5 Things: Maker Edition

On Writing and Not Writing: An Interview with Joanna Laurens by Hannah Silva. 

It Is Broke, We Should Probably Fix It: The Non-Profit Model and the Arts by Alexis Clements. Pretty self-explanatory. Clements offers an insightful explication of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex and discusses how the findings apply to arts organizations. 

What You See by Bill Birkson.

How Lester Bangs Taught Me To Read by Maria Bustillos. (Lester inspired my thesis, among other things.)

Women in Downtown Theatre: Producing Your Own Work. Young Jean Lee. 

Social Practice and Performance by Andy Horwitz. 

Bonus: 

Not Fade Away: On Living, Dying and the Digital Afterlife by Maria Bustillos.

Course On Midwest Culture: The Paradox of Heartland Rock by Kenyon Gradert.

mapping the nightmare by M. John Harrison.

Mellencamp's cover of Born in the USA is heavily edited (for whatever reason).

What's missing:
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said son if it was up to me
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said son, don't you understand

I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone

He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go

Lyrics here.

Big List: It's Really Big Edition

Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenberger.  Porchlight Theatre Company. Closes September 8.

Precious Little by Madeline George. Shotgun Players. Through September 16.

San Francisco Fringe Festival 2012. Exit Theatre. Through September 16. 

Port Out, Starboard Home by Sheila Callaghan. Fool's Fury. September 10 through 23.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz. Aurora Theatre Company. Through September 30.

Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odetts. The Imaginists. Through September 22.

Dogsbody by Erik Ehn. Intersection for the Arts September 20 - 22.

Fresh From the Oven by Amara Tabor Smith. Counterpulse (off site performance). September 22.
Invasion by Jonas Hassen Khemiri. Crowded Fire. Through September 29.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Cal Shakes. September 19 through October 14.

Collapse by Allison Moore. Renegade Theatre Experiment. Through September 29.

Turbulence (a dance about the economy) by Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero. YBCA. September 27 through 29.

Homo File by Seth Eisen & FML by Xandra Ibarra. Counterpulse. September 27 through 29.

Assassins by Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman. Shotgun Players. September 26 through October 28.

Einstein on the Beach by Robert Wilson & Philip Glass. Cal Performances. October 26 through 28.

Fran Leibowitz. Cal Performances. November 15.

whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir by Eve Sussman. SFMOMA. September 27 through 30.

Cindy Sherman. SFMOMA through October 8.

Field Conditions. SFMOMA. Through January 6.

TBA Festival 2012. Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. Through September 16. 

Biography of Physical Sensation adapted by Jon Becraft & Kelli Fitzgibbon (original concept by Rubber Rep). Baby Horse Theatre. September 21 - 22, 28 - 29. 

Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Wooster Group. October 24 through November 11.
Trojan Women (after Euripides). SITI Company. November 28 through December 2.

Why Write for the Theater?

That's the question.

Why continue writing plays.

The grim conclusion that is that there is no reason to continue.

At best or worst, I can't decide which, I'm writing the 21st century equivalent of closet theater.

Except I know there's an audience out there.

Maybe it's a closet theater audience.

 Or maybe it isn't.

Or maybe it's time for a change of form.

Or maybe it's time to let it all go and take up yarn bombing.

Or maybe that's the wrong question.

Why write plays.

Maybe the question is where is the theater?

Where is the theater I'm writing for?

 It doesn't exist here.

Can't exist here.

Where?