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Your colleagues say your title is "President of Vice..."
I prefer "King of Dogma,"
but I'm really just a worker bee.
My current task is helping craft our
artistic brand. We convened a
dogma committee, not so much to restrict the palette as to
identify what we most desire to do.
As we've zeroed in, we
are focusing our efforts on sustainable producing models.
What are the goals?
We're interested in projects with
longer life cycles. It hurts to see a set crammed into
the dumpster six weeks after it was built, everyone going
separate ways just as the show starts really coming to life.
We are lucky to have several
producers with great commercial experience. I can
think of five people who worked at Dallas Stage Scenery
somewhere in the period I was there. We day-gigged
building everything from operas to Mary Kay arena shows.
Ironically, those grueling day jobs of twenty years ago
become a huge asset today. We know how that scale of
theater works, from the hinges up.
Our most cherished goal among the
partners is to make Project X the culmination of all our
respective paths, and to leverage all the skills we've
earned over the years. Hopefully that includes some
large-scale work that people may not expect from us.
What's the climate for this
in Dallas?
Dallas couldn't be more perfect.
The talent base is huge. Lots of commercial and
industrial shows are built here, by some of the biggest
production companies around. I actually wouldn't know
how to do it anywhere else.
We've got a core of artists at
Project X that have worked together over twenty years, and
that is our stability and our community bond, if you will. We have brilliant new
colleagues that shake up the chi with their fresh
viewpoints. The combined skillset of this company is
remarkable.
Our new
campus is perfectly located, in the epicenter of Dallas's
new Trinity River District. Claude Albritton's
contribution to this is monumental. It's not just
putting us on the map, it's putting theater and the arts in
a particular place on a very exciting map.
What are the challenges?
Of course, all the standard growing
pains. Money. Competition for entertainment dollars is
relentless. But theater is elemental.
It remains a singular experience to share air and space with a
living, breathing production.
Really, the challenges are just
continuing to hit our goals. We know we can work
together. Jack Matthews gave us a great opportunity to
develop our organization at South Side, and we did that.
We funded two years of non-stop research. We attracted
a good Board of Directors, and Claude's timing was a
godsend. Now we're developing and funding our shows.
That's the current full-court press, and the clock is ever
ticking.
Do you think theater in
particular is diminishing against its competition, though, because
all evidence suggests that it is. Are funders abandoning
theater?
The standard line is that it's hard to raise money for shows.
People will fund
gear, or buildings; things you can touch or hold.
It is challenging to persuade someone to fund an idea.
I'm not sure I am quite ready to
accept that status quo. There are more empty spaces in
the world than great shows, right? Who says you can't
scale a spectacular, brainy show to a strip mall space? The
theater business is inextricably bound to the real estate
business. There are untapped synergies that can create
a lot of mutual benefit.
Are you talking about
creating more mainstream work?
It's keeping more shows operating
longer.
I doubt our overall sensibilities
will shift. It's not a coincidence that this specific
group of artists has come together. If you're talking
mainstream in terms of reaching more people, then absolutely
yes. If you're talking about sanding the edges off,
no. We live in a time where Target commercials have
lovely edges. No need to do that.
You've mentioned "models,"
several times, now profit...can you put that into perspective?
To work on the scale we desire, we
have to look beyond a regional theater type season model. Cirque du
Soliel has always intrigued us. They are very strongly
branded, but you never know what they'll do next.
They're well merchandised and promoted.
We don't model ourselves
artistically in that direction. Our raw materials are
different, and differently balanced. But we're working
to hone our brand to the same level.
Is there a downside?
The commercial companies work this
way because it is profitable. Anything we can do to
create more art for more people, for the same seed
investment, seems like a good idea to me. But it
is sometimes challenging to explain, and even within our
organization we struggle to balance our desires for
strong-performing entertainment products with the core value
of serving the public. I think wherever one lands in
that balance, the ideal of serving the public can only be
enhanced by more success in the overall entertainment
market. If your heart and motives are pure, then more
is simply more. And given uncompromising quality
either way, then more is better.
I'm probably the biggest mercenary
of the bunch, but on the other extreme, you have folks who
have run some of the most enduring traditional nonprofits
around. So we have a great wealth of experience to
draw from, and it's just nothing but good.
I guess I'm having a little
difficulty coming up with downsides. I suppose there is
the difficulty of front-loading so many projects. That
takes a huge sacrifice of time, and it's not as exhilarating as
jumping right onstage. We're basing most of our early
projects on specific performers or concepts,
ending with a
script. We all love working with writers, that's
important to us as a core value. We're adapting
some things. Erik Ehn is creating an amazing work with us right
now, Boy.
Let's talk about that...
We've had two workshops with Erik, each one culminating with
a reading. For the second workshop, we rented a big seaside
cabin on Mustang Island and did nothing but eat, sleep, and
dream the play. I admire Eric's big brain, and his intellectual
discipline. He is like a creative particle generator,
always able to focus his energy in a way that the sum of the
parts is exceeded.
Boy is essentially a mashup of
Shakespeare's different boy characters and themes, with the
stories of John Dillinger and intercut with Manhattan Melodrama. The rhythm is great,
very slyly syncopated, especially when
the twentieth-century Americans start interacting with the Shakespeareans.
You could call it a boy meets girl thing, only not in
exactly the
way you'd imagine.
What is currently happening
with Boy?
We've read it several times
as a group. Those readings have spawned a mountain of
research, because the ideas are so epic, but very quick and
concentrated. I wouldn't describe Boy
as a musical, but the music is important, and there's a lot
of it.
It has some Disney moments, too, pure fantasy. Raphael
and I have been working hard to pinpoint where to really
pour it on. There's one number with Boy, Hamlet, the
Ghost Dog, and a band of pirates who may be in love with
each other.
There's a significant supernatural-effects component, a
talking bird and dog, and a flock of fairies. In hindsight, it's one of those "careful what you wish for"
situations. We asked Erik to help us create something
phenomenal, and he did it.
Now, we have to hope our hard work will pay off, and allow Boy, and Project X, to survive.
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