Race Matters

Is race a zero-sum game? In other words, does the building up of one color necessarily mean the diminishment of another? It's more complicated than that, certainly—and yet the feeling of holding or losing ground, of a racial pecking order with only winners and losers, seems to persist in our hearts, despite the infinite shadings and individual experiences that would seem to mitigate the whole notion of racial destiny.

Such are a few of the thoughts provoked by YELLOWMAN, which I saw today at the Fountain Theatre and can't recommend strongly enough.

Interestingly, the playwright, Dael Orlandersmith (pictured above) is about to open a new play, Raw Boys, at Wilma Theatre in New York. A story about Irish and Puerto Rican immigrants set in Belfast, South London, and New York, it's her first play with no African-American characters. But it does, according to this report, deal with the playwright's persistent themes of family dysfunction, class, power, sexuality, heavy drinking, and what can only be called race—after all, as my Irish friends have explained, the Catholic/Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland is at bottom as racial as it is religious, despite there being no "color line."

It's easy for me, as a white Protestant male, to stand outside issues of race bemusedly and wonder what the fuss is about. It's thanks to playwrights like Orlandersmith that I, and theatregoers both like and unlike me, can feel our way into dilemmas of race that may be beyond our imagining. And it's thanks to the Fountain Theatre, I must add, which programs first-rate African-American plays with reliable regularity, that L.A. audiences are privy to definitive productions like this Yellowman.

Welcome, Jack

Future quarterback for the Cleveland Indians or future theatrical visionary? His future is bound to be illustrious, given his parentage: Newborn John Walter Proudfit, a.k.a. Jack, enters the world in the capable hands of parents Scott and Kelly Proudfit.

The Proudfits are now Chicago-based; Scott, my colleague and friend at Back Stage West for five years until August, 2003, is now at Northwestern getting a masters in theatre and literature, and Kelly's working as a librarian. I sure do miss them. I send sunny wishes from SoCal to the Windy City, and look forward to meeting the little man.

New Back Stage Boss

Julia Kagan, an award-winning magazine veteran whose last two jobs were at the helms of Consumer Reports and the Zagat Survey, has been named National Editor-in-Chief of Back Stage and Back Stage West—a new position created to oversee both publications and BackStage.com. This strikes me as good news for the consumers of both papers, and for Back Stage West in particular, whose consumers seem to be voting with their feet: Circulation as of last October stood at 9,073 (it was 11,327 in October, 2002—a figure I wasn't happy with at the time, when I was at BSW, and which I hoped to increase).

Full disclosure: I did apply for this new position. But I can see why they went with a seasoned publishing figure. Until recently Kagan served as Vice President of Content for Zagat Survey. She was hired by Zagat in December, 2003, after an abrupt dismissal from the position of Editorial Director at Consumer Reports. As the New York Times reported in September, 2003 (roughly the same month I left BSW):

Joel Gurin, executive vice president of Consumers Union, said that its increasingly important Web presence—consumerreports.org, the Web site, has 1.2 million paying customers while the magazine, which carries no advertising, has 4 million subscribers—required editors with different skills.

"Historically, we have been magazine publishers," Mr. Gurin said. "What has really changed is the growth of the electronic business"...

...Mr. Gurin's memorandum announcing the changes left some employees worried that management's apparent desire for a closer relationship between the business and editorial sides could hurt a brand that defines consumer trust.

"Editorial must be an active, expert partner with publishing in shaping the business strategy for out (sic) publications," the memorandum read.

If Kagan stands for the opposing view—roughly, that editorial's only "client" is the reader and that only a "brand" that serves a legion of loyal readers will be worth a single advertising dollar—then she has my vote of confidence.

No Cause for Celebration?

"I don't think we need the Celebration Theatre anymore," opined a critical colleague last night. We were discussing the departure of Celebration artistic director Derek Livingston, and we were standing outside the NoHo Arts Center at the intermission of Angels in America, which was my colleague's Exhibit A. "It's gone mainstream," he concluded.

I happened to run into Sue Hamilton today with her lovely wife and 14-month-old daughter, and she told me that Last Summer at Bluefish Cove is still running at the Village at Ed Gould Plaza. It opened in late October last year. This is heartening proof that men aren't the only gay theatregoing gender that can support a hit run. But given that it's part of a Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner-sponsored program called LIT (for "Lesbians in Theatre"), this doesn't seem to be a case of mainstreaming per se.

It's true that gay-themed plays now turn up with matter-of-fact regularity at several non-gay-identified theatres, from Theater District at the Black Dahlia to Stage Directions at [Inside] the Ford to Leslie Jordan's Like a Dog on Linoleum at Elephant Asylum. But I wouldn't rush to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the Celebration and the Village can no longer claim exclusive rights to all plays gay, so much the better. But providing a home for gay- and lesbian-identified playwrights, directors, performers, and, yes, audiences remains a valuable service in principle and in practice. Have important plays and artists been nurtured by such venues who otherwise might not have the careers they have today? I think Tom Jacobson, Guillermo Reyes, Mark Savage, and Patricia Cotter (off the top of my head) would say so.

And after all, in L.A.'s sprawling, never-shrinking theatre scene, the operating philosophy seems to be the more the merrier, the greater the gayer.

The Story of O

My piece on composer/music man David O is online here.

Ritchie as Host

Incoming CTG artistic director Michael Ritchie, following up on comments he made to Sylvie Drake in LA Stage a few months back, seems serious about inviting smaller L.A. theatre companies to do their thing at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. And as I noted then, the most encouraging thing about this is Ritchie's perspective on why this is a good idea: As Don Shirley paraphrases him, Ritchie believes that "L.A. is an underrated theater town in part because many small companies receive little exposure."

The article is dotted, however, with a few telling quotes. From CTG board member Richard Kagan: "I can't imagine that any board member wouldn't think this was a smart thing." That's sweeping but also strangely circumlocutory; I had to read it over a few times to catch the "wouldn't." And Luis Alfaro's faintly despairing comment: "I'm trying to stay very positive about it." Aren't we all?

Great Shakes

An interesting literary exercise at the Guardian, asking historians and theatre folks to speculate on Shakespeare's personality. Given my own predilections, I immediately glommed onto a quote cited by playwright Alan Plater, credited to Peter Brook, that "Shakespeare's greatness lies in the fact that we never know which side he's on." Of how many contemporary playwrights—even, and let's tread lightly here, the late, great essential Arthur Miller—can this be said?