The Coming Insurrection

"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.

Tour Report: The PHX Fringe

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

Discussion at Bedlam

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.

Chat with Chad

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.
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On Marx

So, I've been thinking a little bit about Marxism... it's been a few years since my serious studies of Marx, but i think i can still clarify a little bit of the distinction between myself and Marx, and thereby between myself and soviet style communists, Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc etc...

I agree with Marx on how history works and on how capitalism works, for the most part.

Where i think he went wrong primarily is in the outlines of a revolutionary change. He doesn't want to say a lot about this. Because, we can't know the nature of the revolution until it begins happening. He does give some information, which isn't completely consistent throughout his career, but the conclusion that many of his followers drew was wrong headed, and to some degree at some time, he agreed with them. His actions were directed toward that sort of revolution.

He believed that the proletariat was a revolutionary class, and that the proletariat revolution would be the last revolution. He thought capitalism was so effective in the way it organized massive numbers of people into factories that it would eventually result in those masses developing a class consciousness, rising up, and appropriating the factories and the entire economic and social system.

Many modern communists will argue that this theory is not necessarily flawed because it has not been tested. The Russian application of this process was totally fucked, capitalism wasn't fully developed in those countries, etc etc. but i argue that the theory itself is also flawed.

If you look at history, at Marx's understanding of how the capitalist revolution happened, it's a totally different process than what he thought would happen in a communist revolution.

A basic outline of feudalism-to-capitalism:

there were two major classes, nobility (lords) and peasantry (serfs). The lords ruled based on divine right of kings, inheritance and brute force. The serfs provided labor in exchange for protection from neighboring lords or from barbarians. the economy was primarily agriculture based. the primary economic arrangement was ownership, consensual slavery, serfdom. A third class developed, the bourgeoisie (merchants). They worked under a new system (capitalism). They embraced new technologies (factories, manufacturing plants). They focused on a different sort of product (commodities). They had a more efficient mode of production (exploitation). They created a new working class (the proletariat). Their system was superior to the existing system, more efficient. The nobility kept the bourgeoisie down through force and law, rules of land ownership. No matter how much money the capitalists had, they could not own land and had to work with the king's consent. Eventually capitalists became so wealthy, their system so superior that they were able to rise up overthrow and replace the existing system (with help from the serfs who they promised things like freedom and opportunity). The capitalists then set up their system, exploited the serfs and turned them into the proletariat.

The Communist revolution described by Marx follows a significantly different format than this. His revolution doesn't include a third, rising class, it doesn't include a period of both economic systems existing side by side with the obsolete one using state power to syphon off the wealth of the new more efficient mode. If history followed Marx's prescription for revolutionary change, it would involve the masses of serfs gaining class consciousness and rising up to steal the crown from the king. That idea is absurd and not really revolutionary, the base relationships of the system would either be unchanged or would be abolished without a replacement.

The history of failed communist revolutions are similar. Soviet Russia set up the capitalist system, except with the state in the place of the bourgeoisie. Mao in China began revolutions against his own government, called for a permanent revolution. The Khmer Rouge became homocidally desperate in their search for a replacement for the abolished system.

my outline of the capitalism-to-communism:

Two major classes, bourgeois (investors) and proletariat (labor). The investors rule based on private property rights, inheritance and brute force. The workers provide labor in exchange for wages. The economy is primarily commodity based. The primary economic arrangement is exploitation, wage slavery, appropriation of surplus value. A third class is developing, the creative class (artists). We work under a new system (art). We embrace new technologies (the Internet). We focus on a different sort of product (entertainment). We have a more efficient mode of production (cooperation). Our system is superior to the existing system, more efficient. The capitalists keep us down through force and law, rules of copyright and intellectual property. But we are becoming more independent, our system is so superior that will soon be able to rise up, overthrow and replace the existing system.

I'm not totally faulting Marx here. He was very responsible in not describing the revolution in detail, and he was right. There's no way he or his contemporaries could predict this sort of situation, but it is observably happening in our society today.

Just look at the music industry. The big five companies are all struggling, blaming all kinds of outside forces, trying to change the laws in their favor, and trying to make the new system fit into the boundaries of the old (iTunes, fake indie labels, alternative workplace designs). at the same time, independent labels are thriving and independent artists are able to organize their own tours and promote their product without any labels at all. Our music is better than their music. An empowered artist is a more efficient worker, making a better product at lower cost, than a bunch of career songwriters and marketing teams hiding behind the glow of their pop icons.

A General Outline

This is the simplest statement of how i see the revolution happening that i can muster at this point. It's light on evidence and assumes some basic knowledge of Marx. Hopefully, with other posts i will back up and reference these statements, but for now, it's an outline of assumtions. I'll surely need to edit this, but i am going to keep the post here as a beginning point for anyone interested in my theory.

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 will evolve into an 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 (exploitation).

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