The powers of theatre, Part I

Theatre of Crossing Cultures is one of my two theatre classes this semester. It's a bit different than your typical classroom structure. No exams, no lectures, no note-taking. Instead, we play a ball game every day, sit in a circle, and laugh and cry over each other's innermost secrets.

Sounds more like a camp pow-wow than a 300-level college course, right? Well, Barry, our teacher, is respected within the Theatre Department, even if he is a little unconventional. He drives his motorcycle to work and pushes around a shopping cart from Linens 'N Things full of shiny objects, noisemakers, bells, whistles, and decorations. He reminds us of his credo every day: "I have nothing to give you," rejecting the structure of the American education system and instead encouraging us to learn from each other.

I have to say that I've never had a class quite like it before. Although theatre classes are generally a bit more movement- or action-oriented than typical lecture or lab classes, I've never initiated class every day with tossing a globe-sized ball at my classmates to learn their names, or had the chance to share some of my most life-altering moments with people I hardly know.

There's a lot I want to say about this class; I'm breaking it up into a series of posts so it doesn't get monotonous. But if you want to get into the crossing-cultures mindset, ponder the following and all of its possible meanings:

"Who are all those people you have brought with you?"
The disciple whirled around to look.
Nobody there. Panic!
Lao Tzu said: "Do you not understand?"

Welcome to Theatre of Crossing Cultures. It's a wild ride.

--DQ

Lighting jitters, again

I once again caught myself in that difficult situation of being uncomfortable doing lighting work because of the height factor involved. Only this time, it was in the catwalks of the Mainstage
Theatre, and there was no steel grid to save me.

Focus for TU's production of The Time of Your Life, which opens this weekend, took place last week, and I thought it wouldn't be a big deal because I got through the last lighting-way-above-the-stage adventure with flying colors. But this time, all of us were assigned to specific lights to focus as the lighting designer called up commands from the stage, and we were expected to know how to adjust a light properly.

Not to mention we were dealing with heavy, complicated units that cost thousands of dollars apiece and could kill an actor should one of them fall.

It was nervewracking. Leaning half of my body out over a flimsy metal rail to insert color into the end of a light is not my idea of a tea party. It was dark, dusty and hot, and further reaffirmed by suspicions that I am not meant to be a lighting designer, or even part of a lighting crew.

I'll keep my theatre career grounded, thank you very much, either on stage or behind it, and let the people who can't get enough of climbing around the rafters like monkeys do their jobs.

--DQ

Free theatre from Twitter!

Something cool happened to me today.

Last night, @EverymanTheatre ran a mini-contest on Twitter, giving away two tickets to their performance of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to the first person to identify three characters from the show. I was with some friends in the library working on a presentation and just happened to glance at it. I responded for the heck of it, not thinking I'd be the first person, because the tweet had been posted about three hours before I'd seen it.

Wouldn't you know it that this morning, I'd received a reply from Everyman congratulating me and asking for information so they could send me the tickets. Pretty cool, right? Along with that, they asked me to help spread the word about their company through Twitter and other social media sites.

So it looks like I'll be seeing the show on Saturday night. Thanks, Everyman! Don't underestimate the power of Twitter; it has its advantages!

Oh, and Happy Birthday (and possibly Death-day) to the Bard himself, Mr. William Shakespeare.

--DQ

Get cultured this weekend!

Don't let schoolwork, boredom, or the many fascinations of the Twitterverse and the Facebook Nation prevent you from experiencing the multitude of theatre playing in Baltimore right now.

No money? No problem! Most professional theatre companies have a student rush program, which provides discounts to students an hour before the show on any tickets that didn't sell.

For all you locals, head on over to the Baltimore Theatre Alliance website to see what's playing and when, and go do something different with your Friday and Saturday night. And don't worry, most shows will be over around 10:30, which will leave you plenty of time to get your weekend party on.

--DQ

Acing the audition -- you can do it!

It's the absolutely inevitable, totally unpredictable, most nerve-wracking part of the business. And it can make or break a theatre artist's entire career.

The audition.

There's no way around it if you're a serious member of the industry. However, there are ways to ensure that you walk off that stage leaving the director with a smile on his face and a clear idea of who YOU are as an actor.

1. Dress appropriately. It is always acceptable to dress for the part, but it is never OK to do it in an unflattering way. The directors are looking for your personal character as an actor or actress above anything else. It's perfectly acceptable to add some edge to your outfit to portray a character trait, but do it tastefully.

2. Make eye contact. Especially during the deliverance of your monologue or song, it is essential to communicate to everyone else in the room that it should be you in this role and no one else.

3. Act professionally. Just as dressing professionally is essential, so is acting like everyone should take you seriously. Charm only goes so far in this business; overconfidence gets you nowhere. Your work and your professional attitude are all that matters.

4. Starting over is OK. We're all human, and therefore we all make mistakes. Losing your place is a natural side effect of your nerves; if you need to, ask to begin again or perform a different piece. The worst that can happen is the casting directors will say no. If so, politely thank them for their time and walk out of the room proudly. There will always be another audition.

5. Don't freak out when the audition is over. You did your best at the time. The directors have the final say, and nothing you do after your performance will change their minds. Do not seek them out or call to ask for an evaluation of your performance; just wait it out. Whatever happens, you'll learn from every audition and improve in all your future ones.

(Compiled from Essortment.com and Actingbiz.com.)

And here's my own little two-cents: Arrive early! Nothing screams that you don't take yourself or the project seriously more than arriving late for your audition. And although you may come prepared with a headshot and resume, there will often be forms for you to fill out before your audition, and if you're doing cold readings, there will be sides (small portions of the script) for you to quickly rehearse. In show business, early is on time, and on time is late.

Happy auditioning. Break a leg and all that jazz (and all that jazz...). I feel a jam session to the Chicago soundtrack coming on.

--DQ

Calling all theatre people or bloggers, or both!

Overheard on Twitter:

The Baltimore Theatre Alliance is accepting applications for bloggers, either to write reviews of BTA productions or to blog about personal Baltimore theatre experiences. Granted, the applications are due tomorrow, so I apologize for not posting it here sooner, but I just discovered this yesterday.

I followed the link from @balttheatre to the blog. Although the Baltimore Theatre Alliance is a prominent promoter of theatre in the region, the blog is a new endeavor for them. Upon viewing the ad, I contemplated sending in an application, but then decided against it, knowing that soon after graduation (just 41 days now!) I'm moving to Central Florida and will therefore a) not have time to blog much anymore due to the hours I'm going to be working and b) will no longer be living in Baltimore and therefore will not be seeing much of its theatre.

I do regret not having this opportunity sooner, especially with the recent development of All the World's A Stage. But if you or anyone you know is interested, they are still accepting applications until April 12th. It's a great way to promote yourself in online media and to break your way into the Baltimore theatre community.

I remain your Drama Queen.

Five questions for an aspiring playwright

Last month, I mentioned my friend Janet Jiacinto, who was in my Playwriting class and who will soon be staging her self-written play, Chapstick Smells Like Fish. She recently gave me some insight into the process of writing a play and having the opportunity to perform it.

How did your concept for the play evolve in your head, before, during and after Playwriting class?

I was taking an EMF class where we were required to keep a dream journal. That was when I first started thinking about the concept of unspoken dream logic. This is the way, in dreams, you can be in what looks just like your living room, but it's not actually your living room -- it's a swimming pool or something.

Dream sequences happen all the time in movies, but I'm not sure I've ever seen or read something where the entire thing is a dream. I thought it would be cool to try to find a way to stay true to the world of dreams without becoming so convoluted that no one understood the story.

When analyzing a play, one of the first questions you should ask is "Why is this day different from all other days?" because if it isn't, not much is at stake. It's the same with writing. So, I stole some characters I liked from another play I've written and picked a day in one of their lives that they could never forget.

The feedback in Playwriting class and Playwriting Laboratory was absolutely vital to Chapstick's development in that it helped me to shape the characters and shifts in logic so that they made as much sense as possible without perverting the nature of the world.

When did you know that you wanted to potentially produce it?

I sincerely doubt the existence of professional playwrights who work on plays with the idea that they'll never see a stage. I can't write a play without visualizing it in a certain space. I've been working on Chapstick for roughly a year, it's gone through three workshop readings, and I reached the point where I had a script and wasn't sure how else to make it better.

Since the setting is so minimalistic, it is an extremely easy play to produce. The challenge is in making the world something easy for the audience to understand. The production will be more like a workshop in that I want to stage it to find problems in the script that wouldn't be obvious for a reading.

Do you think that since it's a bit abstract to most people, students will respond positively to it?

I certainly hope so. The story walks this fine line between ludicrousness and realism and in doing so finds this place where we can believably say and do things we never would in reality.

Has any particular play, playwright or other person or thing inspired your work?

Every character in the play is based, however loosely, on someone I've really known -- even Ashu, the character who ranges from Sean Connery to a cartoon.

What do you hope to do by producing your play at TU?

By putting a play into the hands of actors and designers, new things will be found in the script. A lot of things the playwright didn't intend to put in the play suddenly become unspeakably important. Stage directions are a whole different world when they're no longer words on a page. Unless the story is completely antiquated, a play is not meant to be read but seen. That's why I believe every play should be forced through at least one workshop performance before it's declared to be a final draft.

Janet's play will be performed as part of Towson University's 2009 Fall Season. (Photo courtesy of Janet's facebook page.)

--DQ

Senior theatre thesis: been there, done that

Facebook, one of my many online social networks, is my number one friend-stalking tool. I constantly refresh my page when I don't have anything better to do to see who updated their statuses, simply because I want to know about the cool things going on in their lives, or lack thereof lately, as most of us find ourselves up to our ears in mid-semester schoolwork, projects and papers.

Sifting through statuses the other day, I had to laugh at what I saw.

Several theatre majors I know had things posted like "is in the library from now until the end of time" or "has 10 pages down, 10 more to go" or "needs some distraction from Stephen Sondheim for a while." Ohhh, yes, I thought, smiling to myself superiorly. It's THAT time of their college careers as theatre majors.

The dreaded senior theatre thesis. I can hear the dated horror movie screams now.

I'm not sure why Towson requires its theatre majors to write a 20-page thesis before they can earn their degree. I speculate about it all the time, wondering if the university administration thinks that as mischief-making, obnoxious theatre kids (come to a cast party and you'll see what I mean), we don't take ourselves seriously, or whether they believe because we have a number of courses that stray from the typical lecture-exam class structure that we're not retaining information as well as other students in other majors do.

Regardless, it's unavoidable. I mocked my research-laden friends, especially the ones who are preparing to graduate in 46 days like me (oh yes, the countdown began a while ago), and gave myself a pat on the back for deciding to write my thesis the semester before my last semester.

I thought I didn't have motivation then? Ha! I certainly don't have any motivation now, definitely not enough to even begin to think about writing a worthwhile thesis.

Well done, Dana. You made a good decision last semester, even though there were nights you felt like tearing your hair out as you labored over the computer screen writing about French translation in theatre.

Best of luck to my comrades, but I don't envy you.

--DQ

Audiences will swarm to "Bug"

I must admit something.

I committed the numero uno theatre etiquette no-no tonight upon my arrival at Towson University's Center for the Arts to see the much-anticipated Bug: I was late for the show. Only by a few minutes, due to a slow dinner waitress (*grumble*), but late nonetheless.

As I entered the theater, I heard a phone ringing from the stage, a clear indicator that, much against theatrical tradition, the show had started on time. I cursed under my breath and followed the usher up the stairs behind the seats in total darkness, trying not to miss one and consequently break my face. At the top, I was directed to an open seat. In the third row.

As I descended the center aisle of stairs, I could feel eyes from both sides watching me, scorning me for being an unnecessary distraction to the hardworking actors on the stage at floor level. As I spotted my seat, I cringed as I passed in front of everyone in the row, who were ironically enough some of my fellow theatre majors (and etiquette-followers). It's safe to say I was nothing short of mortified.

However, the actors didn't much seem to mind as they carried on with the production, which, I might add, was spectacular. Aside from a minor set malfunction, the acting was emotional and impressive, and the characters, raw and real. It's a high-energy dark comedy, much unlike the yawn-inducing Miss Julie, and its obsessive, neurotic themes (namely, a bug infestation which is possibly a schizophrenic delusion) create a multitude of tension and action-packed character interaction. Blood is spilled, hearts are broken, and there is even a hilarious scene where two of the characters waltz to Patsy Cline's "Crazy" in gas masks and lab coats.

Bug is highly enjoyable and different from much of the Mainstage work Towson produces, as Peters promised it would be. You could even say it was...infectious.

--DQ

Backstage at "Bug" - Part 2

It's opening night for Bug, which runs until Saturday in Towson University's Ruth Marder Theatre. Tickets are $2 for students and $5 for general admission.

Here are a few more behind-the-scenes tidbits from the production work this week.

First: deciding on colors for a door. It's a process, I kid you not.



Last: the set finally begins to take shape.



If the desire strikes you, enjoy the show; I'll be there Friday and will see you right back here afterward.

I remain your DQ.