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Round-up of the Week’s Events

Jubiliee Year, AEA’s response to suit, French & Vanessa host the Ovations, and more . . .

By Paul Birchall

Howlround’s Jubilee Year

Howlround, the indispensable national sounding board for theatrical philosophy and policy, has announced the formation of something slightly creepy called “The Committee of the Jubilee.”

The concept refers to a committee of various small and midsize theaters throughout the country, all joining together to promote diversity. This in itself is a tremendous idea – the future of our theaters will live and die on the diversity of the audiences that we can bring in. And the shows we put on should resemble the audiences we serve. And people should see people like themselves reflected on the stage. It’s a matter of simple common sense and, really, of customer service more than aesthetics. Theater needs to reflect the needs and desires of the people it’s trying to reach or, otherwise, what’s the point? No lasting art will be created and no shekels will change hands.

But that is not really what the Committee for the Jubilee is about. According to its announcement on the Howlround website, the idea is simply to obtain pledges from theater companies around the country that during the 2020-21 theatrical season, they will produce only works by “women, people of color, artists of various physical and cognitive abilities, and LBGTQA artists.” All other writers — the white males who have admittedly dominated the national scene for decades —  might as well take the year off, apparently.  

The roster of companies participating in the Jubilee year include Victory Gardens and The Gift theater companies in Chicago and, locally,  Artists at Play and the Evolve Theatre in the Los Angeles area.

First, to be clear, color-blind consideration of material in any format anywhere, not just in a theatrical situation, is a virtue for any number of reasons. This Jubilee just ain’t color-blind.

I think that it’s tremendous for distinctive theater companies to develop materials for their particular audience. We have all seen the wonderful work done by Deaf-West, East-West, Women’s Shakespeare, and Towne Street Players, to name a just a few. There’s truth to the Howlround statement when the Jubilee proposers note that “[Many companies’] theatrical seasons. . . look like a Victorian-era propaganda version of the human race . . . We shouldn’t be modeling for corporations and governments how to exclude in practice while promoting an image of inclusiveness.”

That said, I find the juxtaposition of the cheery, upbeat language of the proposal with the disturbingly bellicose underpinnings to be a distressing, insidious mix of idealism and hate – as though they’re trying to make enemies where no enemies exist.

As a white male, I can’t help but think that the underlying tone of white male-bashing is unhelpful: The Jubilee is gunning for the small theater companies, many of which could indeed stand to add more varied seasons. But is banning any writer, based on gender or skin color, the way to redress a glaring imbalance? I mean, imagine how the Jubilee Statement would read if it substituted black for white or woman for man. The proposal would be in court before you could say how do you do.

To me, much of the Jubilee Proposal puts me in mind of one of those creepy dating ads, which state that “we’re nice people” but “no fats, blacks or Asians need apply.” Preferences are preferences – and the Jubilee Committee’s proposal is still divisive, reverse racism with a sparkly label.

AEA responds to the lawsuit filed by its Los Angeles membership

A very short time after the plaintiffs for Los Angeles’s Pro-99 movement filed suit against Actor’s Equity, the Union fired back with a statement that is about as idiotic as you would expect from its entirely tone-deaf handling of the entire fracas. The Union’s retort to the filed document frames the entire conflict as a minimum wage issue, when the legal brief actually accuses the Union of breach of contract, breach of the covenant of fair dealing, and breach of the duty of fair representation. The Union, in its response, notes that it’s unfortunate that this is going to be an expensive matter of litigation, without mentioning that its multiple breaches of the Settlement Agreement and its obvious contempt for the expressed will of local membership in an already rigged referendum are what made the litigation necessary.

Let us be clear about something we’ve been saying for some time. The Union’s use of the minimum wage issue is a canard. They’ve signaled for some time that they  just don’t want to have to oversee the 99-seat theater scene. Minimum wage is essentially just a rallying cry in the way that Bush and Cheney used Weapons of Mass Destruction to muster public rage. The minimum wage argument is, similarly, an ideological bludgeon used to muster rage. The Union would benefit if most of the 99 seat theaters were to to drop out of the Union (as they have in San Francisco and Chicago) in order for AEA to claim that a greater percentage of its members are working in higher paid Union theaters. This would seem to be largely a game about statistics and ratios in a field with 90% unemployment among the Union membership.

As one reads the Union public response, though, it is clear that AEA is trying to galvanize the rest of the country against LA, rather than attempt to deal directly with employment woes of its own membership. The posts on the AEA Facebook page support this analysis: There are posts in which AEA members (not in LA) claim that the Union isn’t about pursuing art, it’s about getting people paid (which is inconsistent with AEA’s mission statement). Other posters note that if the AEA actors wish to work for free, they should just leave the Union. Some folks mention the good things that the Union brings to their members – as though it is not possible for the Union to be a good thing even when one of the things they do is ill-advised. A few posts even hold to that tedious trope that because there’s no theater in LA, the LA actors should just move to some other city if they want to do theater. How helpful.

On the other hand, East Coast AEA Equity Member Saum Eskadandi, whose comments have become a minor rallying point for AEA actors in New York who are sympathetic to those in LA. He is quoted as saying, “I’m just really confused by this union in general. I say if the actors there want it, and can see pathways by which new Equity contracts can be created, we should let them do it.”

This is the story that keeps on giving.

Royal Couple

French Stewart and Vanessa Stewart will be hosting the Ovation Awards at the Ahmanson Theatre on November 9. The pair are one of L.A. theater’s royal couples, and we couldn’t be happier that they continue to represent our community with passion, brains and class.

Making the Invisible Visible

Margaret Gray and Charles McNulty (LA Times) and Anthony Byrnes (KCRW) at the Stage Raw’s second symposium

Last night, Stage Raw hosted its second of three symposia on arts coverage. Margaret Gray hosted the panel at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena. The conversation focused on the economics of arts coverage, and the panel consisted of Sasha Anawalt, Anthony Byrnes, Sheldon Epps, Charles McNulty and Steven Leigh Morris. The conversation was centered on models for journalism in a non-profit world, including academia becoming a centerpiece for arts coverage, and the conundrums of pay-for-play models. Some of the more intriguing insights came from Anawalt (who heads USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism) who cited evidence that intelligent, long-form online journalism has a far stronger response than generally believed, and from Byrnes (KCRW’s theater columnist) who cited the failure of L.A. as a community to articulate the case, persuasively, for how non-profit sectors, such as live theater and online journalism, feed the society and the culture. Jenny Lower will have a full report later this week.

The final installment, dedicated to diversity in arts coverage, will take place Monday night, November 23, at the 24^th Street Theatre. Margaret Gray will moderate. Panelists now confirmed are Richard Azurdia, Debbie Devine, Lovell Estell III, Jay McAdams, Rose Portillo, Jose Luis Valenzuela and Bob Verini. RSVP here.  

Cursed Child

But, of course, one story trumps all others this week, thrusting every other concern into the fusty background. If you do not think this story is important – well, you should get out of the theater and go work in a bank or fish-gutting parlor.

Here it is: The new Harry Potter story is coming – and it’s going to be a play!

Well, two plays, actually. And that is good for the future of the theater in general, though some disagree with me.

I’m a librarian by day, and I recall vividly, every time that a Harry Potter book came out, it was the best thing in the world for libraries, as readers and readers would swarm in, read the Potters and then stick around and read other things as well. I think we can predict a similar uptick in theatrical awareness when these plays are performed in 2016.

J.K. Rowling’s commercial site Pottermore is reporting that the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, will open June 7 and run through July 29 at the London Palace Theatre. It will take place some 19 years after the book’s events, and will be written by Rowling, Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany. Tiffany won Olivier and Tony Awards for the productions of Black Watch and for Once.

The synopsis suggests that the story is going to feature Harry, now an adult, and his youngest son Albus.

“It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children,” says the press release. “While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

Registration for the opportunity to get tickets is available starting on October 28, and I’d anticipate that huge crowds of Yanks like me are going to fly out to England to catch the show when it opens this summer.