It's been a while

Boy howdy.

Just today I was reminded how remiss I have been in putting together things to read on my little blog here. The last time I wrote in this little public journal, I was just graduating school. Now I have graduated and spent the summer at Vassar College with the Powerhouse Theatre Program as an Artist in Residence. Which was exceptionally exciting and challenging, and a place where I learned an immense amount, both about theatre and, more importantly, about myself.

That said, now the real experiment and adventure is happening. I hope y'all like this portion of the adventure. Oh, and you can head over to my website and check that out. Soon I hope to have these two linked up.

web.me.com/ericugland

The end of times the beginning of true adventure

I find it hard to comprehend that this adventure is over. That this
education is complete. I'm just not sure what this all means. I have a
masters of fine arts in theatre. A terminal degree from a
distinguished institution, and I am seemingly back where I started.
Where do I go from here? All I know is, right now I don't want to
leave, but I'm excited to see where I'm going.

Saturday

Time: 1537
Place: the couch in Layla's apartment, bronxville, by
Mood: fair with gusts of hope
Weather: grey with touches of gray

Grandfather,

This is not a weekend to live literally or vicariously, though there
cetainlt is something to be said for triumphing in the face of the
difficult and vexing, but certainly, you faces your own tribulations
this week, and deserve a weekend of rest and relaxation.

I have just returned from IKEA where I marveled at the ingenuity of
the Swedes and also, at seeing gas prices below two dollars. Crazy
things happening in New Jersey.

Have lots of puppet building to do, so news will be light today. Glad
to hear you are healthy again.

Love,

Eric Ugland

Friday

Time: 7:18
Place: starbucks, Bronxville
Mood: hopeful
Weather: wet and lukecold

Grandfather,

The end of another scholastic week. I have found myself in something
of a sticky situation, having gotten a little behind in my work, and
now I have to throw on some serious elbow grease and make this weekend
a work weekend, and by weekend, I mean Sunday. A work Sunday.

Hope you are feeling well.

Love,

Eric Ugland

Monday

Time: 2152
Location: the back patio, Pub, Sarah Lawrence college, Bronxville, NY
Mood: fair
Weather: clear skies, cold air

Grandfather,

Well, I feel a bit foolish, having sent the past few emails to an address that was, sadly, incorrect. Problem solved, I daresay.

This evening finds things in my neck of the woods quite well. I have a play due tonight, and I fear I will miss the deadline, but the deadline is more of a soft target, not the absolute end time. I started writing the play this evening, after a couple of days of gestation. My writing routine has been somewhat non existent of late, for no particular reason, so it is a little difficult to hop back into the swing of things. In the serious two hours I worked, I got ten pages done, which is no small feat, but ultimately is below the level to which I have performed in the past.

I am currently on a bit of a break as I sit in the brisk night air at the mid point of a stroll. So many tricks and tilts I use to free up my mind, to get it to focus more keenly on the worlds I am trying to populate and the stories I am trying to weave. In a certain respect, it is thoroughly exhausting, and exciting. Really flying in the world of a play is something I lack the appropriate vocabulary to describe, but it is, and I use the proper form here, Awesome. Striking awe into me.

I am going back to work now, and hope your day is full of delights.

Love,
Eric Ugland

Saturday (part 2)

Location: bottom floor, Grand Central Station, Manhattan
Time: 1305
Mood: fair, with mild low pressure zones
Weather: rainy, cool

Grandfather,

Due to unforseen complications (weather et. al) I did not end up attending any of the museums initially intended. However, it has been a fascinating examination of human nature, which is, in and of itself, a museum experience.

Love,
Eric

Saturday

Time: 1039
Location: Starbucks on 6th Ave and 21 St, Manhattan
Mood: fair to hopeful, with gusts into happiness
Weather: cool and Grey, but warmer than average

Grandfather,

Today, I am in the city. People around here call New York City, The City, which, in the context of this geographical area, makes sense. I am planning to visit some of the fine museums in this city today. Ideally, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Quite a large helping of Art (note the capital A), but sometimes that can be good, getting to that point where one can be overwhelmed by the creativity of others, and you can stop judging yourself and let loose on the canvas of your choice.

In terms of being creative, I am having some difficulty putting this puppet show together, for whatever reason, I haven't been able to make it coalesce into a state I am happy with. The prospect of toy theatre has increased in me, when I first began thinking of it, I was a little put off. Moving things about a miniature stage? It seems a little ridiculous, but what about theatre doesn't have a hint of the ludicrous about it, that generally seems to be the art and theatre that most attracts and compels me. As I get more into things, I start to see the potential in it, and just wish I had the time and resources to take things to the level that I can see in my mind, not to mention the general construction and engineering skill to make things happen. I will send you some pictures of the theatre I built tomorrow, in order that you might have a better understanding of this undertaking.

In terms of classes, life is good. Maybe even grand. I am truly challenged by eighty percent of my classes, and find myself engaged in the ideas we discussed in class outside of class too. In particular, we had a rousing debate on the definition and quality of "Art". What is Art? Is such a difficult question to answer. Can one categorize art as inherently good or bad? Does Art require a meaning identifiable across multiple people? Does the author/creator's intent matter? I mean, ultimately these are personal answers, that will likely differ between each and every person. I know that I am still in a state where I cannot provide a concrete answer to any of those questions, and I find that as I experience more and see more and make more, I am increasingly unable to put together a solid answer.

Hope all is well over there on the Left.

Love,
Eric

Arthur Miller

"Without alienation, there can be no politics.

My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house—in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.

If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp… . The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

A playwright … is … the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism."

Thoughts on the day

Today is Sunday, and I feel determined to write more often in this blog. Somehow it seems important to my artistic development.

Welcome Back

So. It has been a while. Truly, you must be my faithful readers.

School has resumed, and it has sucked the majority of time down the drain, though I have to say that metaphor isn't quite accurate. The drain implies waste, but I fel I am learning more this year than I have in quite some time. So, more later.

I promise.

The Big Questions

1. What is the responsibility of the artist?
2. What socio-cultural relevance does art have, outside of pure entertainment value?
3. What, if anything, can art truly accomplish?
4. Is theater dead, and what can we do to revive it? Is it even possible?

So, there we go. The Big Questions.

The responsibility of the artist in accordance to what? Society? Himself/herself? That is a clear distinction that needs some clarification. I will answer the question in terms of Society, as I'm not sure anyone can really place a quantifiable or classifiable answer on the responsibility one has to oneself.

If an artist is going to ask anything of society, then there is an inherent responsibility of the artist to provide something of net worth to society. If you want society to pay you, to provide housing, stipend, space, whatnot and whathaveyou, then there has to be a return on the investment of society. It is at that moment that the masturbatory action of art (making art purely for the self with no regard to the impact or involvement of society as audience) becomes puerile and wasteful. And in my opinion, the more an artist requests from society, the more he/she is required to provide, and the more relevance to societal questions the art needs to have.

Okay, Question two.  Socio-cultural relevance. Big words. I'm almost intimidated, but I won't allow my colloquial self to go down without a fight. I think there is an intrinsic value to art, in a socio-cultural manner, and I would argue that to be communication. There is a reason that metaphors exist, and is it ridiculous to postulate that art is the greatest sense of the metaphor? In a secondary sense, I would also argue that art has a great capacity to initiate thought and stimulate feelings/emotions. As far as entertainment goes, I feel there is an implicit value to entertaining art because it allows art to encapsulate a larger audience and introduce them to your way of thinking. A way to preach beyond the choir, is perhaps the best way to say what I'm trying to say. Especially in this contemporary age, where there are so many methods of artistic delivery which have espoused a pure entertainment value approach, I think Art (with a capital A) tries to eliminate any sense of "entertainment" value in order to further distance Art from (for lack of a better word) crass commercialism masquerading as art.

I think the most that one can hope for art, alone, to accomplish is a inciting a different mindset. Art cannot change the word, but it can catalyze people into changing something.

Theatre isn't dead. Theatre is just stupid right now. And to revive it, we need to treat it like theatre. We need to see why it is theatre, and what reason the shows we want to put on are put on in the theater and not in the cinema, or not as a painting. We need to understand the wide variety of medium available and understand that to ignore the power of theatre, the tools of theatre causes it to go unused and rot. For the past hundred and twenty years, we have seen realism and proto-realism and pseudo-realism completely dominate American Theatre, and until that begins to relent in some way, we won't see anything but more of the same, and that more of the same is the death of theatre. Theatre lives on newness and innovation, and we've forgotten that. Also, contemporary theatre is like Velveeta Cheese. We've been feeding our audiences this bland processed chemical crap for so long, they don't know what else to do expect, and blanche when given actual cheese. We need to educate our audiences, and do it in a way that doesn't penalize them. We need to attract people to theatre because it's theatre, not admonish them. This, in a sense, ties into the ideas above about needing to provide entertaining theatre. There has to be a hook, you know?

Well, there are my answers for today. I'm going to reserve full right to completely change my mind next week, but for now, that's what I believe.

A quote to think on

"I began to feel that the theatre was not only inadequate, it was evasive; it did not wish to draw upon its deeper potentialities... It aimed to be soothing."
- Thorton Wilder

My Bucket's Got a Hole Innit

My dear friends and faithful readers, I apologize for the delay in my posting. I have been preoccupied over the past few days with an increasing frustration built on my own petty envies and jealousies. I want theatre to be bigger and bolder than it is, and I get infantly angry when I look at other arts, other entertainment, other people, getting money and/or attention.

On the opening of the Olympics, I had to take a moments pause. The average Olympian (while I may say average, know that's still a mean feat. (I am so sorry for the puns...)) isn't able to train/prepare for the Olympics without assistance. But the United States government and various big businesses (and a host of erstwhile sponsors)provide the means and ways of allowing an athlete to hold a job and prepare for his/her competitions. Most major schools offer scholarships for athletes. All of this, it got me a-thinking. I won't, for one minute suggest these peoples don't deserve scholarships and such. I think of athletes with a high regard. I am pretty sure there is a cultural prerogative in the United States to perceive athletes as the paragons of humanity, and I find it hard to rise above that cultural pressure.

All of this leads me to saying what I want to say, which is, why don't we have a similar mindset for artists? Would it be so difficult to rework the patronage method?

Okay, well, think on that for now, chew up and down, and I am going to listen to my good friend Jenny's play be read. Go visit her at theoffcenter.com Tomorrow, I will be looking at answering her post, The Big Questions.

Cheers.

Noir Theatre?

Okay, so first an excuse.... I don't have internet at my house, so I can't quite yet get around to posting any actual replies to the comments, but it has bee lovely getting them. Welcome, new readers.

So, Noir theatre...

We'll, let us think back to the elements I posited as requisite for Noir. Can they be put on stage in a manner that allows the art form to be more than an homage?

I mean, certainly, insomuchas there is totally room for violence and eroticism on stage, mysteries happen, and brutality has been rather commonplace since Oedipus plucked his eyes out. I'd say, sure. Noir can happen... Sort of.

I think the visual aesthetic is very strong, especially from the film aspect of Noir. I don't have a strong answer for replicating that on stage... Perhaps i'll come up with something tonight in the dreamland...

A reply to an earlier comment

Okay, so, sometimes I am technologically incompetent and a bit lazy, so I'm not sure how to go about replying to comments via email.

SO... A little ways in the past, there was a comment about wanting to franchise black box theatres across the United States, and while that is an admirable notion, theatre to the masses and al, there is an intrinsic problem with theatre, that theatre doesn't gain any advantages with an economy of scale. Big shows are always more expensive. Always. Even for big theatres producing a host of shows, the big shows are expensive.

Every actor, ideally, requires a living wage for the entirety of the production, and that's expensive. So are sets and electricity and play rights... Theatre is, when we imagine it as fully produced, expensive... And if we want society to pay for it, we need to figure out a method of translating that cost into a worth to society beyond pure entertain, and more broad tan elitist Art.

Okay. Response done.

Noir, defined. Ish.

It has been somewhat more difficult than I originally thought, coming up with a definition for noir. It seems to have been something which has eluded critics and thinkers alike. Although, I'd venture the chief point has been their inability to find a definition that works for everyone.

But, here goes my attempt: noir, first off, refers merely to the film genre, not really the literature. Of course, at no time in my research did I come across any mention of theatre delving into the Noiric arts. The movement (or style (as Thomas Schatz would have you) or genre or what-have-you(Alain Silver refers to Noir as a cycle, or a phenomena, that the noir mood was a period with relative geographic and temporal boundaries)) began in the United States as a literary art form known as Hardboiled, which would also become known, later, as Pulp, due to the cheap printing that normally accompanied it. This was the world of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and was typified by generally dark themes particularly those which emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. There seems to be a need in the noir for an unsentimental portrayal of sex violence and crime.

The Hardboiled fiction of the thirties gave birth to the "Classic" (and to some, only) period of noir films, from late thirties through the late fifties. Certain critics have argued that all Noir films following that period have only been as homage or allusion, and not qualifiable as Noir. I happen to argue that is hogwash.

Okay, enough of the history, you say, what makes up Noir? At one point in my reading, five words were tossed out as elements of noir (though written directly after was the phrase that most noirs have even some of these elements, and rarely all five... So why?... Anyway) oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel. I didn't know what oneiric meant, and it means pertaining to dreams. The stereotypical notion of Noir seems to entail the protagonist being a Private Eye, a gumshoe, but the reality isn't quite true. Sure, Hammett and Chandler relied on the character as a private eye, but Cain (a later writer) relied on a less heroic lead with more emphasis on psychological exposition rather than crime solving. Indeed, most film noir was more likely to have a lead as a victim, or a person directly connected to the crime or problem in question.

So, Noir might not have a detective lead, but there's a crime? Well, mostly, but as stated above, there was a movement away from crime solving investigations toward psychological exposition.

But they happened in the gritty cities? No. Some did, but plenty happened in small semi-rural areas.

There is generally, and it would seem with Noir it is all general, there is a visual intricacy (principally derived from German expressionist film) and a complex voiceover driven narrative. They are sophisticated and bleak dramas (except when they're comedies) dusted with mistrust and cynicism, topped off with a generous helping of the absurd.

Noir's roots are in German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism and Italian Neo-Realism. I really don't know a heap about any of those, but I will certainly do a bit of peeking to see what is up, and push it onto here in the next few days.

Okay, so after reading this, did I figure out a definition of Noir? Not really. For me, noir deals with crime and betrayal and moral ambiguity, where people try to be Good in the face of a choice that isn't simple. The kill one to save five dilemma. But there's a sense of not taking prisoners, of actively seeking revenge when betrayed, of hitting back, at all times. Of using any and all means to win, and of having to accept different definitions to win...

Maybe I can just do as the Supreme Court has done before me... I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

All of this, and the question remains: what the heckfire does this have to do with theatre? Well, can we translate this art form to the stage, or is it relegated to film and literature? That topic, my fine feathered friends, I think I will tackle later this week. Following German Expressionism, Italian neorealism and French PoeticRealism. Good day. Write well.

A quick note

Wow, okay. I just finished watching season three of Veronica Mars. They include on the last dvd the pitch they put together to try and attain a further season from the networks, and the easiest way to describe the change is from a hip young contemporary farce where the protagonist has to deal with her real life and her detective life to what certainly seemed like just another crime procedural... It was such a disappointment. Okay, BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING OF MEDIOCRITY.

Where did Noir go?

It is amazing how good Veronica Mars is. I almost can't handle the fact that the season and series is over. I found it a refreshing island of something new in the world of story telling. Noir, in my mind, is one of the most fascinating arenas of storytelling, and I love it.

There's just something so..... Deep about it. So painful. The noir hero is so conflicted and broken. They/he/she make mistakes and feel the terrible consequences of the choices they make. Sex and violence are bosom buddies. Everyone betrays everyone, and the secrets are deep and deadly.

And contemporary noir! How much potential can there be! There's so much perceived danger, paranoia, it's incredible, and unexploited.

It would seem to me, Noir has had a cultish following in recent years, but hasn't really seen a deep cultural popularity since its birth in the post-war years. So why? Every once in a while, some noir tale pops up and is lavished with praise and delight. I mean, I'm a little biased. I love noir.

My question for this evening is: how can we, and I use the pejorative we lightly to imply those of us playing in the theatrical sandbox, harness Noir for plays?

Tomorrow, I will take a bit of time to write out some of the characteristics that define noir to me, and in the following posts, I will see if I can explore how stage plays might romp in this gleefully dark genre.

Great Theatre

Sometimes we can find ourselves on the site of a phenomenal dramatic event. The quirky fates which seem to control the flows of the universe manage to put on some glorious bits of life.

Karoake is a great example of free fate based theatre. Live-ish music, awkward and usually desperate social interactions, and then, those little bits of weirdness. Tonight, for example, we have this young Hispanic woman, looking rather out of place amongst the wealthy pale elite of Westport. What's interesting with her is some tertiary facts, i.e., she is pregnant. In a bar. With a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And is clearly being ignored (and is upset at this) by the guy with the overpriced jeans, slick hair, and clever orange hair...

(on a side note, the gentleman currently singing is atrocious)

These sorts of characters exist in life, and one of my favorite pastimes is making up their stories. Inviting them into my little universe, the one I control in my slice of mind. I credit this with helping out my playwrighting. Next time you find yourself out people watching, look around and allow the characters you see to permeate your brain, and set them free on the page.

Let's take the people I see here. The Hispanic lady, I think her name is Gloria. The guy she's here with is Thomas. Thom, as he goes by, is playing beer pong with his high school buddies, who are closer to him now than family Lives with his parents, works in the City. Gloria is a supposedly surrogate mother, secretly pregnant with Thom's baby and in a twisted, and ultimately passive aggressive, move, she smokes and drinks in order to damage the poor kid.

I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who does this sort of thing. I do it a lot. Perpetually really. And it can be a bit of a problem when the stories I've concocted don't mesh with the greater reality, and I get a bit confused about what is what. What I came up with, and what they came up with.. But isn't that the game of the playwright?

I guess there's a grand question looming there... Why do we write? And, more specifically, why do we write for theatre? What is it about this particular medium that draws us in, and why do we sacrifice so much to do this?

I am going to try and facilitate an answer to this question somewhere in the coming days...

Breaking News

I am writing another book to a musical, and I am a bit afraid. I don't want to fall into the trap of crating a worthless piece of trash that exists only to make money and provide a modicum of entertainment. I'd like to follow the tenets I have espoused, the ideas I try and believe in.

I was reading an interview with a number of playwrights in the last issue of American Theatre, and I found a rather insightful thought: theatre, by virtue of its place in contemporary society, needs to be bigger and more important. We ask our audience to make increasingly larger sacrifices in order to attend our productions. We need to offer a product that is worth the forty, eighty, hundred dollars, we are asking for tickets. We can't put on something that can be shown on television, just another procedural or a crass commercial event. When we write a play, and ultimately I realize the we must be sublimated to an I, must take a look at the topic, the story, the characters, the show itself and ask the question, "Is what I'm offering enough to justify the sacrifice I am asking so many others to make?"

Is it?

Think about what we are asking. Not just the audience members, but also al the people required to put the show together. Director, designers, riggers, carps, electricians, costumers, assistants, interns, actors, understudies, box office staff, marketers, and so on and so forth. It is a huge undertaking. Does a play so incredibly about your personal experience which no one can relate to, does that rate the sacrifice? Does a broad comedy about sexual shenanigans within a golf office?

I just feel there needs to be more, and I will probably still write plays that are a bit to small, bit too personal... But I'm going to try to keep that in mind, that for my plays to be fully realized, I have to ask a lot of other people...