Minor Expletives

After the singing last night.

On the lazy day after a great night at the Christmas Concert – great singing, great response from a lovely and generous audience… I think about this:

A survey … found that of 74% of adults who said they were interested in classical music had played an instrument or sung in chorus at some point in their lives.
…
being part of the action at a classical music concert is about a thousand times more awesome than merely taking it in.
via Listening vs. doing | Createquity..

My day after thoughts include:

The choir last night was a great mix of people
who work as performers, of people
who work in the arts, but not as performers
and people
who don’t work in the arts at all,
who all thought it’d be fun to do.

And the people who came felt like a reflection of that.
friends
Kurt Weill fans
a lot of parents
and
fellow artists (a few of whom brought their parents)
Many of whom sang along (we project the lyrics)

Most people who signed the email list want
to hear about singing next year.
(a terribly skewed survey, but still)

And I think we all had a good time.
And that mix seems important.

We need a way for people
(who don’t aspire to do it professionally)
to DO contemporary/meaingful/not boring theatre and dance.

It’s always important to move between the doing and the watching.

It feels to me, oddly, that theatre,
from the avant-garde to large not-for-profit,
(Including most of what I do)
is so often disconnected from this

In the endless parades of
the things that “kill” art forms
This seems like a bad one.

And one concert a year isn’t enough
(though it’s pretty fun)

What then?
A pick up game
A recreational class
A once a month show

Does anyone know of success stories?

Enchantment. Enchantment. Enchantment. Enchantment.

Brendan Gall in rehearsal for Galileo. (Photo: Erika Jacobs)

the accumulated list of semi-funny semi-deadly serious movement and/or book titles:
Conversational Formalism
Romantic Contemporary
Presentational Naturalism
Casual Formalism
Big Dreams, Small Houses: The Small Wooden Shoe Story

The General Assembly of Populist Political Avant Garde Entertainment. (GAPPAGE)
We refuse to define our terms. Who’s in?

some people
Patti Smith
Bertold Brecht
John McGrath
Charlie Chaplin

Poetry and Romanticism
I came to theatre through poetry
and romanticism
and maybe I need to go back there.
Bringing everything I’ve gained,
While away,
With me.

Good fun on the road with Perhaps in a Hundred Years (Paul Henderson, Chad Dembski, Ame Henderson, Jacob Zimmer, Kilby Smith-McGregor)

5_There is good and bad fun. Good fun is essential.

To get it out of the way: Bad fun includes (but may not be limited to): fun that re-enforces, re-enacts or otherwise supports existing oppressive, mean and otherwise shitty power dynamics.

Good fun is why it’s worth leaving the house.
It’s the pleasure of company and sharing laughs and tears with friends (new and old.)

In the Conjuring Aspirations I wrote about good fun this way:

We bring people together to share an experience and talk about things they care about.
There is probably drinking.
The time is relaxed and filled with pleasure,
but death and politics are still discussed, people fall in and out of love,
plans are hatched and action taken. Stories are told. Songs are sung.

We care about a good night out.
(We think that’s a fair desire for your night out.)

What got cut for clarity and length was:

(The influence on our work of growing up in
Cape Breton,
Halifax
[and Dartmouth]
should not be overlooked.

 
A few years ago I realized,
after many years of sublimation and denial,
that my work and my interests were hugely impacted by growing up in Nova Scotia.
My parents were hippy-back-to-the-land CFA’s (“Come From Aways”) so I make no claims on deep historic, cultural connections with Cape Breton or the east coast.

But growing up somewhere isn’t nothing.

The social impulse of theatre is what keeps it interesting and essential to me.
The social is (can be) good fun.
This needs to be as true for the audience as the artists.

All I’m thinking about these days is how to make good fun
for the people who leave the house and come to the event.
This doesn’t rule out tragedy or challenge.
(it might, at times, require it)
But it takes care and attention for our guests
And an imagination of what we might like to do on a night out.

Mission Paradox is rolling out a bunch of big questions. Out of appreciation of that kind of thing, I’m going to try and answer Adam’s questions. I will probably fall behind.

First question (abridged): Why would someone want to work with you? (Whole thing here)

Community events for and by professionals. Singing at the Christmas Concert

A while ago, I was thinking a lot about the community theatre leanings of my work with Small Wooden Shoe

(“Community theatre for and by professionals”)

We had done the first Christmas Concert and were working on reading of Life of Galileo, and I was loving the relationship with the people doing these projects and the audiences who were coming.

And they were also among my favourite art events of the year.

I started saying, “We have to have ideas so good people will work on them for free. And then we’ll work to find the money to pay the people.”

This formulation does a bunch of things for me.

It puts a lot of pressure on me to have good ideas.
Or to work with collaborators to make my medium ideas into great ones.

This pressure is a good thing. I think it will pay off in the show we finally make.
And it certainly pays off in the commitment and investment of the people I work with.

We also have to treat people well,
We have to work in a way that moves towards the parts of their work they love
That gets them excited.
Because the idea isn’t just the final production
The idea (the one so good) is usually about the process too. About how we work.

People shouldn’t work for free (or at all) on something because the final show is so good, but the process is hell.
(This does goes on and maybe even has a tradition in the theatre, but it’s a tradition I don’t have much time for.)

Of course there are bad days, there are fights and phases of a process that slog along and nobody can remember why they agreed to this. But the generosity of the idea and the ways of working are what gets us through those days.

So I hope we’re offering the chance to work on good ideas in interesting ways,
Offering a chance to beat back the alienation and cynicism that can set in the professional art world.
Offering a chance to make a good idea great by doing what you love to do.

And we work very hard to offer a reasonable wage.

Jacob Zimmer
for Small Wooden Shoe

It’s been 10ish years of Small Wooden Shoe.

The collected posters of Small Wooden Shoe.

10 years
Of fast, cheap and rough political agit-prop (Delayed Knee Jerk Reactions Series),
of hard-boiled live-to-air radio (The Mysterious Death of WB),
of Chekhov adaptations (The Orchard),
multi-media solo shows (No Secrets)
and durational task based performances (Mostly Just Doing the Saturday Crossword)
of the conversational formalism we’ve become best known for (Perhaps in a Hundred Years and Dedicated to the Revolutions.)
of great plays in grand halls (Life of Galileo)

and Christmas concerts (more on that later), on-line think tanks, public meetings, workshops, lectures and writing.

(attached is a collection of our posters over the years)

And we are only upping the ante.

Times are different.
Theatre companies must also be different.

Small Wooden Shoe changes what a theatre company is.
(Want to join in? Keep reading.)

We are a production company and a think tank, a social space and a big idea in a small room. An over-ambitious plot to make it better, one interaction at time. Dedicated to finding better ways of working and coming together.

We make things to come to,
Experiences to have.

We bring people together to share an experience and talk about things they care about.
There is probably drinking.
The time is relaxed and filled with pleasure,
but death and politics are still discussed, people fall in and out of love,
plans are hatched and action taken. Stories are told. Songs are sung.

We care about a good night out.
(We think that’s a fair desire for your night out.)

“Good” can include tears;
bewilderment;
mind bending;
political fury and almost always:
laughing.

Continuing these things we do,
We will think about the good parts of populism and work on those.
We will make things that lots of people can,
and might actually want to,
come to.

Tickets will be $20 and under.
Accessibility is a financial issue.

We will embrace ambition,
ethics,
and the scale of our imaginations.

We will care more about the world
than about theatre or performance.

We will find ways of spreading the word
and listening to what people say.

We will find a way to be local.
Where ever we are.

We will teach
and study
and seek out
partnerships and friends
with places and people usually distant from theatre.

Not everything we do will be immediately recognized as theatre.
But it will be.

(And we will perform in theatres also.
We won’t deny that we like theatre -
telling stories,
bright lights,
acting out scenes,
songs and dances,
and all those old plays.
All of that can be so great.)

We will admit what’s going on.
And we will try to help.
And for all of this,
We will need some help.
We will need a “we.”
People who want to make this happen.

Singing songs together to fend off the cold seems like a good place to start – so,
We are having our second Christmas Concert on Wednesday December 29th (in Toronto)

we call it:
What Keeps Mankind Alive?: The Small Wooden Shoe Christmas Concert.

We sing songs from 3penny Opera.
They are beautiful songs about horrible situations and cynical people.
Perfect to tuck between Christmas and New Year.

It costs 3¢ at the door at Buddies in Bad Times (doors at 8pm)
and is more party than performance.
There is information and pictures here.

Please join us.

also,

Talk to us
Let us know how to help.
One of the oddities in the arts is not talking with the people we perform and work for.
Let us know what we should be doing more of
or places we should be doing what we’re doing.
We won’t be able (or maybe willing) to do it all -
but we’re curious about how you’d like us to help.

Spread the word
Talk to your friends. In person even.
For all the technology and money in the world -
word of mouth is still the most important and effective way
of getting people excited.
That being said – sign up on facebook and
pass this on to friends who you think would be interested.

Buy a lifetime subscription -
for $500,
you can see every show we will ever make.
And through your belief and support, you can make sure we get there.
Payment plans available. More info here.
Donations of any size help too.

Train with us? -
If we taught a workshop, would you come?
What would you most like it to be about?
And how long do you like your workshops to be?
And how much would you pay (by the hour, by the day?)

Hire us -
We don’t just make shows.
We can facilitate conversations, conferences, brainstorming sessions.
We can consult on making events better – more fun, more helpful.
We can lead workshops and teach university courses.
Or maybe there’s something else?

Contribute your time -
We’re not sure exactly what it might look like,
so we’re open to suggestions. Let us know what you’re good at
and what you’d like to do.

email: jacob@smallwoodenshoe.org

Mission Paradox has these to very good posts – the first on the sports to church to theatre analogies (those Bears examples still hurt – redemption on Monday?) and then followed it up with Not nearly enough

“The implication is this: Art isn’t enough. If you want a career as an artist, or a strong organization, you are going to have to do so much then create work.”

And I agree – except (and.) I want to expand the notion of what the “art” is.
It’s certainly not the script we print out.
It’s not what happens between the house going out and the bowing.
When we’re making a show, that can’t be it.
The art has to be the part where we communicate with (entertain, excite, challenge, talk to) the people we’d like to share some time with. That’s the art of performance.
Posters, language, what happens as people begin to arrive (the dramaturgy of the half-hour),
how the drinks are priced and what happens after.
All of it is the art.

So – to make the art better (better at communicating to people)
all of the parts need to be looked at as a whole.
Better marketing won’t save boring over priced plays and
cheap great things that no one knows about isn’t going to do it either.

Ame and Evan prepare in Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing. Debating is a form full of limits and openness. It's also something we tried and decided wasn't right for the final show. Photo: Trevor Schwellnus

part of a series

2_Nothing is ruled out. Nothing ruled in. Not everything goes.

On the importance of considering the inconsiderable and the necessity of exclusion.

No strategy, subject or form can be categorically dismissed or adopted. As formulaic as much mainstream work is (ruling out many politics, forms and ways of being,) the “experimental” can be equally guilty of refusing to consider options (especially those from the mainstream.) I want to exclude none of this.

At this moment especially I want to include the populist and entertaining. I want to embrace them with also embracing social and political urgencies.

We all tend to make assumptions and develop habits about what goes and what doesn’t in our work. And I don’t know that that’s helpful. It’s more helpful me to be able to have a full spectrum of possibilities. This means of course, not assuming I’m going to do that thing I always do. Do all Small Wooden Shoe shows have microphones? Do we always speak mostly to the audience? The answer for any given production might be “yes” – but for every given production, I have to think about it.
» Read the rest of this entry «

The mess of I Keep Dropping Sh*t. Part of Dedicated to the Revolutions. Photo by Trevor Schwellnus.

part of a series

1_There is no such thing as a clean start. Start from the mess and move towards something. Something that might be called truth.

This starts as a way to get over the paralysis of starting.
The frozen moments of waiting for the right time.
There isn’t one,
or there is only the right time – to paraphrase any number of philosophies, traditions and productivity websites.

I am terrible at this. I wait to send an email until I have all the things ready – of course there are more things every day – and then am fearful I have waited too long. So this is a start, at least a provocation to myself to get over it – to start moving.
» Read the rest of this entry «

Aimée Dawn Robinson in conversation in Dedicated to the Revolutions. Photo: Ömer Yükseker

Four years ago (time passes) I wrote 11 Conversation Starters for Small Wooden Shoe

(you can watch the 11 develop here)

They’ve held up well.

While I fear running the risk of ruining the aphorisms, like the comic explaining his jokes, I am going to start a tag thread for the series. To write a little more about each one, giving credit for where they come from and opening a space for them to work the way they were supposed to: as conversation starters.

A recap of the 11 after the break –
» Read the rest of this entry «