Systems of Rehearsal (Shomit Mitter)

I didn’t quite finish today’s book- I have another thirty pages which will have to wait until tomorrow, and while I think I may still attain greater knowledge of the subject of the book (which I swear I will get to after this preamble), I don’t know how much my feelings towards to subject of the study will change and so that’s what I’ll focus on now.

Systems of Rehearsal purports to be the first book which examines the theatrical philosophies of three luminary directors (Stanislavsky, Brecht, and Jerry Grotowski, a man I didn’t know), how they sought to bring out those philosophies in their actors through rehearsal techniques, how both their techniques and their philosophies changed over their careers, and the influence they had on director Peter Brook.

It’s a clear idea with a lot of work needed to bring it home, and the part of the reason the book is taking so long is the meticulous, I might say over-burdened, way that Mitter explains the philosophies and techniques of these directors. I’m not an anti-intellectual by any means, and I think art requires making sense of difficult and often contradictory thought but if these philosophies cannot be articulated simply, or if they rely on pushing through to their logical conclusions until you end up on the complete opposite side of where you started (which has happened to all three of the focus directors for each chapter,) then perhaps the director is stretching, or hasn’t though things out clearly enough.

In theatre circles I am kindly ignored for my views of the modern director, a position that I think has been warped past what its true use is and contorted into something much more all-encompassing to everyone’s detriment, much like the US president.

In Western thought (maybe all thought, but I don’t want to speak for other cultures) we’re taught to exalt the individual: so when we study history we don’t look at the broader arcs, we look at the actions of a few choice people; in civics we don’t look at our systems of government, but only at the people at the top; and in theatre we’re trained to ignore the collaborative aspect, the single most distinguishing characteristic of it, and are told to instead hold up someone as the auteur of the work, and that person is usually the director.

In my mind the director ought to be a facilitator, the eyes of the audience, who is there to hone what the team is doing, clarify it, and help everyone pull in the same direction. It’s not hard to go from that idea, to the one that the director ought to be the person who sets the tone for the group instead of the person who finds the tone the group already is doing, and unfortunately we’ve gone past that to the point where what people care about, flock to, and wait for, is the “director’s vision.” All people working in theatre should serve the play, but too often we want the play to serve the director and everyone else to follow.

All that being said, I think directing is the weakest tool in my toolbox, and one I’m called on to use quite frequently, so I picked the book up to find ways to use rehearsal better, ways to help hone and guide the actors. I didn’t find that.

What I did find was an interesting book full of people who thought deeply about theater and then ruthlessly hammered that idea into every production they did. They became a brand. But Mitter does a great job of showing how the zenith left by one director became the foundation of the next: Stanislavsky demands truth in performance and the blending of performer and character; Brecht says that alienating the performer from the character is the proper path towards art, but that to alienate one must first master the blending that Stanislavsky demanded as the end point of the work; Grotowski suggests that it is only by finding the performer’s true self that belief can be earned from the audience, and that we must use Brecht’s alienation techniques in order to find the negative space between performer and character.

All terribly interesting and not at all practical. Mitter assumes a greater familiarity with these director’s published work than I have (and so I assume more than the average person would have.)

When we raise people up to think for us I think we start twisting in knots, and when we assume that all work must always have a deeper connective tissue across our whole careers I think we limit what we can find in each individual project.

It’ll be interesting to see how this ends (and the Peter Brook of it all.)

The Art of Dramaturgy (Anne Cattaneo)

The book I’m currently reading demands, I think, to be considered holistically and so I am putting off writing about it partially. Instead I’ll reflect on a professional development book from last year, The Art of Dramaturgy by Anne Cattaneo.

I picked it up by chance, seeing it new arrivals at the library, but I’m glad I did because it is an illuminating book about my art form that I hope to return to in the future.

To hear her tell it Anne is one of the first professional dramaturgs in the business, having to fight early in her career to be seen as having a legitimate place in the rehearsal process. This book is part-autobiographical, but largely serves to illustrate the many facets of the dramaturgs work: in understanding old work, inspiring new work, and resurrecting lost work.

To potentially minimize the profession by working off my year-old memory the dramaturg, as Anne sees it, is there to fight for the script sometimes in defiance (though respect) against the author. Before this book dramaturgs was presented to me as a kind of research partner, their job was to look into the past and find resources for designers and provide context to actors. A worthy job, certainly, but one I would mostly seek out for period pieces.

Cattaneo argues something much broader: the dramaturg is there to question and to discover. To assume that everything in there is for a purpose and to ask what that purpose is, to at all times wonder “why” and in doing that to discuss with the director, with the actors, and with the designers how to bring every aspect to life.

Reading her book made me realize how much I take scripts for granted and how shallowly I’ve been reading my entire life. Her fervent belief that playwrights are artists and that their choices matter, and that discovery of those choices is vital work at every level reminded me how much opportunity I’ve let go to waste in trying to solve practical problems first.

Real Artists Don't Starve (Jeff Goins)

Like Hook before it I picked this book up in the hopes that it would have some general advice for a way of thinking and approaching the challenges in front of Pronoia and myself.

Real Artists Don’t Starve challenges the notion that suffering for one’s art is noble or even beneficial and uses a number of classic and modern case studies to show what are effective strategies for artists working today.

Like so many other books in this vein it depressed me for two reasons:

1. many of the people outline are extraordinary. Legitimate geniuses who many people recognized the value in right away and they needed to work to carve out time, find their niche, or believe in themselves. As has been documented in various places my work has been rejected by nearly everyone who has encountered it, and it is hard to find a foothold from which to begin my climb. Put simply: I don’t think I am extraordinary or can ever become that, so where do I start?

Do I strive forward stubbornly making my writing my way and hope that against all odds I find someone in power who likes the cut of my jib? At this point that seems like a losing battle that’s only going to continue to hurt me.

2. Almost all books about artists focus on solo-practitioners. Although some time is spent on Tywla Tharp and a movie producer, the vast majority of this book is for visual artists, prose writers, sculptors, etc. People who by and large don’t need other people to buy into their vision to create their art: they just need people to buy-in to be the audience. It is hard to build the team to exhibit play-writing, and then once you do you have the additional challenge of finding the audience.

So I continue to be frustrated as I can’t find the way to actually get started. There doesn’t seem to be a place for me until someone else decides I’m worth paying attention to.

There are a few things that the book suggests which I can put into practice: it says to expose your process and make work in public. Although that is hard in Houston, it was the basic idea of what we were trying to do with Production Meeting and I think I will need to find ways to keep myself and my work visible in-between projects.

The section in the book about being paid for one’s work is relevant to my work as a producer: as we decide how things for Space Train will move forward our biggest question is whether it is better to build community through a small stipend to show our respect for the artists we have, or to ask for people to share their skills and benefit from any profit accrued. Although I am still hesitant to pay artists under-market (for psychological reasons, not financial ones) I think the book has convinced me that paying people, and myself, is the best way to go forward.

Hooked (Nir Ayal)

Even before I had the terrible idea of starting a theater company I had an artistic problem: I couldn’t get people to see my work. Whether it was at university, at Station, or today I had tremendous difficulty getting people to come out even if those same people said they enjoyed it.

Back then it was an annoyance, today it is an existential threat to this company: if we can’t get people to see our shows we can’t get them to pay for our shows, and if we can’t get them to pay for our shows we won’t be able to do bigger projects.

As a company we have some notable weaknesses: we’re working in a niche genre that’s eschewed by the theatre class in Houston, we have shallow pockets and can’t compete for the best talent, we have an artistic director who is afraid of and loathes social media. Lots of problems.

So I picked up Nir Ayal’s Hooked which is about turning customers into habitual users of one’s product. While the book is primarily focused on the tech sector I hoped I’d be able to get some insights.

Let’s address one thing first: yes, this book is about changing people’s behavior, specifically into getting them to use your product habitually. While this can be seen negatively, and definitely has nefarious uses, the author defends the thesis by saying that as humans we want pleasant experiences, and this book is about refining experiences.

Right at the end of the book Mr. Ayal has some choice words about my field, entertainment, specifically saying: to turn entertainment into a viable business you need to work on creating a robust distribution network with lots of content moving through it. Pronoia isn’t there yet, it may never be there, but it’s a thing to think about.

The basics of the book are as follows: for a behavior to happen (seeing a show and buying a ticket,) a potential customer needs motivation (wants to see a show,) ability (free at the show time, disposable money) and a trigger (likely us telling them to come see a show.) The book is designed around how to turn that trigger from an external one (us advertising the show) to an internal one (“I want to see a show, what’s Pronoia doing tonight?)

Most of the tools suggested in the book are somewhat unavailable to us presently. To an extent the relevant information for our company could be: build a relationship with the audience and make sure you have content for them. Which we’ve tried, and failed, to do.

As much as I liked the book and as much valuable information is clearly present, I don’t have a roadmap to immediate implementation of it.

Theory of Fun Chapters 6-12

Although the first chunk of Theory of Fun was devoted the authors that games are a series of puzzles and exist to abstract real-world patterns of current or former use, the final chapters were more philosophical and talked about how games grow as their own artistic medium and what the means for the ethics of game development. For my purposes there wasn’t a lot of useful information for my current projects (which are not games, just reminiscent of them.

Still, it’s a highly interesting read that I would recommend.