Finding Your Theater: Real Estate That Enables The Unreal, Surreal, and Whatever: # 9 of 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing
You Need Space
Looking for space is a little like the Wallace Stevens poem that serves as our inspiration for these observations: one thing — in this case, your stage — benefits from exploration done at a variety of perspectives just like the poem’s blackbird. Peter Brooks declared at the beginning one of my favorite theater books, The Empty Space that he could ‘take any empty space and call it a bare stage.’ For Brook, theatre happens when someone crosses that empty space while an audience, even a single person, beholds them. That Peter Brook used the word ‘space’ makes us mindful of distinctions that are somewhat arbitrary in this realm. Holly Hughes once playfully noted, “Theater tends to happen in theaters, whereas performance art tends to happen in spaces. A theater will be defined . . . as somewhere with a stage, some lights, a box office, a dressing room, head shots, and people who know how to run these things. A theater is a place that has been designed for theater, whereas a space has been designed for some other purpose: it’s a gas station, an art gallery, somebody’s living room, a church basement, and it’s always better suited for pancake suppers and giving oil changes than for performing” While much of our recent work has taken place in theaters, earlier performances made use of such locales as the conference room in a mental health clinic, a college lounge, and even a loading dock.
Thinking of your work with that range may make finding an appropriate space seem the simplest of tasks. The reality of production, however, and especially your own vision for your work often leads to grander desires for the right space. And that’s what this installment of 13 Ways of Looking at Self Producing is about. Like many of the observations made so far in this series, others have discovered and shared insights about each one of these aspects. In the case of finding the right space, consider these links along with what we offer below them.
· ‘HIP-HOP SINCE 1987’ has a nice brief guide on finding a performance space
· Howl Round, a really cool group and website that we cited previously in 13 Ways, talks about the importance of finding a theatrical home and shares pertinent experience
· Drama School Mumbai earlier this year published of thoughtful examination of how “there is a concern for finding the right space — physically — there is also the question of finding space in an artistic and political sense.”
And I could go on and on: do your own Google search to dig deeper into this topic. Time to share our own way of looking at space.
Riding into New York City to see a potential space for our next self-produced foray, my colleague (and, full disclosure, beloved son), Gifford, asked me what we were looking for today in a space for HONOR as an Equity mini-contract run starting in September 2024.Here are the aspects that we selected:
CONDITION — Audience Experience: if you want your audience to suspend disbelief willingly and engage intensely with whatever is going on up on the stage. Jane, you should start by looking at what’s going on in their seats. An uncomfortable audience Is it distracted audience. Obviously, whether you’re a budget is old folding chairs or Corinthian leather, you probably will have limitations as to this particular line item, but remembering the importance of the comfort of those people who have done you the favor of coming out to see the work is first on our list.
CONDITION — Actors’ Experience: A very close second is the condition of the stage itself and the wings, dressing rooms, etc. while the audience may have primacy, the actors also need to feel feel well situated. The particular demands of your play will necessarily focus you on elements such as flats and exits and entrances, as well as lighting and sound equipment. But there are other factors that merit attention; e.g.,, is the stage raked? how well maintained is its surface?
CONDITION — Audience Experience II Ingress is an important word in this context; Shakespeare uses it in Act 35 of his Henry VIII, “To haue free ingresse egresse and regresse in to all suche places.” Never saw that one of the Bard’s works, but how people are able to get in and out of the actual performance space matters a great deal in our judgment. Ingress — the actual way going in or entering the building in which space is located — is a critical consideration. Our audiences have been nothing less than heroic in their willingness to brave streets that are challenging to pedestrians. Creaky stairs, crumbling steps, and dark passageways set the wrong tone for most plays. Elevators are an even more important issue from our perch. When they go out of service a half hour before your first preview, reviewers who had to trudge up the stairs carry an air of annoyance and disdain that may waft into their opinions of the performances. And then there’s always the concern about the health of some of your patrons in those situations.
TECHNOLOGY — From Lights to Laundry there are too many variations on what pieces of theater require in terms of technology (rigging, light and sound boards, mics, lights and the like) to go into them in any detail here, but the important point is to check to see if whatever you need is there and it’s operational. We had an experience at one theater where the lighting cues were still handled by means of a 2 disc MS-DOS system. That’s not a typo. You had to shift one floppy to another in order to get your lighting plot working appropriately. Another aspect is maintenance. As this UK website reminds us, equipment will not maintain itself. Many of the spaces that are available to us at the rents that we can pay our dusty and even dirty, which can affect things like cooling fans in equipment. Will the people providing your space allow you to change the plot? Do they have a policy about your bringing in additional speakers? Are tools available or will you have to bring in things such as saw horses, hand saws, a Mider saw, clamps, drills, battery charger, screws of varying sizes, screwdrivers, paint, brushes, etc. etc?
FINDING SPACE — Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places When we started on this particular phase of productions and 2019, we thought it be a good idea to create a map of all of the spaces that were available. But the pandemic changed that landscape drastically. Theater Resources maintains this list, but that’s only for New York and we know that there are many readers of this series outside of that metropolitan area. Facebook groups tend to be very helpful in this regard.
It’s hard to prioritize these facets of your prospective space because they all seem terribly important. For example, the success of your experience depends a great deal upon the people who make the deal with you for the space and then continue to make arrangements and alterations as necessary throughout your run. Some will treat you strictly as the itinerant company you are; here today and paying your way but gone tomorrow, and, therefore, not worth much of an expenditure on their part of concern or even in some very unfortunate circumstances bare courtesy. Others will treat you as comrades in an ongoing effort to make theater live. We have experienced loving relationships with people we barely knew prior to contacting them about space as well. Thus, this has become for us one of the most significant factors: connecting to the spaces with people who get the importance of engaging with you.
Is that it on places to present your work? Hey, don’t forget the street. Yes, or a plaza or a park or even a parking lot. Why even think of such possibilities? As World Theatre and Art notes, “There are so many different reasons, but the outdoor has a lot of possibilities different from the conventional theatre stage and space.” Wikipedia has a wonderful page on street theater and I think the possibilities continue to be potent. Include it in the overall array of ways you look at self-producing. Don’t let the immediate apparent lack of a suitable space stop you. Get your work up as a reading anywhere you can and then as we pointed out in an earlier installment network to find the next location for you to make theater live.
