Pump Up the Volume

I just caught one of my favorite movies on cable: Pump Up the Volume. If you haven't seen it, rent it. You'll love it. It's about a high school kid (Christian Slater) who starts his own pirate radio show. And the message of the film (at least for me) is twofold. First, that none of us is really alone. We all suffer the same insecurities, the same fears, the same loneliness. It's just that nobody ever says it out loud. But there is a cure: connecting.

It's what most of my favorite shows are about -- Sunday in the Park with George, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, High Fidelity, Bat Boy, Company, Hair, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Passion, yes, even Assassins...!

But Pump Up the Volume is also about finding your voice and, having found it, Saying Something. Those of us who make theatre have been given the greatest gift of all -- a voice with which to tell the truth. But we must not waste that voice. Why do you think live theatre still survives after all these centuries, largely unchanged? People need us. We have the power to make people think and feel. We can tell the truth and be listened to. This is a great gift but also a great responsibility. That voice must be used, not wasted, not trivialized. People will try to control the voice. People will find the voice threatening if it really speaks the truth.

That's why the Republicans are so angry right now. They are terrified of this truth-teller Obama, because everybody seems to be listening to him! And now everything's going to change!

And so I challenge my fellow theatre artists: don't waste your voice on the trivial or the shallow, don't offer us the easy and the comfortable, don't believe the lie that people only want escape; instead trust your audience, believe in their intelligence and depth, believe that your voice has value to them and purpose in our world. Say Something.

There is no nobler profession than storytelling. It is how we bond, how we record our history, how we pass on our culture and philosophy, and how we chart the human mind and heart. It is absolutely necessary to the health and well-being of a civilized society -- even more so today, in an ever increasingly complex world.

Let's set the bar as high as we can imagine it, and let's take our audiences on an adventure every time they come to see us. What could be more fun than that?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

The Beauty of Life

I've been watching our Presidential race for more than twenty months, back before Obama had even announced he was running. I watched every debate, Democrats and Republicans. I'm a political addict. Luckily, I have great dealers like MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, etc.

It was this race and its historic nature that made me think we should produce Hair again (at that time, we had a black guy, a woman, and a Latino all running). And it has been genuinely amazing working on this show in the midst of this campaign season. It's been very cool knowing that we were part of the conversation. Early in the run, after curtain call, after the audience had come down to dance, one of the audience members yelled, "Vote Obama! Don't let this happen again!" And I thought, wow, this really IS as relevant as I think it is...!

Having just recently worked on Grease again, and now on Hair, it has crystallized for me a theory of American politics that I have picked up from various sources -- that for the last forty years, American politics has been about the battle between the 1950s and the 1960s. The Republicans, if they really had their druthers, would return America to the 1950s, although their vision is that of Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, not the real 1950s of discrimination, racism, sexism, sexual oppression, enforced conformity, and prescription drug dependence. And the Democrats have been trying since 1968 to finish the work of the 1960s, to work toward equality and justice, and an end to poverty.

But it goes beyond just politics. The famous American "Culture War" is really just about 1950s morality versus 1960s morality, conformity versus individuality, oppression versus freedom. That's what Grease is about, with Sandy representing the 1950s and Danny representing the 1960s. The Rocky Horror Show is about this too, with Brad as the 1950s and the newly sexualized Janet as the 1960s.

Just look at the candidates this year. Every one of the Republican candidates looked like they stepped out of a 1950s sitcom. But Hillary and Obama sure didn't. They are the faces of the 60s, of independent women and proud black men.

When the 60s fell apart in 1968 and 1969, after the twin assassinations, Nixon manufactured a great cultural backlash and unleashed not only really dirty politics but also the false cultural divide that has poisoned American politics ever since. Nixon didn't just soil the office of the Presidency with Watergate; he also invented the politics of fear and personal destruction that Reagan employed and that Karl Rove perfected so many years later.

Perhaps, at long last, Obama is the candidate who is immune to the slime, the one who can finally finish the work of the 60s.

Think about it... What if the ideals of the 60s weren't silly and naive after all? What if the song "Walking in Space" in Hair is actually wiser and more knowing than we give it credit for? What if Hair is full of ideas that we're only slowly evolving enough as a culture to understand? What if mind-expanding drugs really are the road to finding The Truth? What if the answers were there all along and we just weren't open enough to see them? Can we see them now?

Walking in space,
We find the purpose of peace,
The beauty of life
You can no longer hide.
Our eyes are open,
Our eyes are open,
Wide, wide, wide...

The last several performances of Hair were wonderful. We had the best fucking audiences! One New Line loyalist, Randy Ulrich, saw the show ten times! We have a winner! Thank you, Osage Tribe, for helping me to spread the word. Keep on keepin' on.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Oh Great God of Power

We were about halfway through the first act, in the middle of the scene with Claude's parents, right before the big number "I Got Life." And right in the middle of a line...

The power went out.

And the actors kept doing the scene... and they kept doing the scene... And I'm standing up in back, thinking, do I interrupt them or should I wait for them to find a place to stop...? And they kept doing the scene. So finally, I stopped them, asked the crowd to sit tight, and went to find out what I could find out.

We soon realized all the buildings behind our building were out too. Power was on across the street, but not us. The building guard called the Wash.U. folks and I called Ameren UE. We slowly pieced together the story: a drunk driver hit an electrical pole and took out a big area about 7:00 p.m. There was a crew working down the block. But that was at 7:00 p.m. And here we are sitting in the dark around 9:00 p.m. Eventually we find out the crew working down the street took out our power too. We don't know if it was accidental or if they had to do it to do the other work.

Ameren UE had told me to wait fifteen minutes and call them back to see if they knew more. So I did. They told me the power would be back on at 2:30 a.m. On my way back up to the theatre, the cop who had come by to see if we needed help told me he heard it would really be 6:00 a.m.

Now, Ann had a lot of wine she could've sold, but asking the audience to wait NINE HOURS seemed a bit excessive. I'm sure you would have come to the same conclusion.

So anyway, I announce to the audience that we can't finish the show and that they can bring their stubs back on another night to see the show again. Then the guard tells me that the Wash.U. folks are asking us to leave as soon as we can because the emergency lights will start to fade out at some point.

So the audience leaves, the actors change back into their street clothes by candle light (good thing we were doing Hair!), and Trish, Matt, and I go about shutting the place down and locking it up. I came home and emailed Metrotix to tell them they'd be getting calls, and then I changed our voice mail to include info about all that.

It's hard work canceling a show! But now I'm home, cuddled up next to my favorite pipe, and all is right with the world again. And as I am walking in space (you know, to find the purpose of peace...), I realize this is gonna give us bigger houses for the last five shows. It won't be more money, but fuller houses are much more fun to play to...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

He Pretends He's Fellini

Such is the life of a guy running a small theatre company...

We're two-thirds of the way through our six-week run of Hair, and though it's not selling out (every theatre in town is experiencing a downturn in sales right now), the show is going well, and we're getting decent-sized houses full of people who fall in love with our show and often come back to see it more than once.

But meanwhile...

We've got the first audition for Return to the Forbidden Planet this Monday. So I'm trying to redirect my brain. It's hard for me -- when I'm running a show, that pretty much takes over my brain till we close. I don't think about a whole lot else. But today I have to switch gears and prepare for tomorrow's audition. And I fucking hate auditions.

And... I'm also working on gathering together a cast (by invitation only) for our two-night concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall in January. Once I get everyone confirmed, then I have to go back to my tentative song list and start assigning songs to singers. At that time, I'll probably find that some songs on my list should be cut, and others may be added. It's a relatively complex process, but it's worth the hassle to get to play that beautiful grand piano at the Sheldon...

And... believe it or not, we're already thinking about what shows we'll be doing next season -- yes, that's right, the 2009-2010 season! Funding applications for that season will start coming due in the next couple months...

And... I have to readjust our current season budget because I anticipated sellouts for Hair, which would have given us a real cushy nest egg to get us through the other lesser known shows this season. But I guess I'll have to change my plans... (show tune reference!)

So there's a lot on my mind right now. God help me.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac