sanctuaryplaywrightstheatre

Magic vs. the Imagination - 2

2011-03-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Part 2
So screens with a mix of reality capture and CG enhancement, to a large extent, own our myths now. They do this by making explicitly specific every visual detail of our myths. In the past we had myths depicted on film and TV screens but these were low-res, what McLuhan would have called "cool" media - we were left to fill in much of the detail from our subconscious, the realm of myth, leaving our visualization of myth relatively safe.

But now CG makes visualization of myth what McLuhan called "hot." It is hot because it fills in every aspect of mythic visualization and corresponding soundscape with overwhelming amounts of detail. We're not always aware of how insidious this is and aren't really questioning it from a scientific standpoint. And since this is basically a sociological phenomenon, and since sociology tends to be an unquantified science, it's hard to prove this is true.

However if you observe kids who are now growing up post-CGcalypse, you'll note that they tend to have fewer and less specific references to common myths in their modes of speech. When left to their own devices, they fall back to the imagery depicted on screens. Again, this is through personal observation, and is anecdotal, but if you talk to 10,000 parents and teachers, you will start to appreciate the common patterns of this and the danger to our mythic selves it implies.

Now, this phenomenon isn't something we can fight by abstinence, in all probability. Individuals might push themselves away from the trough, so to speak, but our culture as a whole cannot. Screens occupy nearly every personal and work context in our lives. The flat-panel is the HD hearth. And myth is not an individual phenomenon. It is a cultural and racial (as in human race, not ethnicity) phenomenon. An individual might experience a version of a myth, but the myth itself is in our wiring, so to speak.

(You're about to say, "I thought you were going to tell us how to get our myths back from screens." I'm just about to get to that.)

OK. Let's try a small mental picture. Imagine it is 200,000 years ago and you and I are hunters on a grassy plain in one of humankind's birthplaces. It's evening. The sun has set. We sit together, before a fire that spits sparks into the darkness, as I tell you a tale of a hero who journeys into the wilderness to bring back three tokens to please Nature and thus brings in a successful hunt that saves her village.

We face each other, and the fire flickers between us, and a wolf howls in the distance as I recount the story. There is warmth between us, and a sense of shared purpose. We both want our own individual hunts to be successful, and this story creates patterns in both our minds that relate back to structures that have to do with personal responsibility for the group, evolution into adulthood, and sensual understanding of the principles - the laws, if you will - of the natural system in which we live.

Now, you could accurately say that these principles and thus the story I relate to you before this fire (in this mental picture) is a mythic story, and what's more the image of sitting before the fire and telling a story is, in itself, also mythic.

The trappings and details of myth are simple. Myths activate images deeply locked up in our selves. Images that go back to a billion years of evolution and written into our genetic makeup, in the wiring of our brains. It all comes down to these simple things. A fire. The story of a journey. My voice and movements as I tell it to you. And you being there, that is just as important. A myth can be personal but to see it reflected, we need two or more people together.

Now where do we find these common elements? I think you're on to me. Yes.

In live performance.

The question often arises, why even have live performance any more? If we can project a perfect image of a performance around the world, and record it in digital media forever, and ensure total consistency of its presentation, why would we need to continue having live performances? Can't screens depict the performance with greater depth of image, in much more detail, fully spelled out for us. And isn't that consistency good and sustainable as a business? I can spend the sum needed to produce a digitized story and have it practically forever (barring changes in digital storage formats) and be able to sell it over and over. Whereas, live performance? It is variate and imperfect and unrecordable. It cannot be preserved in any way that is meaningful. It doesn't make a good business at all. Ask those who do it - they will tell you that for 95% of them, it is a very lousy business indeed.

But live performance has one thing the screen does not. It brings the elements of myth together. You. Me. The story of a journey. A fire. These things are burned into our genes and will never leave us. And it does these in exactly the low-res way that makes total sense for our wiring. So I would propose that if we cannot get live performance, our mythic selves will, indeed, suffer.

I could trot out more anecdotal examples to prove this is the case. For example, in towns where children have access to a good drama department, amongst those kids who participate, you see a much higher incidence of creative play in social situations. Though I don't have the proper statistics to back up this argument, and thus am opening the argument up to being disproved on the same basis as it's proposed... still, in a deep sense, we know it is true.

We need live performance, and to a far greater extent than we probably realize.

That is why so many people still gravitate to this lousy business, even though audiences grow smaller and less willing to leave their screens. Many don't realize what those screens will do to them if they never attend another live performance. Their myths will be sucked out from their experiences, and they will be left with nothing on which to base the core images of their lives.

So go out now and support live performance where you are. Get out from in front of that screen. I'm about to stand up from mine (as this little article is about done).

Why not you?

Magic vs. the Imagination - 1

2011-03-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

Part 1
We are inundated with information, the pundits say. As if we couldn't turn it off when we wanted. As if all the information came flooding past our perceptual filters all at once. As if we didn't like it and didn't make things this way.

Over the past 3 decades the emergence of computers & networks created a unification and a separation of what we call us. We chose the unification and once we experienced it, we chose the separation. As a result, now we are all connected to each other possibly, but are only really connected to those within the all-connect we choose. That's how things are. We know it. We made it that way, whether by making it or experiencing it and letting it wash over us and not moving to a limestone cave. So, that's the end of that part of the story.

There are other, similar parts of the story we won't cover here.

Another part of the story is the growth of reality modeling & CGI to make magic special effects more and more cheaply. Steve Jobs loves to tell this story because he had money to buy Renderman (Pixar) when George Lucas sold it to finance his divorce. (No, he didn't invent Pixar.) The resulting blend of digital reality capture and its increasingly similar-colored simulacrum is the pulpy mesh we now bathe in when looking at screens. This, we're told, is magic. And not just magical magic, but Disney magic, Dreamworks magic, (and now) Comcast magic. Und so weiter.

So we see very real looking dinosaurs (once real), whose software foundation is used to develop very real dragons (never real). And the software is also used to create very real looking monsters, such as liquid androids, armies of robots, giant towers topped by eyes, and weather such as earthquakes, & tsunamis (tragically real. Much cheaper to simulate). We now see these things on a screen & thus have a picture of these things defined in our mind. So we no longer have to work ourselves to picture these things. Part of what our imagination once did, now automated by human artists and technology to allow faster pixel rendering.

This material, is our pulpy mesh, is called "entertainment." To entertain also means "to consider," as in "I will entertain your idea." But here it communicates "that which is defined on a screen." That entertainment refers to both consideration of a thought and the sensual elaboration and definition of thought could be a somewhat diverting conflation.

So we entertain moving pictures from our myths, from our storehouses of our adventure and surprise (populated as they are by dragons, talking animal spirits, gods, and images of the future). While these images are fresh, they entertain us. But eventually we habituate to them, and in that habituation we kill our sense of adventure and surprise.

In that way we are robbed of ownership of the pictures to our myths.

End of Part 1.
In Part 2 we'll describe a way to get our myths back from screens.

Lastly, speaking of earthquakes & tsunamis, if you can, please help the Japanese.

About NextStage... Part 3: How

2011-01-30T05:54:00.000-08:00

The basis of theatre is creating an experience that communicates itself to the audience. The other things that the experience leaves behind – photos, reviews, scripts – pale beside the live experience.

Central to our vision: Community, and peak experience for that community, from playwright to director to cast to designers to technical staff to production support personnel and straight on to the audience themselves. Nothing less than this is Sanctuary:’s goal for its journey of journeys.
How We Do It
A community of actors has been working with playwrights for the past 5 years in voicing new work. Our playwright/producer model determines how work is made - playwrights serve as executive/artistic producers of their own work, with all departments of the theatre aligned with that vision.
With this model we have produced many works acclaimed by both audience and press.
To expand the performative vocabulary, we have designed a fusion training program for the entire company that will be ongoing for the next phase of the company's growth. The program integrates many types of physical and performance training (instead of practicing just Commedia Dell'Arte, Six Viewpoints, Spolin, Grotowski, Decroux, or Lecoq), and is offered to playwrights, actors, and directors of all future projects. The acting company itself will become an ongoing repertory.
Theatre trainers fully support our integrated approach. The February issue of American Theatre magazine has an article about it, in fact, which quotes several of the individuals whose work we integrate: Let's Get Physical: What's Happening Now?

About NextStage... Part 2: Where

2011-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Where: The Space

Primary to all will be our safe and flexible work and training space where takes place, a place that permits a transformational experience for those who partake of it. The more powerful the attempts, and the more the company totally gets that this is the purpose, totally believing in what they are doing, the better the experience for all participants – playwright, actors, director, technical staff, backstage staff, business staff, and most importantly, the audience.

The Look and Feel of the Space

The space is a cross between a dance studio, circus arts space, and a martial arts workspace. In addition the ceiling with be rigged for circus arts training. These dynamics allow for full flexibility to perform various training methods, the ability to fully explore the dynamics of the human body in performance space, while at the same providing complete OSHA-level safety for the company to work within the physical space.

About NextStage... Part 1: What and Why

2011-01-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

Just sharing in this space what we are saying in another. We will say more probably (isn't a Blog about what you're saying - and maybe some people saying something back?). Anyway, we've been working hard a year to make this happen... and now it will.

Sanctuary: NextStage is an ambitious new live performance company, based in NYC, practicing state of the art theatre work. It is a permanent resident company, producing new work in a hothouse environment, where pressure to deliver new work on schedule will be minimized to allow for work to germinate, take seed and be carefully cultivated.

Sanctuary: NextStage will generate new ideas and metaphors to re-enliven the art of live performance by rooting it in story. It will have a strong emphasis on poetic and metaphoric text, visual, audio, and universal delight. Since this is hard in the connected-but-separate scene of today, we implement a comprehensive & intensive training training program that enables the hard-working performers to fill the gaps.

Why do you love the theatre?

Think back to the moments when you had peak theatrical experiences as an audience member. What do they all have in common? Those experiences are why you love the theatre. What if a company could find a way to make sure the audience always had peak experiences? Theatre can – and must – be a mind-changing, life-enhancing experience that enriches all. If it is anything less than this, it is not succeeding to its real and full potential. It is our job as makers of theatre to be co-authors of its apotheosis.

What would be, say, Six Tenets of theatre Perfection

2010-07-10T14:32:00.001-07:00

If one were actually going to start a theatre company that would actually handle not just the production but also the aesthetic and total artwork of theatre. What properties would such a company need? It seems to boil down to six (hence the post title) but perhaps there are more.

What do you think? Please comment, tear this up or agree or whatever you want to do. You might have already started a company with such or similar goals in mind. Or you might be afraid to do one. Or you might be mad enough to plan it and do it.

One last thing. The question mark is intentionally missing from the title. This poses as the first draft of a question. But not quite a question yet.

Ultimate Experience – A life-altering experience for the audience and the performers must be offered, every time. It’s a big thing to promise and you can never achieve it fully. An ideal is intended to be beyond reach. This is the most important tenet.

Revolutionary Design – The visual and aural aspect of every performance must push the boundaries of the known state of the art. Perfect and life-altering look and sound. These designers want to change the world through light, color, depth, tone, melody, emotion.

Physical perfection – to keep the instrument of every performer in perfectly tuned shape, permitting no limits to what can be accomplished. The maximum possible human physical state, to ground what must come from the performer and company.

Cultural breadth – Sufficient knowledge of all major branches of human knowledge that the performer can call up an immense library of knowledge in performance. Every performance calls up Joyce, Popper, quantum theory or finite automata, and intelligently, in the service of story as well as culture.

Situational Dexterity – Having studied every form of improvisation known, the performer can call any one up at will. This includes Commedia, Spolin, Bebop Poet, Jazz, Rap / Hiphop, Slam, & whatnot.

Genre Flexibility – Discovering, understanding, codifying scene, act and work structure of every known storytelling genre ever used. Then, more importantly, the ability to instantly adopt that genre for use, both overall and within a scene.

Voice compares A New Theory of Vision to Tom Stoppard & William Gibson...

2009-04-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

In an interesting turn of events, Garret Eisler from the Voice compares tags A New Theory of Vision as "Stoppardian Banter meets William Gibson mindfuck." It's a great tag and rather flattering... of course not one we can post on our site as is (hence we use most-discreet asterisks). Stoppard is a heroic playwright and Gibson a great genius as well. Wow.

So come see this play! It's like spending an afternoon at the West End Theatre in Cyberspace...

the critics... new philosophy... hope...

2009-04-07T06:40:00.001-07:00

We got widely varied critical response to A NEW THEORY OF VISION; the first critic gave us an unabashed rave and said, there's all this philosophical background in the play, perhaps a bit too much, but since it does reflect on the action, you have to sort of let it wash over you and then it all makes sense, even if you're not a philogeek. Another, our only pan, said, there's all this character and plot stuff but not enough of the actual philosophy these guys are talking about. Finally, there was a balanced review that complained s/he wanted to hear the philosophy too. So that's two critics who complained they wanted to have the philosophical content of Lee's books spelt out.

Well, I'm not adding these explicitly to the play. It feels talky enough in the parts where it talks about the de minima aspects of Berkeley's philosophy that directly impact the play (a total of 2 minutes of stage time, max, and even though these support the action moment to moment, some might feel even these to be part of an extra credit assignment).

So perhaps we need to prepare a companion to the play that explicates the exact philosophies about which Lee wrote in his two books? Now, it must be said the philosophy is actually at the heart of the play's action. Thus if you observe the play's action, you can deduce all the philosophy you need, right there in front of you. This is perhaps an arrogant statement. Because if the smart people who write our theatre criticism can't pick this stuff up from the action of the play, how can we simpler minded people?

(There's an implicit criticism of criticism building here, I can feel it... but I won't spoil the ending of this essay by stating it there, so let's briefly state it here. Critics often take upon themselves the "duty" to "represent" the audience, but they often use a simplified model of who the audience is, and judge a work by how "clear" it is to that simple-minded artificial audience model. But it's self-deception. Audiences are far smarter than critics think they are, and sometimes, far smarter than the critics themselves.)

So. A warning. If you proceed there will be spoilers. And thanks for sticking with this, thus far.

Lee's first book, A New Theory of Vision was essentially a simplification and popularization of the works of Berkeley and the idealists, updated for a more telepresent world such as existed in the late 1980s, when his book would have come out. The parts of the materialist/idealist philosophy that would have made the most stir in the popular mind - the book was, after all, a massive best-seller - would have been those that talked about the increasing virtualization of who we were. Extended we were, as McLuhan would have said, by our creations - the telephone, television, and the PC network - we learned to project and virtualize our identities to match their representations over the various wire protocols of these extensions.

So we would have first developed a "voice or sound-heavy" set of identity contexts to serve as representations of ourselves over the telephone (which is a two-way medium - one-to-one) and for radio (which is a broadcast medium - one to many); a visual-and-sound set of identity contexts to represent us over the airwaves. These would eventually evolve to no longer being literal attempts to represent us. They would begin that way. But identity as communicated and compressed over these media would become first shadow representations of our selves, then gradually the representations would diverge as we accommodated ourselves to the medium, until eventually we had created at least one, perhaps many separate representations of ourselves to adapt to each medium.

Shadow identities, each containing part of our own experience and the contexts made real and appropriate for each medium and tuned to the audience each medium brought. So to each person with whom you conversed on the telephone, you created a different identity. It began as a set of sounds that resembled your voice, but gradually it evolved to become a new voice. Likewise, on TV or the radio, you created new visual and audio aspects of yourself.

Note in the play how the characters identities are somewhat malleable. Not in a MAN = MAN way (cf. Brecht) but rather in a postmodern way - their decisions and actions and the "selves" we see of them are adapted to the medium in which they present these selves. These represent the world as Lee saw it in his best-selling book.

Lee's new book, also probably destined to be a best-seller, The Book of Reality, takes this much further, in fact all the way into the world Erich inhabits. On the path to writing the book based on Erich's online world, Lee is in fact creating signifiers that led him inexorably to the realizations he has at the end of the original act-break, where his mind begins to loop in on itself - when both he and we - SEE and HEAR his self-perceived crime, that he didn't prevent a suicidal person, whom he loved very much, from committing suicide. The realization he makes - and which is wrong - is that the self is actually an illusion. That there is no contiguous set of ideas upon which any person is based. That we are chaotic stews of ideas constantly attempting to summarize and interpret and re-spew endless chaotic casseroles of matter and energy that surround us, and of which we are also constructed.

This can lead to a depairing, nihilist worldview which in fact represents exactly Jane's. We would then all want to kill ourselves, since what's the point of existence if you're a temporary process that observes temporary processes, and even your observations themselves are captured in a boiling cauldron of sense information which in itself is destined to change and be corrupted by chaos?

But the other assertion The Book of Reality makes is there are constancies. That the only constants are the links between us. Two hands clasping each other. Words of comfort, and care. We are the forces, amidst the stew and spew, that wrenches the world back from chaos. We create the illusion of order, and it is in fact the illusion of order that is the fact of order. In a world where all is illusion, illusion is therefore fact. That it all is some sort of miracle worth experiencing is the main of it.

We're a PICK in BACK STAGE!

2009-03-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

"thought-provoking...

"a stunning Matt Steiner...

"smart video set by production designer George Allison...

"Director Cat Parker culls vibrant characterizations...

"skillfull character development by Ferrante...

"unexpectedly effective... !

Have a look at the article:

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003953831

Don't miss this show... if you sit on the fence too long you'll miss out on tickets. We cannot extend this run.

So... PLEASE buy tickets from.

http://www.sanctuarytheatre.org

See you at the show...

love

25 Random Things about A New Theory of Vision

2009-03-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

25 Random Things about A New Theory of Vision (Sanctuary: Manifesto)

What is the sound of memory? How does imagination smell? What flashing color best represents ideas as they form? What can grow in the fertile loam of the mind? Can the manifestations of the senses themselves be defined by sensory input? Does a picture summarize vision?
It is not possible to have fun in the theatre. Seats are too uncomfortable. Acting too mannered. Sets are too shoddy; lights too bright. Darkness too pervasive; humor too droll; tragedy too lachrymose. It is not possible to have fun in the theatre. But it's possible to have a blast.
First Confession: The germ of the idea for the play A NEW THEORY OF VISION originated in a story I wrote at 19, while living in Exeter, England. There really was a girl named Jane, however she didn't kill jump off a bridge. Instead, she was sort of indifferent as people sometimes are, and probably completely without real volition happened to break my heart. SO at the time, I believe I just wanted her to jump off a bridge, and had her do it in the story. Amazing how vindictive we writers can be. You can sort of definitively punish someone who upsets you, and if you're lucky that fictionalized punishment is long-lived. The story was published a short time after, in a forgotten literary journal.
A drama should last two or fewer minutes; comedy three. Anything longer and we run the risk of wearing out thin patiences, and we can't afford to do that to our subscriber base. O wait... we don't have a subscriber base; o that's good news. (When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose - ah, how does it feel?).
The next great threshold of research in performance: To technologize the audience; to find a way to automate them, or to downsize. And finally, to ultimately provoke: perhaps there is a way to fire them; because if you need an audience, you're somehow weak. Or perhaps, to engage them so they are no longer audience, but in some way participants. So theatre regains its original nature, a participatory celebration, where the audience can contribute - if not performance, perhaps tribute: an eyelash, a layer of skin cells, a skein of nerves.
If you want to have fun in the theatre, put on your goggles and shut everyone out. Theatre is isolation in a space of mutual communion; theatre takes place only in the mind.
Tom Stoppard said writing a play was the best way to argue with himself. That's fine long as you don't lose those arguments. The trick is to bury the argument into something that saves itself for later. You don't want the experience to argue with itself. The experience must seem to agree with itself. Then, after the audience leaves the theatre, the argument can form in their minds and they can draw rhetorical blood over dessert and coffee.
Some rather ego-maniacal among us think of humans as like unto Gods on this Earth. The present crises notwithstanding. But just remember: It’s a God eat God world out there.
Behold a new theory of vision to refresh our aching eyes. Behold the story of how our minds become. Behold the pang of something you lost a long time ago and can't live without. Behold the open blue sky beckoning you to realize what a human mind can do. Behold the thick glass wall that smashes down and tells you what a human mind can't do.
Using a low-voltage electric current, run through every seat in the theater, and near undetectable to the human nervous system, we devised a peer network that enables us to tap into and manifest the dreams of every spectator. Plus version 2.0 of this network will install local software in the brain of every spectator to allow them to exist simultaneously in a world of their own mutual devising. It's the ultimate in audience passiveness/participation/pleasuring. It could lead to new consumer products and tie-ins as well. Imagine an ad superimposed on the inside of your eyelids as you sleep.
Talk, talk, It's only talk. Arguments, Agreements, Advice, Answers, Art, Announcements. When will they start doing theatre in this place?
Second Confession: There really is a bridge upon which there's this house in Exeter, and the house was indeed rotting away and abandoned. However (more confession) it's not, as the play states, Polsloe Bridge Station but is instead some nondescript trestle stuck somewhere just outside town. And of course it's possible, since that was 26 years ago, that the nondescript trestle has somehow disappeared, or that the house has finally been razed. But I doubt it. These things have a tendency to stick around, don't they?
Lose the masks, Noxzema the makeup. Wipe that smile from your face, wipe those features too; wear a white featureless mask and no hair; then allow yourself to be stamped with an identity someone else wanted to put there. When you remove a mask, make sure there is no makeup underneath. No warpaint.
Third confession: Already about 8 weeks before opening I started working on a string quartet (well Richard Schechner said theatre was becoming the string quartet, so now the string quartet is becoming theatre). The quartet would incorporate two movements roughly similar to the structure of the play, whose acts already had the subtitles I - Duets and Trios II - Grosse Fuga. So the quartet would be a two-movement work that featured thematic play between dual instruments in the first movement and a great fugue of all elements building in canons, inversions, rondos until all voices came together as one voice.
What creature might be crawling from the slime? What sometime-notion might be rising from the dead?
Berkeley posited an existence where illusions were fed to willing minds; where minds met each other on a bare Adobe Flash stage. And we moved in deterministic circles according to our ActionScript. We bitblt ourselves in space, our surfaces replacing themselves over our backgrounds, maintaining our Z-Order so we don't become obfuscated by the world and its things.
We seem to have friends we only party with, friends to whom we bare ourselves, friends with whom we have only a few tenuous threads in common, friends that we only know through work or while searching for work. Are we coming to a place where we can no longer have a single definition for the word "friend?" Wait, is this really a new thing?
The new hallucinogens are called theatre. The new antidepressants are called theatre. The new soporifics are called theatre. The new antibiotics are not called anti-theatre.
Fourth confession: Age of six, Grandpa Giudice took me to a Broadway show, for which he was conducting the orchestra. I met Robert Goulet backstage. That was the trauma that planted the sand in my oyster. No, Robert Goulet was a perfect gentleman.
A New Theory of Vision is dedicated to 1234567890 Day. At 6:31 pm EST on Friday Feb 13, the Unix time will be 1234567890 - exactly that many seconds since the beginning of Unix time (Jan 1 1970). Another example of consummate perfection - time becomes not the tick that holds the reference points for memory, not the inexorable march toward terminus, not the scythe, but a simple point progression between items in a set made finite by its need to be defined by the conscious mind. There is no time if there is nobody to measure its passing.
Old is the new new. New is the old old. We are constantly renewed as each new technology washes over us. We adapt, accept, incorporate the new into our beings, until there is nothing left of the original us, until our core existence is diluted by each new model that impedes on our spiritual brand. And yet somehow that new self, whose cells have been completely replaced, still holds the same form as we originally had.
Fifth confession: I never know what I'm really doing when writing a new play. Which is weird because I spend so much time reading plays and studying their structure. I like to think that the process of writing a play has become one of unconscious competence, where it's just the play's dialog, structure and sensorium are somehow flowing out of me and at some level what is being done is clear. But it's never like that. It's always, despite whatever process I think I'm using, a start-and-stop that consciously makes me feel incompetent. As a result, the act of composing a play is mostly an exercise in insecurity. "Is it bad? Did that work for you? Really???"
Watching the actors in A NEW THEORY OF VISION as they are absorbed, sucked into the digital projections, not merely surrounded by technical objects but actually obscured by them, one realizes that we now live in a time where many of us exist to each other only via technology. On the new "social networks" we reconnect with hundreds, even thousands of people who inhabited past parts of our lives, and also ghostly remnants of others whom we have never met but perhaps have something in common. We develop an online self - and some of us develop many of these - that serves as the butler to our new telepresence. It's only the keylight - that remnant of an older generation of technology - that restores the actors' faces and bodies to us.
There's some talk about "levels" in our work on this piece. The piece specifies three "modes" of presentation. Each mode represents a means we have of mapping terms of our increasingly expanding sense of reality. There is the mode of what we call reality or sensorium. That is the most direct and manipulable aspect. We can pick things up, break them, burn them, make them, by manipulating them directly. They have smell (fresh cut wood), taste (a savory sauce), etc. The second level is the mind; where we have mapped these real things into categories, unities and from these ideas. This is the realm where we can start to be deceived, but that realm is still personal - nobody is truly in anyone's mind yet. Then there is the third space - this shared mental space where all our thoughts are beginning to drift around, the world of the online. This world we are still defining.
Although the play doesn't explicitly talk about work itself, the context of work is all-important. 200 years ago you farmed or made clothing or hewed wooden tables, holding the tools and working the materials yourself. 100 years ago we compartmentalized our activities into fragments, and did these tasks in increasingly automated and centralized ways. Now many of us work with tools that have no tactile reality - only pictures as tools - and we manipulate these using proxy tools that are nearly transparent to us (the keyboard, the mouse, the touch-screen). About the only work that hasn't changed fundamentally in nature is the telling of stories, and the stage. We still stand up on a platform, and we tell stories to each other, and despite the increasing technological nature of that stage, fundamentally we can still consider ourselves telling stories, around a campfire, person to person. And you have to love the basic, primitive nature of that.

In the Brooklyn Rail: Susan Bernfield Interviews Bob Jude Ferrante

2009-03-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

From: the Brooklyn Rail, Critical Perspectives on Art & Culture

On the occasion of the Sanctuary: Playwrights Theatre's production of his new play A New Theory of Vision, playwright Bob Jude Ferrante virtually connects with Susan Bernfield (fellow playwright, and Artistic Director of New Georges theater company), over our shifting sense of reality, its representation on stage, and the dual role of being a playwright involved in producing one's own work.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/03/theater/bob-jude-ferrantes-new-theory-of-vision

Website secret...

2009-03-06T17:20:00.001-08:00

Psst... here's a secret few people will notice.

The postcard on the site for A New Theory of Vision is peppered with hyperlinks. each going someplace with a skeleton key to the play.

Screens, screens, screeeeeeens

2009-03-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Production Designer for A New Theory of Vision is named George Allison. He took a new play that asked the impossible:

Change location in a split second
People change into different people; hair changes color, face changes, clothing changes instantly in front of the audience
People have to disappear onstage
Three worlds must be depicted and clearly delineated: The world of reality (Cara's world); the online world (Erich's world); the world inside the mind (Lee's world).
Other characters have to be able to enter these worlds and it needs to be clear when they do.

And came up with a unique, never-tried-before-I-think-at-least concept: that we would use screens onstage and digital projection to handle everything. This in itself is not revolutionary; in fact projection is becoming commonplace downtown as it's a "cheap" way to do a set. However, what makes George's approach so unique, really, is that:

The projections are malleable in their visual language. For example, there's a scene online where a man is unmasked and revealed to be a puppet controlled by a character. When he is unmasked, the script just called for a makeup convention that was previously used for that character to be used to indicate he was a puppet. But George's concept was that, when he is unmasked, the screens flash front & profile shots (like mugshots) of the puppeteer. Friggin brilliant. Says it all.
Likewise, there's a scene where a character tells a lengthy story and we're not supposed to hear all the details. The designer is created a video sequence where images from the story flash by quickly; as if the information is being "rapidly downloaded."
Last, not only are the scenic elements designed to "take" projection - the actors are as well. Because the actors' clothing - and even masks - are designed to allow projection right onto the performer as a canvas. We can "rebrand" a performer with a new identity in a flash.
Etc.

We bet you can't wait to see it?

Good, that's what we were hoping you'd say!

Why the hell design the sound?

2009-02-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

So when I tell people I'm also designing the sound for A New Theory of Vision they look at me sideways (which is actually kind of cool to see... the eyes go vertical).

Don't know why absorb incredulity only to justify it in the blog... but here goes. The audio part of this play is for some reason locked up in my head, and Cat (the director) and I agreed that it needed to come out from there.

Already about 8 weeks before opening I started working on a string quartet (well Richard Schechner said theatre was becoming the string quartet, so now the string quartet is becoming theatre). The quartet would incorporate two movements roughly similar to the structure of the play, whose acts already had the subtitles I - Duets and Trios II - Grosse Fuga. So the quartet would be a two-movement work that featured thematic play between dual instruments in the first movement and a great fugue of all elements building in canons, inversions, rondos until all voices came together as one voice.

So that went pretty well (have only one final canon to complete before the quartet is done) and then it became clear the entire play had a very large soundscape - there are something like 170 sound cues in the production script, stemming from a catalog of hundreds of blended sounds. And all these sounds were still very specifically in my head. So I did some farming and recording and collating and then began assembling them all. Good thing the script is done!

The final sound canvas should be a lot of fun... evocative at times, spooky at others.

Often I say that I write a play thinking of music in the structure, and now I'm actually bringing sound into the fabric of the play. Maybe this will be the first non-musical comedy with a cast recording? Hmmm...

Tickets on Sale for A New Theory of Vision

2009-02-19T10:42:00.001-08:00

Stoked! Tickets are on sale for A New Theory of Vision, which will run March 18 - April 11, Wed-Sat at 8PM at the Kraine Theatre, 85 E.4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave). You just have to go to http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showCode=NEW156.

The Web page is under way on the Sanctuary website too: www.sanctuarytheatre.org. We're building the ability for the poster on the page to be clickable to explore the ideas, events and characters of A New Theory of Vision.

Check it out!

lotsa

Excerpts from a manifesto-in-progress.

2009-02-11T23:08:00.001-08:00

Disagree.
It is not possible to have fun in the theatre. Seats are too uncomfortable. Acting too mannered. Sets are too shoddy; lights too bright. Darkness too pervasive; humor too droll; tragedy too lachrymose.
A drama should last two or fewer minutes; comedy three. Anything longer and we run the risk of wearing out thin patiences, and we can't afford to do that to our subscriber base.
The next great threshold of research in performance: To technologize the audience; to find a way to automate them, downsize, and fire them.
If you want to have fun in the theatre, put on your goggles…
Argue.
O wait, we don't have a subscriber base. Oh goody.
Behold a new theory of vision to refresh our aching eyes…
Using a low-voltage electric current, run through every seat in the theater, we have created a subnet that enables us to tap into and manifest the dreams of every spectator.
Talk, talk, talk. When will they shut up and start doing theatre in this place?
Lose.
What creature might be crawling from the slime?
Berkeley posited an existence where illusions were fed to willing minds; where minds met each other on a bare Adobe Flash stage.
What sometime-notion might be rising from the dead?
Befriend.
The new hallucinogens are called theatre. The new antidepressants are called theatre. The new soporifics are called theatre. The new antibiotics are not called anti-theatre.
When I was five, my Grandfather took me to a Broadway show, for which he was conducting the orchestra. I met Robert Goulet backstage. That was the trauma that planted the sand in my oyster. No, Robert Goulet was a perfect gentleman.
A New Theory of Vision is dedicated to 1234567890 Day. At 6:31 pm EST on Friday Feb 13, the Unix time will be 1234567890 - exactly that many seconds since the beginning of Unix time (Jan 1 1970). Another example of consummate perfection.

Casting complete; first read-through

2009-02-10T19:34:00.001-08:00

We're cast! And it will be:

Lee: Eric Percival
Cara: Maeve Yore
Ted: Jullian Elfer
Erich: Matt Steiner
Jane/Hariko: Brooke Eddey
MW/Susan: Sonya Tsuchigane
GB: Lawrence Cantor

First read was tonight; read through the final production revision of the script, and though it's just as crazy as we always feared, it's also just as fierce as craziness permits. In short, it's another one of those ferrante comedies (people keep telling me I don't write comedies, I keep blinking and looking offended whenever they say that).

So far the process has been - as one would assume - stressful but fun. Cat is a dream of a director. No, back off, you can't have her! Mwah hah hah.

Next up: Manifesto of a theatre geek, part 176.

2009-02-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

From A New Theory of Vision by bob jude ferrante
opening March 18 2009 at the Kraine Theatre:

JANE

I’ve been having this dream where I’m asleep.

LEE

You’re… you’re always… asleep when you dream.

JANE

Excepting daydreams. And don’t give me Berkeley on the subject, we’ve had enough of that dim prat.

LEE

So… you dream you’re asleep.

JANE

And mum comes in, as usual paralytic, and starts the customary screaming at me.

LEE

And that’s it?

JANE

No it’s not bloody it. That’s when I wake up.

LEE

So then you’re awake?

JANE

No. I’m still asleep. And dreaming. And in that dream, in comes me mum.

LEE

Again?

JANE

Again. I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid of the dark.

LEE

There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

(JANE cries)

JANE

Your dark isn’t my dark.

***

So yea... the script is in final production draft, the show is cast with the fabulous Cat Parker at the helm and genius George Allision doing production design. Poster design is done... have a look here.

Hiring the Director

2009-01-28T07:29:00.000-08:00

One very cool aspect (continuing on this idea of aspects, which should please the astrologically inclined among us) of being the playwright producer is being able to hire directors. Did I say that already? It bears repeating.

During the past 8 weeks I had the distinct pleasure of talking to 13 directors - people I variously admired and perhaps had met at various openings around town, but with whom I'd never had the chance to discuss a project.

Some conversations were briefer than others - after all A New Theory of Vision is a real project with a real production date which means some brilliantly talented directors had real and not-so-brilliant schedule conflicts.

In some cases also - two specifically, the directors actually read the script and told me that the project wasn't right for the kind of work they liked to do. Which was an interesting response.Do you find that directors are more comfortable turning down work due to creative or stylistic conflict than actors? When I feel more secure in my work myself, someday, might be moved to then ask a director what specifically they didn't like (although one did proffer an explanation, which only led to more questions in my mind, but since they'd turned the project down, didn't want to waste their time).

In most cases however the directors said yes enthusiastically (a massive relief, referring to aforementioned insecurities) and then I had the weird problem of trying to find a fit amongst a group of incredibly brilliant and talented people, in each case trying to tell them they weren't the only person I was talking to (not wanting to waste their time - OOB directing is a tough enough job) but also wanting to have a good strong sense of how they'd attack the material. Attack is the principal word.

In the end, Cat Parker turned out to have a great affinity for the material, and was also generally delightful to work with. I mean, all the directors I chatted with were friendly and cool, but Cat had a specific and southern warmth and charm to her as well besides being brilliant).

One thing I did learn. Directors who work the NYC downtown theatre scene are universally intelligent and sharp. These are definitely people you want to hang out with.

What it's Like - The First Eight Aspects

2009-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Sanctuary's model for operating is that the playwright is the center of the company. Not a guest, but the host. In the largest sense. Host and host body.

Although Sanctuary has done this service for several other playwrights now, none have written about what it's like. This seems to leave a big hole in the imagination. Something needs to fill it.

Writing about the experience documents critical parts of its dynamics; makes it more likely Sanctuary will reproduce these dynamics from playwright to playwright. These are the heart of what someone would call the Sanctuary experience. By nature it's an experience few will really have (and we're not sure if Sanctuary will last forever).

So since now the process has chosen me to be the playwright, I plan to document what it is like to be the playwright/producer on a Sanctuary show:

Thinking hard about the site and its properties. The shouting properties of the space; its posession and rights to its neighborhood; its sense of dominating energies, its radiances, its shortcomings.
Pondering how do you tell the story you want to tell beyond the page and how do you make the script fit the story you want to tell? The script becomes less your calling card and the dynamics of the event begin to supplant it. Then acting on what one infers.
Hearing again all those voices arguing in one's head - characters, critics, supporters, the excited for yous, the tired of hearing its.
Having the joy of talking to so many smart directors and getting to choose the one that is organically "right" for the piece and its process. These guys are all uniformly amazing.
Knowing how much money there is to spend and figuring out which expenditures are more important. I know this sounds boring, doesn't it? But it's not. Money is the power to do what needs to be done - power is inherent. If we're talking about the power in theatre being given to the playwright, we have to mean - at least in part - that the money is under their control.
Realizing that in a sense everyone serves the script - the story, really. In that sense the playwright is yet another midwife.
Experiencing the exhiliration of juggling the text - largely an object to be heard - and its impacts in the other realms of sensation.
Sadly noting that this documentation - fascinating though it might be - must be created peripatetically, as finishing the script and making it acceptable as the controlling document for this event is far more important than documenting the process, however much an honor it is.

unholy weekend

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

in the aftermath of a soundly unholy wednesday evening, brought my red-colored glasses to the west village on all hallows eve. into the brew for our next devilish round:

the two large nuns with larger pints in a flourescent-lit cafe, on bad terms

princess leia, mona lisa, and the geisha spilling ketchup at the hotdog stand

operation on wheels undergoing repairs by the geico gecko

the lone ghost, tilted, blankly staring at the fire hydrant where nobody came to meet her

all eight slices of pizza on the march

the border patrol guard, cleavage spilling, duly noting obama came out of a white pussy

and an uncanny turnout of sweeny todds.

i think only phil would dare write the play to contain them all (and kissinger)...

running behind

2008-10-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

Sonya can't post anything because she is working on an article for the Brooklyn Rail on the New York Neo-Futurists which was originally due today. She hasn't even scheduled a rehearsal for her reading yet. There is an eight-ball in front of her. As well as a weekend full of workshop to learn how to teach playwriting in the public schools. Yikes. See you Wednesday!

Reading coming up fast - watchout now watchout watchout watchout!

2008-10-22T13:38:00.001-07:00

Space booked, ideas pooted out, arguments had, actors booked, audience signing up in droves....
Looks like a readin' is done come upon all uv us:

You are cordially invited to
A NIGHT OF UNHOLY ONE-ACTS
One hour of diabolically-funny brief readings from Sanctuary Playwrights Theatre
+
One Minute with Satan by Bob Jude Ferrante – Avert your ears or be Damned.
Hellchildren by Phil Hopkins - Family is hell. So’s your mother.
True Enough by Sonya Sobieski - The inanimate speak ugly truths.
All Is Bright by Angela Thurston - Behold a Miracle.
+
Wine will be served. As will justice.
+
Wednesday October 29, 20086:30-7:30PM
The Actors Institute
150 W. 30th St., 14th floor (between 6th and 7th Aves)
Free of charge, reservation requested
For info / reservations, email mailto:tickets@sanctuarytheatre.org?subject=Reservation

Sanctuary Playwrights Theatre new blog opened

2008-10-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Sanctuary: Playwrights Theatre's new blog.

Here we will cover:

Reviews of new shows we have seen
Commentary on the theatre scene in NY
Talk about our writing process
Describing what we're doing right now
Detailing steps leading up to our productions and readings
Generally commenting on the world about us

It's guaranteed to be opinionated and funny. Stick with us.

sanctuaryplaywrightstheatre

Magic vs. the Imagination - 2

Magic vs. the Imagination - 1

About NextStage... Part 3: How

About NextStage... Part 2: Where

Where: The Space

The Look and Feel of the Space

About NextStage... Part 1: What and Why

Why do you love the theatre?

What would be, say, Six Tenets of theatre Perfection

Voice compares A New Theory of Vision to Tom Stoppard & William Gibson...

the critics... new philosophy... hope...

We're a *PICK* in BACK STAGE!

25 Random Things about A New Theory of Vision

In the Brooklyn Rail: Susan Bernfield Interviews Bob Jude Ferrante

Website secret...

Screens, screens, screeeeeeens

Why the hell design the sound?

Tickets on Sale for A New Theory of Vision

Excerpts from a manifesto-in-progress.

Casting complete; first read-through

Hiring the Director

What it's Like - The First Eight Aspects

unholy weekend

running behind

Reading coming up fast - watchout now watchout watchout watchout!

Sanctuary Playwrights Theatre new blog opened

We're a PICK in BACK STAGE!