Raw Returns

Emerging From our Bunkers

By Steven Leigh Morris

Let’s not mince words: It’s been fucking awful. Doing theater. No, trying to do theater. To be stopped. And started. And stopped. The impediments have been a toxic viral, cultural and legal stew. As though putting on a play is some kind of privilege rather than an entitlement.

But putting on a play, like singing a song, is an entitlement. Art belongs to everybody, to those who create it and to those who absorb it. There is nobody who can’t sing in the shower, loudly should they wish, to be heard and overheard by audiences real and imagined. Let them assess the virtues of your efforts. There is nobody who can’t act out, act in, write on, design and orchestrate, should they be moved to do so.

The only questions, as we collectively emerge from our bunkers, is how? Can traditional models hold up? Can arts institutions of all stripes go another decade without crumbling. Or should they crumble like the amphitheaters of ancient Greece? Perhaps their time is exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to blend live performance with virtual reality and gaming technologies? Perhaps that will give, say, theater a larger reach and greater relevance, not to mention a sustainable financial platform. Anything is possible. We can dream.

One thing remains certain: no assembly bill or virus can kill the theater. It will simply move into other spaces, like a song that orbits for a while and then returns in the future with echoes of the past. We can dream, but we must work. 

Theater makers: You are here. Most of you. And we, at Stage Raw, are here to acknowledge that. As we emerge from our bunkers, our first project is recognizing your existence. Our first week of stage listings is now live. It chronicles the week of Feb. 1-7, and will be updated each Tuesday.

A few words about our philosophy. To be included in Stage Raw’s listings service, you don’t need to be in a club. You don’t need to pay a membership fee. You don’t need to have graduated from anywhere in particular. It’s a free service. If you’re putting on any kind of public performance,  because you feel compelled to do so, we’ll acknowledge your efforts.

All you need to do is go to the homepage of stageraw.com, download our listings request form, fill it out and email it – with a press release if you have one – to listings@stageraw.com. If for any reason you have trouble downloading the form, just say so, and we’ll email you back a form. Pretty simple, really.

To be honest, if you have a press release, and you fold it up into a paper airplane, if you the lob it anywhere in the direction of Stage Raw, you’ll likely find it listed on this platform. 

Thank you to the Theatre Producers of Southern California for their support of this listings service. And thank you, Peter Finlayson, for your continued engagement.

I don’t have enough superlatives for my colleagues at Stage Raw, our veterans who never disappoint – from Vanessa to Deborah (who is compiling the listings) to Dana, Lara, Katie, Terry, the two Julias, Taylor, Jannelys, Julyza, Socks, and Myron. We’re particularly excited to welcome six to nine new writers. You can find our confirmed list of contributors here, and it’s still growing.

We’re reshaping our reviewing strategies and have a planning meeting at the end of this week. The general idea is to supplement our written reviews and essays with podcasts reports, in order to expand our coverage to otherwise hidden corners of the region. I’ll report back on that next week.

In the meantime, I’ll simple quote Natasha Tripney, reviews editor for The Stage in London: “The end of a review is not a full stop. It’s the start of a conversation.”

If we can start a new conversation with L.A. area theater, the effort will be worthwhile. Perhaps, I hope, this is the time to set aside the remorse and frustration of the past two, terrible years, crawl back out into the light, and then, even on wobbly legs, try to stand, first by imagining what’s possible.   Perhaps this is the time, for all of us.