will be entirely confused.

And, yes, as always, there were a number of people who didn't get it, radical theatre is not for everyone, and it never will be, but Russ and others seemed to think that the play had no hope of finding an audience who could appreciate this kind of thing. Once we hit the road and got some audiences who came to the shows cold (they were there to see the bands, not the play) these naysayers were proven wrong. The references got laughs, and compliments. "It's not often i get to hear so many Marx jokes" said one audience member in Baltimore (who was originally from Milwaukee). Also, many people who didn't understand the references at all came to tell us how totally inspired they were, by the play. They bought copies of the script and other merch with great enthusiasm. It seems the people who were able to recognize that the names were shorthand, and view them as character development (these characters are people who argue with each other on that level) rather than as content, were able to focus on and follow the over-all themes of the play much better than those who got caught up on the details and frustrated when something went over their heads.

This is who i want to make art for. These people appreciate the same things in art that i do. When i go to a show that's over my head, i love puzzling it out or trying to catch up. I've sat on the edge of my seat taking notes during The Death of Empedocles. Notes which then made it into the final scenes of Paint the Town. I love going back and seeing things that puzzled or enthralled me again and again. I want more of this art produced. I want more of these audiences discovered and cultivated, so more make the jump from viewer to producer and I get to see more of it happen. One way to do that is to produce this kind of art myself and introduce it to the widest audience possible.

Another great example from this summer: i had the privilege of producing John Manno's This is Entitled: This is Entitled. This non-narrative play takes on and destroys all theatrical structures and systems of thought, and even the very idea of systems of thought at a break neck pace, and with hilarious results. It's the most "inaccessible" play ever. Russ was relieved that he wouldn't have to review it because he assumed he was the only person in the audience who got it's references to quantum physics. During one of the performances of this piece, i sat near the back of the audience, and a few rows in front of me were two boys, who came to see the show together, they were friends of one of the actors in another piece. One of them leaned back in his chair a scowling with confusion and boredom. The other, sat forward, hands on his knees and a huge grin plastered on his face, his eyes darting around the stage not wanting to miss anything. There, two rows in front of me, i saw the extremes contrasted. These two boys had come together. They shared the same backgrounds, the same culture, they could have been brothers for all i know, and they were having radically different reactions to this work.

Experimental and avant garde work is so rarely produced that there is no reliable marketing data for it, no demographic predictors, no way to categorize or pigeonhole the audience. There are people out there who will like this stuff, on a base level, and the trick is to produce it as widely and in as many unexpected contexts as possible to find those people and build a niche market. That's why the Paint the Town tour was exciting and successful. So many people came to shows expecting a few noise or metal bands and instead, they got radical theatre. Some of them hated it, but many loved it, and wanted more.

So, we can sustainably make art that has rigorous intellectual content, if we're creative enough in our presentation. We can pursue Brecht's ideal of a theatre that educates as it entertains, without simple propagandizing or catharsis-based messages. If we get out of the universities, and bring this work to the masses, we can find people who are hungry for intellectual challenges. Then we'll have the audience and the community and the demand for an art that combines non-bourgeois form with critical content, and the means to create a sustainable production apparatus that will remain out of the hands of the entertainment industry long enough for us to develop a mode of production that rivals and competes with capitalism openly.

Well, that's what could happen once we solve the first two vulnerabilities i mentioned earlier. Which brings us to the third: irony. There is a growing subculture and aesthetic within the community that epitomizes the very opposite of my goals and threatens to lead us all into the marsh of a mediocrity worse than capitalism ever imagined. This is a whole different story. One that requires a new blog post and a gut wrenching account of our experience in Providence (duhn duhn duhn!) Yes, i'm talking about the mullets and mustaches crowd. Check back in about a week, when I'll thoroughly explore this subculture in the forthcoming "Impressions of Tour Part Two: Fuck your Irony."

Insurgent Summer

2008-09-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

I don't want to go in depth about the experiences of this summer. We mounted two local long-run shows simultaneously, took part of one to the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and toured out east for two weeks with the other. Forget the details, here's the conclusions: 1. We learned a lot. 2. I hate being back in Milwaukee. 3. I find myself most motivated by revisiting and refining my theory, rather than continuing to try and apply it.

See, this theory galvanizes me. I drives me to action, very specific and direct of actions. But, it has the same effect on very few other people. This means that either: I'm crazy, my theory has not been stated clearly, or nobody gives a shit about the kind of things that i find absolutely compelling. Of those three possibilities I can only do something about the second, so i'm about to start spending more time improving the theory and stating it more clearly.

To this end, i will be posting no more reviews here for a while. Since getting back to milwaukee, going to shows and galleries has pissed me off more than anything. Not because the art isn't great, but because the audience is so obviously there for reasons other than genuinely appreciating, engaging with, or supporting the art. I'll still go see art, i love it, but i'm done trying to talk about what i see. Instead, i'll be retreating breifly into academic research and using this blog to share the developments of my theory.

You can expect future posts to deal in depth with the following subjects:

First, there's "Paint the Town" itself. This play is a theatrical statement of my theory. The creation of the play, critiques of it, experience touring with it and discussions with audience members afterward have impacted my thoughts on these subjects in many interesting ways.

Second, there's "Towards a Practical Revolution" this is a consise, general and incomplete (though more complete than any other single document) statement of my theory of political revolution through artistic production. I sold copies of this for cheap on tour, spreading the ideas to the east coast. I'm also distributing them to certain people and places locally to try and elicit feedback, communication and development. I'll be putting it up on the insurgent website soon, but it's a bit long for reading off a screen, so if you'd like a hard copy, email: insurgent.ben@gmail.com or call 414 305 9832 and I'll sell you one for $2 (to cover printing costs).

Third, I'm reading Richard Florida's "Flight of the Creative Class" and will be re-reading "The Rise of the Creative Class" taking better notes and thoroughly incorporating his findings into my theory.

Fourth, i'm continuing to have ideas and looking for additional supporting evidence to my many claims and ideas.

In the next six months i hope to get together a much longer, more thorough statement of the theory, with more supporting evidence, works cited, academic analysis of Florida, Marx, Adorno, Daisey and many others whose ideas have contributed to the theory.

I don't know what, if any, art i'll produce during this time. I hope to tour more with Paint the Town.

Theatre Education

2008-08-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

So, last night i drank some coffee, which seems to have kicked in starting at 7am, leaving me wide awake in a NYC warehouse full of sleeping musicians and artists (we hooked up with this crazy band from baltimore last night). Fortunately, i found someone's laptop, and then i found this interesting blog post about theatre education. It reminds me of things some of us have talked about in the past, so i thought i'd share.

http://feministspectator.blogspot.com/2008/08/unhappy-thespians-manifesto-on-training.html

my position on this is: if theatre education programs are too narrow, and only preparing people for careers in the established theatre institutions, a field that as it declines is becoming more and more arbitrary, close-minded and exploitative, then theatre students ought to drop out of those programs and instead get their theatre education the way that most of the theatre artists these programs teach about and romanticize did: by self-guided experimentation and creating their own theatre on their own terms.

Theatre education programs are an institution that profits and perpetuates itself just fine under the current system. The few actors who make it big give millions of students something to dream for. Theatre education programs will maximize their income from tuition if they encourage these dreams. The few educators who object to exploiting their students in this way will be taking a pass on that income, and like everything else in a capitalist system, doing the right thing gives you a competitive disadvantage, which over time will result in your replacement by less scupulous competitors. This is an institutional problem, one that will only be solved by escaping the flawed institutions.

--
insurgenttheatre.org
414 305 9832
rexwinsome.net

INSURGENT TOUR

2008-08-19T10:45:00.001-07:00

Hey Everybody, we're on tour! and it's great!

After doing the show in the alley, we've done a bar in chicago, a basement in dayton, and an open artspace in G.D. Rapids.

The audiences are bigger than the average local audience at the alchemist, and they are very attentive, excited and responsive. It's great. One of our best performances ever was in the tiny Dayton basement, with people sitting on the floor and an old couch, just a few feet away from the action. We were a little worried coming into this that people wouldn't respond to theatre in that kind of setting, that they'd chat, or hangout upstairs, but these people have been really cool. The Grand Rapids kids were really great, lots of positive energy, and bought scripts and other merch cuz they wanted more.

Kurt's set is proving very versatile and portable. We're getting better and better at packing the van, able to lean the seats back and have more space after each load in. The basement's low ceiling, and the bar's small stage forced us to adapt the set, which is really easy.

We're all getting along great so far, tackling adversity like a team (a tire blow out) and we ratified a constitution of the SS Gerald Holidy (peter's van) which thus far is working great. Eating cheap on the profits of the shows, and paying for gas with the fundraiser money (thanks again Kristine!) We've got episodes of this america life, and a slew of old time radio programs to keep us company, remember: LSMFT! Lucky Stike Means Fine Tobacco. We've also started a daily writing competition, and we're tracking the physiological effects of touring photographically.

Adapting to the different spaces, pushing the narrations, running lines on the road and giving each other notes is also causing the play to slowly evolve. After 14 shows in 17 days, when we get back it'll probably be quite a different show.

--
insurgenttheatre.org
414 305 9832
rexwinsome.net

REVIEWS- Minnesota Fringe Fest

2008-08-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

I saw about 25 shows last week. I reviewed a bunch of em. Loved many of them and hated a few. Here's my reviews:

Depth of a Moment
Best I've seen yet. by Rex Winsome Rating: 5 kitties
Wonderful experiments, performed with care and immense skill. Fay and Glassman present beautiful peices that necessitate active viewing, holding us in rapt attention as huge explorations of breif ordinary moments occur almost magically, before our eyes.

Deviants
Interdisciplinary dance theatre with content. by Rex Winsome Rating: 5 kitties
This show kicks ass. Deviants has got it all, raw energy, roughness, discipline, proficiency and commitment, honesty, daring, intelligence, process, surprise, alienation, emotion, action and cruelty. The spirit of Artaud is on stage with these people. MUST SEE!

elephant shoes, & olive juice; (mis) communication in a modern world
Adorable! by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
This cute show about misunderstandings, anachronistic communication mediums, and linguistic snafus exudes a genuine playfulness and simple unpolished joy of performance. Good times.

The Cody Rivers Show Presents: Stick to Glue
Insane Skills!! by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
The most manic, energetic hour of storytelling games and fun on stage you'll ever see. Completely off the hook conceptual sketch theatre. Tons of fun, but left feeling a little flat, cuz the themes were small and buried so deep you can barely find them.

Delirium for Two
Manic and Chilling and Fun by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
Don't get to see much (well, nowadays, any) Ionesco where i'm from, so it's exciting to catch this strange surreal tale of a couple trapped in an aparment under shelling. The actors range from manic to depressed with great energy and commitment. But, the performances are not consistantly believeable. The tech really steals the show here, creating startling moments of confusion and alienation that punctuate the action on stage and really up the stakes.

Leaving Normal
Amazing by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
Incredible energetic one woman show. Great physicality and control of body and face to create radically different characters and weave them into a poignant story about all the universal truths of the human condition, but with a totally unique presentation and voice that overcomes sentamentality and eschews cliche.

Boom
great new package for known message by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
A clever future times fairytale, incredibly witty and spectacularly performed, Boom tells today's story, a story we already know. The story of corporate irresponsibility, income disparity, governmental idiocy, facile pop entertainment and individual moral responsibilities. Will this fantastic packaging finally effectively deliver the message to the masses? Or is the message itself being ignored because it's not really inspiring or complete?

Gone, Gone, Gone
Accessible Modern Dance by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
Great playful and very accessible modern dance. I'm not big into dance in general, but i've seen my share of it, and this is the only concert that had me laughing out loud with the dancers. These two look great together, they are synthesizing great talent with having fun on stage like no other group i've seen.

The Butterfly Kisses Effect or A Post-Nuptial Log Flume towards Consensus
ingenious! by Rex Winsome Rating: 4 kitties
Great juxtaposition of erudite academia with insane hijinx. The best post-kitsch performance art I've seen. That's right, i just coined a new sub-genre: post-kitch. This highly personal, confessional tale by obviously well-educated people acting downright idiotic. I loved it!

Life Sciences
Sarte meets sketch by Rex Winsome Rating: 3 kitties
Like a sketch comedy No Exit, with uneven jokes, uneven performances, and a valient attempt at inserting intelligent themes into sketch comedy. Definitely worth checking out.

You're No Fun
Good try. by Rex Winsome Rating: 3 kitties
Most importantly: turn that keyboard down!!
Second: This is a show for theatre people about how theatre is growing dangerously irrelevant to non-theatre people. There were great performances and a lot of fun, but the show doesn't give what i hoped it would. It seems like a valient attempt to reach a subculture that i'd really like to see theatre reach, and it uses some wonderful Brechtian techniques to do so. Unfortunately, by the end, the message gets muddled. The characters fall into cliches and the play ends up just smashing the "modern hobo" type up against the "crazy theatre artist" type. A few scenes tap into a genuine sense of what's wrong with theatre or what's wrong with anarcho-punks, but the broadway musical resolution of these conflicts short circuits the critique. While funny and crowd pleasing, the end of the show occurs so completely within the theatre world that the play ends up more like an inward self-affirmation for crazy theatre artists, than the reaching-out to anarcho-punks I was hoping for.

All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage
Spinning Wheels by Rex Winsome Rating: 3 kitties
The typical complaints from indepenent third party politicos in an often witty and occasionally funny package. Over all a pretty negatory show, espousing an ideology that seems to be defined purely by the many things it stands against.

The BoyShow
mixed feelings by Rex Winsome Rating: 2 kitties
Middle class high school boys producing a show about the issues that matter to them. It's a great thing, and some of these kids have a lot of talent. Looks like all of them had a lot of fun, too. As a play, the peice too often smacks of after school special or sex ed class mixed up with an annoying kind of untimately ineffectual politically correct liberalism.

The Gypsy and the General
Not Quite by Rex Winsome Rating: 2 kitties
Some well done loop pedal created music and really creative versatile use of a few props, resulting in a handful of unique and interesting sequences, lots of fun, but the story that tied these elements together was so utterly lacking and over acted that i found myself cringing and waiting for the next scene.

JACK
Nice Puppets by Rex Winsome Rating: 2 kitties
Lovingly told puppet version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Dreamy and langorous, visually wonderful, but the meta-theatre realization at the end leaves the peice with no where more to go.

How Does a Drug Deal Become a Decent 3rd Date?
Uninsightful by Rex Winsome Rating: 1 kitty
the male actor was funny, sometimes...

Shakespeare's Land of the Dead
Less Shakespeare. MORE ZOMBIES! by Rex Winsome Rating: 1 kitty
This peice succeeded in putting someone's excessive historical education about The Greatest Playwright of All Time (TM) to some use. It even had a good parody of Sir Francis Bacon. It's well acted and looks good too. But, it fails because it uses a zombie gimick to lure in people who don't give a rat's ass about The Bard, then dissappoints us completely. The zombie threat never seemed real or compelling. All the actual drama occuring on stage relating to the zombies had no stakes at all. The zombies were dispatched too easily to make room for more Shakespeare detrius and biographical speculation, subjects that i for one wish would just please stay dead already!

Antigone...A Riff on Sophocles
Style Clash! by Rex Winsome Rating: 1 kitty
I've heard political rallies in the 60's described as some guy on an ego trip shouting at a crowd to get free by following his every demand. This production of Antigone seems to be in that tradition. The patronizing attempt to reach a younger and more diverse demographic by inserting hip hop and modern slang creates a confused clash of styles. A genuine hiphop antigone could be good, and relevant, but this production makes ancient Greece and modern hip hop go together like plaids and stripes, with a flower power pattern of overwrought contextless symbolism scattered throughout.

The Pumpkin Pie Show
Tedious. by Rex Winsome Rating: 1 kitty
If these stories were printed on paper, they'd be mildly amusing, and you probably wouldn't make it through a collection before wanting to catch some better reading. The stories start out with an utterly uninteresting cliche, something totally ordinary and safe, then expand and deepen it until tension is introduced, and the story starts to say something. Then quickly take it a few steps further, into the ridiculous and unbeleiveable (and thus, again, safe) before wrapping it up with a silly punch line. But, I guess telling these stories with ego-maniacally bad acting somehow turns them into crowd pleasers here at the fringe.

TOUR DIARY - Minnesota Fringe Kicks Ass

2008-08-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've seen like 20 plays in the last few days. Some of which were completely amazing. I wanna talk about the two best:

Deviants and Depth of a Moment

Deviants is by a MN group called Live Action Set. This is the closest to Artaud's impossible Theatre of Cruelty ideal I've ever seen. The show is packed with surprises, unexpected alterations of the reality you think they've created for you. Everything is simple and rough and incredibly intense.

Depth of a Moment is a much different, slower sort of conceptual work. Very small ideas are langourously examined and more active listening (or watching) is required than most theatre audiences today will allow, and so most theatre audiences miss out on the slow revelation or realization that can come from watching this kind of work.

Other great shows include Leaving Normal, Boom, The Cody River's show, Gone Gone Gone (a milwaukee dance group) Butterfly Kiss Effect, and You're no Fun.

TOUR DIARY- Minneapolis Fringe Fest

2008-08-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

We're in Minneapolis. Last Wednesday was our tech rehearsal, which went swimingly, we're going to be able to use everything, the cube, the sewing machines, all of it. We drove up here starting at 6 am, had our three hour rehearsal, performed in the out-of-towner showcase to great response, and then got back in the truck to drive home.

Tracy and I came back up last night (saturday) and saw three shows back to back. The massive numbers of people attending these shows, and so excited and enthusiastic about theatre has really got us pumped about performing up here. The festival is huge, and there's a wide variety of different theatre forms co-existing here, dance, performance art, solo shows, sketch comedy, burlesque, heavy experimental works, dramas, everything all happening together in a cooperative and supportive manner.

150 shows going up all around the city produced by all kinds of great companies. Bedlam theatre has a giant cardboard "DIY Plan for World Domination" standing up in their lounge, which contains their strategic plan with clippings, relevant articles and all kinds of stuff available for passersby to check out.

In our first night up here I saw more art and enthusiasm for art than I have in a year in Milwaukee.

The Art in Milwaukee Survey

2008-07-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

I used to do obnoxious, absurd surveys on the streets of milwaukee. This was before there was a theatre company, and then during and immediately following a lag in the theatre company's existence (after Tracy and I broke up, but before we knew we still wanted to do theatre together) anyway, current events have led me to do a more serious survey. A case study of art in Milwaukee.

THE QUESTIONS:
What forms of art interest you?
Where do you get your information about art?
What is the current major exhibition at MAM? (follow ups: did you see it, what'd you think?)
Name a play shown recently in Milwaukee. (follow ups: did you see it? What did you think?)
Name a gallery with a recent exhibition. (follow ups: what artists work was shown? Did you see it? What'd you think?)
Name a visual artist working in Milwaukee. (follow ups: how do you know them? Have you purchased any of their work?)
Name a movie showing at an independent or art-house cinema. (Have you seen it? What'd you think?)
Do you care about art in Milwaukee? (optional follow up: what should be done to improve things?)

THE RESULTS:
So far we've surveyed 22 people at bars or cafes (fuel cafe, and ART bAR) and catagorized respondents into three classifications: Involved, Informed, and Ignorant. Involved people know about and have seen or otherwise participated in more than one form of art on the list. The informed people were able to answer some of the questions but had actually done little more than stumble drunkenly into a gallery, or shown their own work. The Ignorant might have answered one or two questions with some level of accuracy, or seen Batman at the Oriental (which given it's current programming choices obviously CANNOT be classified as an art-house cinema anymore).

THE BREAKDOWN:
Involved: 6
Informed: 5
Ignorant: 11

almost everyone catagorized as Ignorant replied in the affirmative to the final question (Do you care about art in Milwaukee?) in spite of having just demonstrated the opposite. One group of young men outside Fuel admitted "well, i guess not. Shit."

REVIEW- Traveling Art Circus

2008-07-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last night the Traveling Art Circus closed "100 Years of Nothingness" a fun three act play to a packed house at the Off Broadway theatre.

The TAC's shows fall somewhere in the range between sketch comedy, 24 hour theatre, and the fully realized play. They've got the wit, satire, pop culture references, archtypical characters and laugh a minute puns and visual gags of great sketch comedy, the random plot twists and hyperactivity of 24 hour theatre, and the length, structure and sometimes even the craft of a complete play. When these elements come together as well as they do in "100 Years of Nothingness" you get a unique and entertaining, if still quite fluffy product.

100 Years of Nothingness follows a fictional bloodline through 3 eras of pop culture icons in the last 100 years. This conceit allows the group to indulge in a wide variety of fanciful and often amazing impressions. The old timey radio programs of the 30s, the huge awards celebrations of the 70s, and a speculative unemployment line of the 2010's (from one great depression to the next) provide settings for everyone from Groucho Marx and Gertrude Stein, to Charlton Heston and Mary Tyler Moore, to Courtney Love and Hillary Clinton, and many more to share the stage in wild mash ups of debauchery, desperation and de-volution.

The history and events portrayed go beyond being merely speculative, they are totally absurd. While charming, this doesn't illuminate much, and gets a bit repetitive. Celebrity always seems to manifest as unchecked libido and abandonned responsibilities. Then mawkish themes are tacked on to these scenes with a heavy hand, and by the end of the night we're expected to see all this random fun cohere into a message that "love and art" can shore us up against all the evils and futility of the world.

But Traveling Art Circus doesn't sell itself as anything other than art for fun's sake, and they do not dissappoint. It's clear the large cast have all had a great time bringing a great time to their audience.

The money problem

2008-07-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Our thinking about money and art is unhealthy, delusional and devisive. New art will not realize it's potential in our society until we can start having some constructive dialog on this subject. The recent exhanges between Mike Daisy (http://www.mikedaisey.com/) and Don Hall (http://donhall.blogspot.com/2008/07/friday-roundup.html) are emblematic of this craziness. We take this shit personally because we look at it in terms of values and commitments, and it's clear we've all got serious baggage about it.

We should not be asking questions like "what are you playing for?" or even "how did theatre fail america" these loaded phrases are very dramatic and can garner an immediate response, a flurry of debate, and that's great, but at some point the shouting needs to die down so we can talk practicality, compare notes, and make each other better at hammering out our own approach.

Before we can start this debate for real we need to accept the following: 1) a new economic model for art is essential. 2) none of us has the perfect solution. 3) couching this debate in terms of values, beleifs and personal commitments is not getting us anywhere. We need to look at the issue pragmatically and ask ourselves better questions. What works? What used to work and isn't anymore? What is most likely to work in the future? and How do we impliment and practice these solutions?

We'll all have different answers, cuz we're all making different art, but our projects can compliment each other, they do not have to be exclusionary. This does not have to be an us or them question.

Let me start by articulating my position. I am an entrepreneurial communist. My central goal is the empowerment of individuals against social structures through self-help. I find patronage self-defeating and self-imposed deprivation disgusting. It is my opinion that artists need to find ways to finance their art which do not compromise the art itself. Art can be compromised in two ways. First, it can sell out. The compromised artist can modify his vision to make it marketable, or appealing to donors. Second, it can sell itself short. The purist, in refusing to even encounter the problem of financing his art allows economic factors to constrain his productions or productivity. Both are compromises and neither ideal.

Mike Daisy seeks to solve this problem through institutional reform. He is trying to change the hearts and minds of arts administrators to make them more compassionate and supportive of artists and the art they're supposed to be administering. I have a problem with this approach because it requires asking administrators to sacrifice their interests for our benefit. Something that might (and has) worked for the occasional individual administrator, but will not work on an institutional level, because those admins who make their jobs harder to make our lives better will eventually tend to fail at their jobs. Admins build new buildings and spend money to make money on fundraising because that's what appeals to the donors. They cut back on paying artists because the donors don't actually give a shit about art. They'll smile and praise and dump money into anything, as long as it's in a fancy building that makes them feel fancy and special. This worked for a bit in the past, because there were enough fancy people that there was something left over to give the artists. No more. Fewer people want fancy-ness today. Now we want SUVs and big screen TVs, and internet pornography.

Don Hall, Silent Nic, and various others propose that we shun this money and these fancy donors. That we go on a campaign of making theatre that new audiences want. Beholden to no one. This is great, and i agree. The problem is, when Don, Nic, etc talk about this they villify anyone who doesn't follow the method and still claims to be an artist. They also engage in all kinds of doublethink and self-delusion. They claim that if you need money to do your work, then you must be doing big hollywood crap and seeking celebrity status or popularity. But, the fact is, they need money to do their work as well, because no one can do theatre without resources. Our money comes from self-sacrifice. We live poorly on slacker day job income, work full-time with little or no pay for theatre, and put our surplus income into our art. We do this for a couple / ten years and then give up cuz we've burned out or run into debt. To attack anyone who doesn't want to burn out with us is ridiculous. But that's what Don and many others seem to do. They paint everything in bullshit absolutist terms. Claiming that you either play for the money or you play for love of the game, but NO ONE plays theatre for the money. They divide artists into two classes in order to have an enemy close at hand to attack. We can't stop the hollywood shit machine, or Shakespeare-Ad-Nauseum, but we can cut down that sell-out Mike Daisy, right? I mean, he actually reads what we're saying, so he's vulnerable, right?

If we're going to bring new audiences and artists in, we need to bring them in to something lively and sustainable, something thriving and growing, not something that is living off our bitter sacrifices, or using us up while we've got the energy or naivite for it and then spitting us out as soon as we want or need to do anything but this one thing with our lives.

What if instead we recognize that all artists are in this together, all artists have to encounter the money problem and solve it in some way, and that the difference between Don and Mike is shades of grey, not black and white. What if we all set out to empower artists through greater cooperation, specialization, and sharing of resources?

Gilbert and George at MAM

2008-07-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

I like to take the occasional day trip to Chicago, once a year or so and the MCA is always a stop on these trips, regardless of what was showing there. A few years back Gilbert and George's exhibit made this trip to the MCA somewhat dissappointing, and rather unremarkable. When i heard G+G were coming to my town i yawned, and planned to re-examine the work in light of recent changes in my perspectives on art.

The insight of years and greater sophistication has turned my yawn into a bigger yawn and a head shake of bored disapproval.

My reading of Gilbert and George's art is: they're a couple of art students who when studying Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol decided they wanted to do the "my personality as a work of art itself" thing, and then they got shitfaced a lot and went on to do that thing, really really shallowly, but big enough that they'd get attention. These guys are a testament to the idea that alchohol and art school dampen creativity. Their large format photographs encounter issues in the most shallow and unengaging way. This is our poop. Are you shocked? Don't you poop too? What are we, preschoolers?

The sad thing is, this show (like endgame at the rep) is another awkward attempt by a large Milwaukee institution to earn some credibility by doing "provocative" art and botching it terribly. All the advertisements for the show say "brace yourself" and push the "are you angry or are you boring?" message. Traditional patrons to the museum are well-warned that they'll be offended by what they see, and people who are looking for art that speaks uncompromisingly about issues that concern them are supposed to be intrigued by these advertisements.

But Gilbert and George's work is rude enough to offend the squares without being intelligent or relevant enough to engage the enthusiasts. No one goes away happy. There are binders full of comment cards left by the veiwers of the exhibit. Most of what i saw of these cards were either: admonishing the art museum for presenting this filth, or completely bored and derogatory toward it. If the MAM is going to inspire new patrons or engage young people in art, then it needs to take a risk, and be willing to sacrifice some of the traditional patrons whose tastes are mutually exclusive with art that actually engages it's viewers.

The Theatre Problem

2008-07-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

So, i've kinda thrown my opinion of theatre around quite a bit lately. On Schmartzy's last days effort to make his MKE blog a debate forum and on a number of theatre blog comments (internet access at work expanded suddenly). Now i'm thinking a general statement of my views rather than a bunch of snarky comments would be useful.

First we need to define "theatre artist". The theatre artists i am concerned with are the ones who seek to challenge themselves by producing the kind of work that is not easily produced in the current theatre environment. You wanna do Shakespeare in a calssy auditorium? That's great. You are a theatre artist, but you are not the kind of theatre artist i am concerned with here. My solutions will not solve your problems (only a fountain of youth for your patrons can do that). I predict that my solutions will temporarily breathe new life into your shit, but in the end we're going to be replacing that ever shrinking pie you've been hoarding with a brand new one, and your share is gonna be a lot smaller.

So now we know who i'm talking to. If you aim to push theatre into a glorious new golden age by realizing the intentions of what was happening in theatre before the 80's shut everything down, if you will acheive this by focusing on new works and new mothods that utilize the strengths of the medium in the present (and future) post-virtual context then we're on the same page and we can talk about improving our lot.

Alright theatre innovators, here's the facts. First, art is business. Like it or not artists who lack business skills, organization and sense need to learn it. If you don't want to be exploited or abused your best chance is to know how to do the business end of your work yourself. You don't necessarily have to DO all the work yourself, but you need to be involved in it and capable of doing it. This goes for everyone. Actors, directors, producers, techs, and non-theatre artists too, painters and poets get fucked over just as much as we do, and need to prepare themselves. You can't just trust the company that's hired you, or the business manager you hire. If you don't make the business of your art YOUR business, then you have no one to blame but yourself when you fail.

Second fact: New theatre cannot exist under an obsolete business model. The non-profit reperatory regional theatre model (whatever you wanna call it) is broken, and as far at the theatre artists i'm concerned with go, it's irrepairable. Bourgeois patronage is a sinking ship and it's time to get in the lifeboats people.

The third fact is there are many lifeboats available to us it's only a matter of choosing one. Now is not the time to sit and ponder up a new theory on how to do things. Now is the time to act. Read some history and choose a lifeboat with your favorite hodge podge of Growtowski, Artaud, Brecht, The Living Theatre, The Wooster Group, Peter Brook, etc etc etc. There are many many great ideas that were only afforded a splash in the pan in the old theatre world. These can be great resources for the future.

So, you've hasilty picked your lifeboat (no time to be too choosy about this thing, grab one and get off the wreck!) and this is where the metaphor falls apart, cuz the fourth fact is, whichever lifeboat you've chosen, however carefully, it's going to have to be rebuilt repeatedly while you're navagating the turbulent seas in it. Luck and uncertainty play a huge role, and the only way to know how sturdy or maleable the lifeboat is, is to try it out, you might sink it, but you can try a new one. Either way, you might as well jump in now, cuz any hesitation is only cowardice. Spend an hour or two on wikipedia and on these blogs and then start a production based on your chosen hodge podge of ideas. Whatever you think might serve your aesthetics, ethics, and community.

Then, as you produce, never stop learning. Meet with critics, artistic directors of existing companys, artists in your community, retired experimenters. Once you've got a production or two under your belt these people will be more likely to give you some of their time, wether they've seen your stuff or not. Ask them out to coffee, and take notes. Also, spend more time on Wikipedia and replace your leisure reading or nightly TV watching with the biographies or works of your lifeboat's architects.

This brings us to the next fact: if you are going to participate in the revolutionizing of an art medium, that art medium is going to consume your life. Friendship? Entertainment? A relationship? A career? Only if it serves your art. That the kind of commitment the revolutionaries are making. If you wish to stand amung us, all you have to do is step up to that commitment.

The next fact, you are going to fuck up, and you've got to commit everything to the possible fuck up until it's clear it was a mistake, then get back on your feet and start again. If you're still breathing, you can still start over. I may be in the middle of one giant fuck up right now by remaining in Milwaukee Wisconsin as it goes through a sort of citywide identity crisis. Are we an art city or a bar town? Can we be both? The only way we can know is to give it 100% effort and then quit the city if we fail.

Okay, now, for my lifeboat, my recipe, my company. Insurgent theatre has been guided by the following principles since our first production in the summer of 2003.
1. Theatre must be affordable and accessible. Our productions are priced to compete with or undercut movie theatres.
2. Artists must be compensated with the full product of their labor. All profits are returned to the workers in the form of company ownership / control and callous cash payment.
3. No experience necessary, dedication required. Success has less to do with being "gifted" or "love of theatre" than with simple hard work.
4. Arts administration is anti-art. We have no fundraising, business management, or marketing branch. The company is artist-run.
5. Art must challenge and engage. We will not pander to bourgeois audiences or institutions.

We've mostly done open auditions and had some of the best luck with people who'd never been on stage before, and some of the worst experiences with the most theatre-y of people. We do a mix of full length original works, one act extravaganzas with less experienced community artists, 24 hour shows, and street theatre. All are done trial and error, all supporting each other, often working in collaboration with other local groups that share our ethic and aesthetic. We've experimented with an ensamble workshop. All administration, fundraising, and marketing work is done by a few core members with help from everyone else. We do not have non-profit status, a bank account or a legal existence. Every show we've done by ourselves has made a little money, which goes to two places: the future productions and even distribution among everyone involved in the show.

The modifications to this lifeboat that i am currently most interested in making are: 1. longer more thorough rehearsal processes that workshop the scripts and develop peices colloboratively with a quasi-ensamble atmosphere. 2. continuing to do short one-off shows and 24 hour shows to maintain a public presence. 3. touring the fringe theatre and DIY circuits with our major productions after local runs.

I hope to expand this, increase the little money we make and reduce everyone's dependency on our day jobs.

Theatre and Labor Relations

2008-07-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

There's some back-story reading necessary to provide context for this post, but, it's interesting stuff, so check it out:

Mike Daisy wrote and performs "How Theatre Failed America" and if you don't know what that is, you've got a lot more reading to do if you wanna catch up. Google it.

Teresa Eyring wrote this editorial response in the current issue of American Theatre

Mike Daisy wrote this reply.

This is what i think about it:

In these contrasting opinions I've noticed something bigger than the questions about theatre being presented. I really really like a lot of what Mike Daisy says, most of it is stuff that was obvious to me as soon as I started producing theatre and it's great to have my perspective validated by someone much more connected to the "real" theatre world.

But, i strongly disagree with Daisy's claim that theatre artists are entitled to benefits and garaunteed long-term employment. Eyring's claim that this problem doesn't exist is specious for the reasons Daisy points out, but it does open the door for my conclusion: theatre should not provide such things.

I look at these things from an economic trends perspective. The institutional patronage system that Daisy is looking for is old school capitalism. He seems to want the theatre artists to become "The Company Man". That's regressive. Corporations are doing that less in every sector because innovators found greater efficiency in loose freelance, subcontracting and flextime arrangements. Trying to establish (or re-establish) old school capitalism on theatre artists where it seems doubly inappropriate given casting and the project orientated nature of theatre work, is bound to fail, as it should be.

It was the creative class that spearheaded this rearrangement of labor relations, and yes, the transition is sloppy, leaves people out of things like health insurance and benefits, but as labor relations go, freelancing and shifting employment can empower workers as well as benefiting companies. What's more, it's a radically different labor relation, which is a step toward a post-capitalist society, something i think theatre will be VERY invovled in.

REVIEW- Triptych

2008-06-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

This excellent and unique presentation of three mediums colliding in different contexts has got me thinking. Thinking perhaps unintended things, but that's what great art does, it puts the audience in a weird headspace and compells them to come to totally unexpected conclusions. But, i'm getting ahead of myself, cuz this is a review of something complex and praiseworthy, and my provoked thoughts are less important than the work itself, and with how big and complex the work, this is already going to be too long of a review.

Especially since i've gotta mention another tangent first: I stopped at Inova downstairs for a minute before Triptych started. They are displaying 5 works that were supposed to be public art back in the 80s, but apparently never made it through the beaurocracy, inspiring a playful protest by the sculptor. I love the fact that Inova is contributing some history to the present debate on the woeful state of Milwaukee's public art administration. Thank you!

Okay, on to Triptych:

Three artists' work are combined in three different ways in three different rooms refered to as "panels" in this elaborate peice. For the first panel you are ushered to the 6th floor of Kennilworth to view the three disciplines mostly isolated from each other. First you view dense complex pencil drawings by Leslie Vansen hanging in the hallways. Reading the program you discover that Vansen is a teacher at UWM and that these drawings are composed of layered manual partial reproductions of some of her students' sketchbooks. Even without this great concept, the work is engaging and interesting. Pages covered with so many patterns they become chaos, the drawings look like they should be precise things, as solid as a scientific proof or a blueprint, but the removal of certain elements and layering of so many contradictory lines make it all ephemeral, flickering with movement, impossible to look at, like a sprite in your periphery vision that flits away when you look directly at it.

The second room on the 6th floor was an experimental percussion work by Christopher Burns, played by Christopher Froh. This intriguing exploration of texture and complex rythem was incredibly precise, well performed, and dynamic. But I felt held at a distance from it. I'm used to seeing this kind of thing performed by Ettrick or Jon Mueller, in raw live performances using all the same techniques, but without the written score or the constrained perfectionism. I'm used to dancing epileptically to this kind of shit, and politely sitting in a chair with the knowledge that the end comes at the bottom right corner of the sheet of paper spread in front of the drummer takes a whole lot away from the experience for me.

The third room on the 6th floor featured Predella, a HUGE modern dance peice by Luc Vanier. Modern dance is one of the most foreign art mediums for me. I do not understand what is going on. All i can say about the half dozen modern dance peices i've seen is that i've just been impressed as hell by the dancers' ability and obvious commitment, but i haven't been able to understand or engage much with the work. I have some personal baggage in this area, ballet classes i was coerced into taking into my already awkward middle school years and a love of disorganized dionysian dancing in a crowd (even if i'm the only one) have kinda soured me on choreographed dance. This is the most unjustifiable of my many biases, and i'm glad Triptych got me more exposure by combining it with other mediums that interest me more. Especially since i felt this was the best modern dance i have seen. This conclusion might be ignorant and irritating to real dance afficianados, cuz it mostly results from the fact that with too many dancers at too close proximity i couldn't watch them all and this somehow made it more compelling.

The next panel combines these three mediums into one colloboarative interacting peice. Predella was danced to Christopher Burn's music recorded, filtered, remixed and then piped in through speakers. This apparent convention of modern dance done to recorded music is one of the things that irks me about it. This second panel defies the convention, and we get to watch smaller groups of dancers, doing more intimate work, accompanied by live vibraphone and cymbals. Projected animations inspired by Leslie Vansen and controlled by video recognition software accompany and interact with the dancers. These animations don't quite work for me, i'm not sure why, they'd make a really nice screen saver, and they don't detract from the dancers, but they are too digital, too computer generated and crisp for my aesthetic taste. Again, the dancing and the music are impressive and enjoyable.

But, its the final panel that's really got me excited about this work. The first panel introduced the three seperate artists, the second panel combined them and this third panel introduces the spectator directly into the work. You leave the room where the dancing happened and enter a maze of white sheets with more of Leslie Vansen's imagry projected on it. Scattered through this maze, side-lit by the projections, and rendered to silouette by the sheets, the dancers lie on the ground in various attitudes. A music composition made with computer scrambled vocals generated by the artists talking about the work itself fills the space and after a few minutes the audience is scattered through the maze along with the dancers. Then the recorded music stops, Froh starts playing a different version of the peice from panel one and the dancers start moving.

It's this completely unique and immersive experience that got me thinking. Throughout the final section i was aching with a temptation to somehow "touch the art" i wanted to speak to, sit by, or dance with the dancers, i wanted to move the white sheets and manipulate the images on them, i wanted to play, and i suspect that the authors of the work wanted us to play. Triptych's playbill is full of artist statements, descriptions of the works, and invitations to discuss and understand what's going on. It risks being pedantic (this is a school). Luc Vanier rode the evelvator between the floors halfway through the show with some of us, and talked genially about how two dancers had slipped and collided in last night's performance. At one point in this final section the dancers move through the maze, forcing the audience to get out of their way, and one even gently pushed me down a dead end. The art touched me.

But i still couldn't touch the art until the music stopped the curtain came up and the lights shifted to indicate that the peice was over. The art world programming is too strong, the setting somehow still to sterile, the performances too perfect and clean. I greatly commend the authors of triptych for this valient effort to break the rules of the art world from the belly of the beast, and i hope that some other audience members were more able to do their part.

Review- Gentleman's Hour

2008-06-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

I do not like sketch comedy and improv, but last Sunday I unexpectedly found myself at The Alchemist with an hour to kill just as the Gentleman's Hour was about to start one of their bi-weekly shows. I'd heard good things about this sketch and improv group and even though my expectations for sketch and improv are generally set deeply into the negative, I've been meaning to check these guys out.

I wasn't convinced to radically change my mind on the genre, but I did find myself genuninely laughing with some frequency. More than I expected.

The show starts with a series of sketches interspersed with video, breaks for intermission and comes back for a second half of long form improv. As with other shows following this format, the improv is better than the sketch, and the video is mostly tedious. These actors are good at what they do, the writing packs in jokes, and the group occasionally defies deadly conventions enough to be interesting to someone who despises pop-culture reference, cliche and all other sketch comedy tripe.

Gentleman's Hour does sketch comedy and improv well, but does not overcome the (in my view) fatal flaws of the form. These are all things that make me bored, but they also make most sketch and improv audiences roll in the isles somehow. So, taken as suggestions, the things i need changed about sketch comedy would probably sink any sketch comedy group, as i make up a much smaller demographic than sketch comedy audiences, so i should be ignored. But i'll enumerate my needs anyway.

1. The skits fail to inform, challenge, or critically engage with the audience on anything even vaguely approaching a relevant issue or concern (what happened to meaty satire, folks?).
2. There is a lack of the unexpected or strange. Most of the jokes are predictable and unfunny.
3. The improv is not genuinely spontaneous or original. Actors pull stereo-types and ready-made characters, facial expressions, voices, and plot twists from their personal bag of tricks.
4. Irony is applied in a way that i hate. Bad jokes are made with a sigh, rolled eyes, or abrupt pauses to indicate that the joker knows how lame the joke is, which supposedly magically turns the un-funny into the funny. I am completely immune to this magic for some reason and see this technique as a cop-out, laziness on the part of the writer and or lack of talent on the part of the actor. People are funniest when they are dead serious and fully committed to their actions, no matter how absurd or stupid.
5. pop culture references. I don't watch enough TV to get most of them, and when i do get the reference i cannot understand why repeating the stuff of Hollywood or TV land is supposed to be humorous.

Review- Armoury Opening

2008-06-22T08:45:00.001-07:00

Another Visual Art Review from Rex Winsome...

The Armoury gallery opened their second show this weekend. Four artist's works were displayed: collage paintings from Dan Schank, abstract paintings from Elizabeth Ann Lopez, and an installation by Mark Schrieber and Erik Baden.

Dank Schank's cut paper and gouche works depict icons of comfort attempting to stave off dark storms and ominous caverns, through a lens of childlike decoration. Many of these works remind me of Salvador Dali's assertion that restful sleep requires a complex system of subconscious props and crutches. Schank's mounds of clothes and billowy quilted comforters propped up by splintered wooden structures can be read as an doomed arrangement of such props and crutches, set up against massive puffy black clouds, perpetual storms and endless musty caves. Schank uses formal decisions to reinforce the tension found in the content of the work. His use of pattern, decoration and smooth pastel line work flatten and abstract the images, while the cut paper, forms and layered collage attempt to create depth and representation.

The installation by Mark Schrieber and Erik Baden seem incompletely realized or represented. An awkward machine with spinning lights cavorts in irregular circles on the floor of a darkened room with waves of black markings creating a sort of hilly horizon on the walls. Clusters of letter and number blocks from a printing press also hang on the walls. I wasn't sure what to think of this peice, the dense clouds of small black marks are visually interesting, the machine on the floor looked complicated, but hastily constructed, the light show wasn't focused enough to contribute much. The Armoury's press release discusses mechanical drawing, so presumably the machine on the floor somehow created the markings on the wall, but I can't understand how. The piece would've been far more interesting if I could've understood the relationship between the elements invoved while viewing it.

The best and worst works in the show came from Elizabeth Anne Lopez. When most successful, Lopez's work befuddles and disturbs the viewer. Her day glow intersecting lines and decorative patterns destroy fields of color, scatter perspective and defeat the representative elements of the paintings. "Sleepless Arabian Nights" is most successful in this way. At first glance, the painting looks like random assortments of half realized objects, patterns, and color fields but once you allow your eye to enter the painting various avenues of understanding or placement are suggested. Following these, you quickly find they go nowhere and you're pushed back to the surface to find another dead end road. It's a wonderfully frustrating viewing experience. The less successful works are less complicated, too clumsily representational, or lacking the muddy color fields and neon line work that make the other works so successful.

This well-organized show of unique and interesting work by upcoming and semi-established artists, with a good balance of installation, large fine art works, and smaller more purchasable works makes The Armoury an exciting and hopefully sustainable addition to the Milwaukee visual art scene.

Rex Winsome insurgenttheatre.org 414 305 9832

REVEIW- White Whale Collective, Borg Ward, Spackle

2008-06-10T11:54:00.001-07:00

Some friends and I rode down to Walker's Point to check out some visual art last saturday.

We hit up White Whale Collective, the Borg Ward, and Spackle Gallery.

First stop: The White Whale Collective's 'Mountains and Anthills'. Some great work here, my favorite stop of the day. A large format pen and ink drawing by Kathleen Nelson reaches out to you as you enter the space. This woman's body as fantastical landscape rendered in beautiful black ink on rough paper gives the impression of an imagined alternative anatomy for the human body, with patterns layered over the form inviting your eye inward, to mysterious caverns created of spider web lines. Marcus Wichman's photos of exterior landscapes carefully superimposed on bare industrial interiors create visually compelling and uniquely stated commentary on urban sprawl and big-box development. But, Julia Schilling and Emily Siegel Belknap's work stand out above these and the others. Belknap's installation of a miniature wood stick fence and thin threat horizon line around the perimiter of a small room evokes the peace and comfort of the beach, while maintaining a distance through miniturization that allows us to imagine when such things will no longer be available. Julia Schilling's limited use of materials (blue ink, sheet metal, paper) create a wonderful cold formal and uninviting landscape. My favorite peice in the gallery is a sheet of metal, etched with a complex topographical map, then the blueprint of a house. This is covered in blue ink, sometimes etched away sometimes filling the grooves, and accompanied by a smaller peice with stencil cut out letters that morph into ameboa-like shapes defined by the contours of the map as they bridge the gap between the two peices and then invade the house blueprint throught he windows and door. The way this explores the relationships between domesticity, landscape, cartography and the world of platonic forms expressed through overlapping letters forming garbled text intrigues me.

After having some raspberry ginger ale with the friendly hosts at White Whale, we walked a block down to the Borg Ward. I love this place. A punk rock venue that also houses a serious art gallery, i hope they can keep it alive because the cross-medium synergy in such an accessible DIY space is inspiring.

The Borg Ward's Juried Sculpture Show is a mixed bag. There are some amazing conceptual works in mediums and processes i've heard of but haven't quite seen, especially not locally. Some less conceptual but beautifully crafted work, and some stuff that didn't really interest me at all. Madeline McGrath's soap slabs with photographic images of city streets pressed or printed or i'm not really sure how they got on there, were covered with beads of condensation that slowly wore off the image. I like to think this was intentionally planned for the humid weekend in the un-climate-controlled space, and not a happy accident, because the result was delicate, site-specific, temporary, and conceptually perfect. Viewers could see the process of gentrification degrading a unique and interesting neighborhood, replacing it with bland, clean whiteness. Other interesting conceptual works include Erin Garber Pearson's sculptures of ornamental manufactured forms sprouting with grass or hair. These works provoke a re-evaluation of these definitions. Is the sod in the music box any less artificial than the cast iron composing the box? How about the song the box plays? Another peice involving the manufacture of natural materials is the delicate and beautiful "Collar" by Ashley Morgan. The bones of a dozen or so small animals have been glued together to form a fragile sloping collar.

We left the borg ward and pedaled down to Bayview to see what Spackle had to offer. 'Peculiar Creatures, Charming Beasts' is a collection of small paintings drawings and collages from two artists, Delaney Jane Larson, from New York, and Spackle member Tara Klamrowski. Both artists create small two dimensional works that feature adorably pathetic figures as their subjects. Larson's collages and drawings evoke edward gory, but include cut out eyes from playing cards as a recognizable sign for the viewers. The peices lack the restraint and ambiguity that make Gory's work so timeless and interesting, replacing it instead with a heavy dollop of precious frowns and outright sadness (as opposed to a more interesting apathy or ennui). Klamrowski's paintings make this mistake even moreso. This work is very nice, and much more easily saleable than the large format and conceptual work at the other galleries. If you want to buy something cute to hang on your wall at NYC art gallery prices, swing by Spackle, but if you wanna see Milwaukee artists striding out toward the boundaries of artistic expression, do not miss the shows at the White Whale Collective or Borg Ward.

-Rex Winsome

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insurgenttheatre.org
414 305 9832
rexwinsome.net

A Response to Combat Theatre

2008-06-10T07:20:00.001-07:00

It must be stated that the opinions expressed by Rex Winsome on this blog, or anywhere else in the world are, like any editorial or opinion piece, the opinions of Rex Winsome only, and not Insurgent Theatre, blogspot, or any other organization or individual associated with Winsome. I thought this went without saying, and I was wrong. Also, it should be pointed out that Rex Winsome is not a "horribly dressed blonde", but rather one of her "entourage" y'know, with the bad haircut.

My review stated my interpretation or perception of the show. This is how it works "as far as I can tell". I was misinformed regarding the payment of actors and crew, but I stand by the rest of my statements, and I feel that I, like any theatre goer or art viewer, should be allowed to have an opinion of the art I've viewed, and should feel free to share this opinion publicly.

You'll notice that my review, however harsh or misinformed, has a few virtues that the comments on it lack. First, I own up to my opinions by putting my name on it. Second, my review does not contain personal insults or ad hominem attacks. Third, I've read more than one book and I know what I'm talking about (who was it that said "no one would dare call Shakespeare deadly?" Do you not realize that Peter Brook first coined the term in reference to Shakespeare and that your ignorant absolutist defense of Shakespeare supports the contention that he's deadly?)

I think polite silence stunts the growth of an artistic community, especially when the public silence is there to protect such highly defensive reactionaries from honest criticism. If you read further on my blog I hope you will see that I review most shows that I see and I see as many shows as I can. I think frank critical responses are an important part of a mature theatre scene, and hope to see more of them in this city.

This city's theatre community (indeed this nation's theatre community) needs to stop being stunted in this way. Milwaukee is suffering a dearth of challenging, immediate, rough theatre so deep that even the Journal Sentinel had to point it out last season. I have no further agenda than sharing my opinion and encouraging more people to share their opinions, preferably with author attribution and without ad hominem attacks, but I'll take what i can get (by the way, thank you guys for the feedback on Cracks in the Floor).

I have no greater desire than to make good theatre in a mature theatre community, even if I have to help thicken some skins to achieve that community. Perhaps I'll regret attempting such a thing in Milwaukee, but I'm not done trying yet.

Review - Small Objects Fly Toward Heaven

2008-06-09T15:32:00.001-07:00

I saw Deborah Clifton and Peggi Hong's Small Objects Fly to Heaven Friday night. This original collection of vignettes that flow naturally together brings the complex real world perspectives on the Iraq war to the City of Milwaukee with grace and beauty. The text was almost all derived from various blogs, presented in amusing and touching situations that center on and celebrate diversity and humanity's ability to persevere inspite of the messes we make of each other.

The content is fresh and relevant. These blog entries tell simple stories from common real-world voices struggling in extreme situations. The way Hong, Clifton and company bring these common voices together creates a historical record of the present day that approaches Barbara Krueger's ideal of history as a "crowd of voices". The show won't change your opinion much because it doesn't make a concise elegant statement on the war. It doesn't tell you what to think. Instead it trusts the audience with the competing perspectives of US soldiers, american consumers, and Iraqi civilians at the same time. We are to be informed by all equally, and are held responsible for the conclusions we draw.

At it's best, all these perspectives are portrayed sympathetically, as all valid inspite of the fact that they compete with each other. There are a few moments that fall short of this ideal. The couple shallow american girls are portrayed as cliche's of such, denying them this treatment. It's hard to sympathize with such people, but i wish the ensamble has risen to the challenge, and included a radical anti-american Iraqi perspective as well (anti-Bush bumpersticker slogans don't count, no matter how pleased the audience seemed to be with them).

At times the show slowed down or went on a tangent and it included a fair amount of new age pandering to a middle class female audience, but these flaws were tolerable distractions from the other themes in the show. Beautiful drawings and pleasant folk songs augmented the mood and setting of the play and made this celebration of womanhood (something I generally do not condone, prefering a post-gendered stance) immersive and enjoyable.

Review- Bunny Gumbo's Combat Theatre

2008-06-09T13:13:00.001-07:00

My friends and I saw Bunny Gumbo's Combat Theatre the other night. This was a horrible angering mistake. The Combat Theatre process, as far as i can tell, is as follows: Jim Fletcher invites his friends and people he knows to participate in the show. He assembles a very large cast and crew from the local theatre community, gives each person one distinct role, which can be acheived in a few (i'd guess at max 8) hours, and then bribes them to beg their friends and family to give Jim $18 each.

With a casting process based on friendships, not merit, a pyramid scheme supported by an absurdly large cast (whoever brings the most audience gets $100, everyone else gets nothing) as a promotion system, randomly selected subjects and locations that are so obvious, they all but write the play themselves, writers too lazy to do much of anything challenging or creative with these ready-made script set-ups, actors who rarely play anything but the most worn out imitations of facile stereotypes (with a few notable exceptions) ridiculously high ticket prices and an audience who is only there to see their friend or family member acting goofy, it's no wonder Bunny Gumbo crawls up near the top of the deadliest theatre i've seen.

Deadly Theatre, a term coined by Peter Brook, is theatre that nobody actually likes. We just go through the motions of liking it because we think we're supposed to. It's Shakespeare. It's a stale cliche, an old joke, something that we laugh at or attend, or promote because it's so familiar that doing so is socially ingrained. We go because for whatever reason, we ought to, not because we want to. It's deadly because it's an unsustainable scam, sinking the medium of theatre in a bog of mediocrity and social niceity. Most of what hit the stage in Saturday night's Combat was deadly.

Bunny Gumbo promotes themselves as though they are producing edgy original works, as though this 24 hour theatre production is an impressive feat. But these works would only be edgy to pre-school teachers, original to a recently dethawed cro-magnons, and impressive to someone who hasn't participated in producing similar shows. To someone who has produced the 24 hour staging of a dozen plays written in 10 minutes, or the 24 hour writing and staging of a full length musical, both with everyone taking multiple much larger roles that actually require them to lose sleep and experience stress, and both with far more merit, originality, and watchability (though less audience) than what Combat produced, (not to mention full sets and almost no budget), to someone who's done that, Combat Theatre is an insult, it's a fucking scam. It's a bunch of theatre people having a party and charging $18 for the privledge of watching them play.

Review - Fat Pig

2008-05-20T12:48:00.001-07:00

Fat Pig at Renaissance Theater Works promised me it'd be offensive, controversial, shocking and uncompromising. I realize that's just marketing, but still, if someone like me was going to be swept away by any show at the BTC this season, it would either be this, or Chamber's Crime and Punnishment. The Dostoyevsky play turned out to be a book report, immensely upstaged by a production of Notes From Underground that I saw in a tiny room by candlelight a few weeks later (i'll never stop talking about that show) so i was banking on Fat Pig.

But I was let down. Fat Pig was dull and pointless. I mainly blame the writer, Neil LaBute, though. His script can be summed up as: In our society, people who have weight problems also have social and romantic problems, especially if they get involved with shallow assholes. You don't need to write a play about this, and if you do, you had better do something with it that goes beyond the basic conclusions one could draw if they thought about, or saw a "fat pig" on the street for two minutes.

The play starts with a chance meeting between Helen, an oversized but interesting and attractive woman, and a Tom, completely dull but well-built man. The two get involved, and a couple of harpies at his useless office job can't stand to think about it, or stop talking about it. There's only two ways this can go, and ten minutes in, anyone but the most naive will know this story won't come to the happy one. The fact that Tom doesn't throw these obnoxious co-workers out the window in their first scene together, or that he's friends with them in the first place cements that he will eventually succumb to their pressure, and leave Helen.

On stage, I saw capable actors crippled by the limitations of this script. Even Wayne T Carr, who starred in the best locally produced theatre I've seen (as Booth in Topdog/Underdog, also brought to us by Renaissance) failed to overcome the limitations of his role, and when I heard a room full of rich white women chuckle at some bit of 'funny black man' business he indulged in halfway through the second act, I was immediately reminded of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, and couldn't help but lose a little respect for the guy. On the whole, the actors (or maybe the director?) were unable to develop chemistry, or maintain interesting character they went through the completely predictable uninspired roles they played.

Maybe my political bias is at fault, but I failed to have a even moment of sympathy or concern for the bourgeois white collar drama queens and pricks that were supposed to balance against Helen to make Tom's tribulations into a dramatic conflict. Without any identification with these characters, I couldn't see Tom as anything but equally insipid. The only person to give a shit about at all is Helen, and even she is reduced to a symbol. Tanya Saracho played the part well initially, but she was ground down as the play went on. The fact that for the length of the play we never deviate a moment off of the topic of the social dimensions of her body, makes any interest surrounding her character evaporate quickly. There are deeper, more interesting things that can (and have elsewhere) been explored on the subject of weight and body image. Opportunities to indict Tom for a sort of sexual tourism, or to explore a prurient vicarious - even oedipal - motive for his co-worker's probing curiousity were brushed past in favor of this sentimental romance, and the result is far from offensive.

Making Trouble on the Art Blogs Again

2008-05-15T10:16:00.001-07:00

I recently posted a comment on local DIY visual artists who are getting shit from the mainstream press, probably at the urging from whiney artists. I went out on a limb to defend people who probably would rather not have my help cuz i tend to throw gasoline on fires.

Anyway, it's here:

http://blogs.jsonline.com/artcity/archive/2008/05/14/milwaukee-international-reverse-discrimination.aspx

Why My Political Science Degree is Useless.

2008-05-15T08:24:00.001-07:00

As if i need more evidence against academia...

I just spent an hour and a half working on a new start to the direct statement of my philosophical / political theory, a manifesto of sorts. Every time i try to fucking write this two things happen:

First, i get caught up in bashing the opposition, talking about the "patched black denim anarchists" or the "loose-woven hemp idealists" who are so "bogged down in the morass of utopian idealism and obsolete moral altruism" to honestly puruse the "goal of challenging or even understanding the capitalist system" When i read this shit back to myself, it seems well-stated and cutting, but also incredibly petty and isolating. Like a double-negative.

Second, i get really really pissed off whenever i'm interupted. It's like i feel somehow entitled to spew off on my political opinions. When i'm interupted while writing a play i react to it as a reminder of how lucky i am to have a job where i have so much free time. When i'm writing philosophy, i scream inside my head and clench my jaw whenever the door opens, the phone rings or a truck arrives to deliver something.

In these ways i fall into exactly the kind of assholery that i'm trying to critique. if the medium is the message, then the message of polemical debate is inevitably bitter whiney bitching, and thus a political philosophy education is merely training for how to be a snarky little shithead who's whole purpose in life is to eat other peoples shit and then throw it back at them. fucking pointless.

I want to have this manifesto to distribute on tour with Paint the Town, I want to refer people to a direct statement of what i think or see happening, of what we're trying to do, but i can't get the tone right. I try to make it a wholly positive statement, but i worry then that it won't distinguish itself from the prevailing (and useless) ideologies. i envision legions of hippies nodding their heads, saying "right on, man, right on!" and then going on with their perspective and their actions entirely unchanged. I'm describing a radically different approach or mindset, and can't do so without critiquing the present approach as a point of contrast. I also can't do it without providing supporting evidence or reference to somewhat esoteric texts which are horribly misunderstood by our present society. I'm talking about Marx. Between the USSR and the Red Scare further development or critique of Marxism is really nigh impossible today because you have to correct all the wrong prevailing notions about Marx (the ones that led him to say "i'm not a Marxist") before you can then correct the things Marx himself was actually wrong about. By the time you're done with that people are either staring at you with a glazed look on their face cuz they just don't give a shit, or they're thinking, "well, he obviously must be confused, does he agree with Marx or not?"