Uplifting Your Monday - One Feather at a Time

(With apologies to Steve Miller)

I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till I'm free
Oh, lord, through the revolution

Friday Flights of Fancy

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz,
I wonder where the flowers iz?

All the boids is the on the wing...isn’t that absoid?
I thought the wing was on the boid!”

With apologies to Andrew Osborne

Shoe Strings & Timing Part Deux: The Reckoning

Quick recap from the earlier post - are "shorties" (groupings of short plays) of less value than full-length plays? At the end, big questions were asked - what is the value of art? Is it tied to length of the performance? Ultimately, does bang + buck = time + quality?

Last weekend I had an opportunity to view Andras Schiff perform a number of Beethoven's Sonatas. The performance consisted of 3 pieces and an encore performance of Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor. The central performance was, at most, eighty minutes long - not much "value" for the insane cost of Carnegie Hall tickets, no? But such a statement discounts the value of experiencing one of the greatest pianists tackle Beethoven. Absolutely breathtaking. I want to also note that the man did all the pieces from memory - which, I'm sure you can agree, is totally insane.

After the performance, I thought about my earlier questions. Did I get what I paid for? Was it worth it? Ultimately, I decided that, despite the "short" time I was in the theater, the experience was more than worth the dollars paid. The experience wasn't tied to the time spent in the hall, it was tied to the performance itself. I would have liked it to be longer, but I certainly didn't feel short-changed just because it didn't last another hour. As for the idea that "short"performances are less worthwhile than full length one? Preposterous. To my mind, Schiff's performance was as "valuable" as watching one of Beethoven's symphonies - probably more so, considering how often those symphonies are performed.

I'm going to have to abandon my rapidly collapsing comparative analysis - to continue to compare Schiff's performance to our "shorties" would entail us putting our work on the level of Schiff's - not something I'm willing to assert under any circumstances.

In the end, I feel value isn't tied to time but to quality. If you'll allow me another poor comparison, a 1940s Loony Toon short is better than a full-length late-70s Disney feature, right? Of course, now I'm just digging a deeper hole by breaking my own Granny Smith Apples to Golden Delicious Apples rule. A better example - a tight one-disc OutKast album versus the terrible Speakerboxx/Love Below.

So length doesn't necessarily equal value. Rather, quality is value. "Of course!" you say, "I didn't need to read all that to realize this! I knew that all along!" But what if that OutKast album was only 5 (the best 5) songs long, instead of 14? Would it still be worth your money? Or would you hold out for the "full" album even though you know the content isn't as strong as the already-released 5 songs?

BOOM - Do people have certain preconceptions regarding length regardless of value? Stay tuned to part 3!

Wednesday Whimsey

Wither would William wander
When wife Wendy whines?
To the Ten Tramps Tavern
Tripping toward titillating times.

- BOOM; A Nate Root original

Shoe Strings & Timing

Here is something I've been struggling with for a while - My therapist says talking about it with a mass audience of faceless strangers might help. (Kidding - I don't have a therapist - I have theater instead! Nowhere near as helpful.)

So my problem - many of the plays/productions I've done in the past and those we plan to do in the future tend to focus around a number of short plays rather than full-length, three-act epics. As always, part of this is technical - short plays require less from actors, are easier to put together, cost less, and don't live/die on their own.

These "shorty-groups" also tend to be quicker. Hamlet, they are not. They can't be - without common characters/themes/problems, audiences can't stay engaged for hours on end. There is no hook in a shorty group. Without a hook, even an hour of small works tends to test an audience's stamina.

With that said, shorty groups aren't in any way "lesser" works any more than a short story is worth less than a novel. They are simply two superficially similar narrative forms saddled with their own rules and audience preconceptions. Granny Smith Apples to Golden Delicious Apples.

What constitutes value in theater? Specifically, does "length" mean value? In video games, people expect the game to be 10 hrs long to be "worth it". Movies have to be over 70-80ish minutes to be considered features. Does a similar time = value equation apply to theater as well? Do people have expectations of how much "value" they get when they purchase a ticket?

As this is dragging long, I'll delve deeper in a later post. I just wanted to put this out and see what people thought first: Do you feel better spending more money for a long show than a short one? What sort of expectations do you have?

Nate

Vestigial

So I was trying to remember the word "vestigial" - don't ask - and that got me thinking on the nature of modern theater and Feed the Bird's approach.

Yeah - try following that mental leap.

Warning: The following is just my thoughts on this theater group. (Scary, I know.) There is no overarching point I'm trying to prove or argue.

*Ahem*

My ponderous pondering focused primarily on the "lean and/or mean" structure of Feed the Bird - minimal actors, no lighting cues, only as many props as we can carry, etc. We chose this feature to be one of our theater's defining characteristics. Why? Partially because we have too, considering the realities of no-budget productions in NYC. Yet this was an artistic choice as well - our plays tend to disdain big set-piece productions.

From a FtB standpoint, the trappings of modern theater tend to distract from the point of it. We don't need a full helicopter a la Miss Saigon. We don't need a parade of animals a la The Lion King. Would the (hopefully) witty word-play of our Tradegy! A Series of Chorious Incidents really improve with a rotating stage and full choir? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

So - back to my original thought: "vestigial" & "theater". Is FtB shedding the much ado of major theater and moving forward? (Not alone, obviously - we're certainly not the only no-budget group in NYC. However, no-budget is currently experiencing a real resurgence.) Or are we regressing back to an earlier form of theater? Shakespeare did the travelogue "Antony & Cleopatra" on a blank stage. The original Greek productions took place in barren sandy amphitheaters.

If I was pushed, I'd probably argue that we're regressing, despite the negative connotations that word raises. My personal creative focus has always been on finding & manipulating the rules and conventions on media and genre. This, to me, doesn't seem like any kind of step forward. People have been messing with this sort of thing as long as "this sort of thing" has been around.

All said, I'm okay with where we are. I look to entertain - myself and my audience. I have no desperate desire to push the art of theater forward. In fact, I tend to think the people who actively set out to "progress" are pretentious assholes. Doing something successfully is, for me, more than enough.

I'll leave the argument about regression versus evolution of theater to those who care. At least, more than those who care for more than the length of a blog post.

Feeding the ducks

I agree with Spence on this one - there is something poetic about doing our first major event about birds. It was either this or "Make Way for Ducklings".

(Click here if you're not up on your kick-ass children's literature)

Entering from Stage Left

Nate: Um, hello?

Blogosphere echoes mustily

Nate: Man...this is weird. I've never written a blog before. What do I say?

Shuffles digital desk papers

Nate: I guess I could talk about my feelings and stuff, the girl who sits behind me in class that I like, or quote high-faultin' poetry like someone who'll go unmentioned...but that's not me.

Beat

Nate: If I were a blogger, what kind of blog would I write? What kind of blog defines me?*

(*Disclaimer: Nate is not someone who writes questions like the one above and would be more likely to avoid anyone who would seriously ponder such a question.)

(Further note: Nate feels the same way about people who talk in third person.)