Writing on Michael Rau

Theater, Musicals, Opera and The Bechdel Test

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 23:54:15 +0000

I woke up early this morning, and while idly thinking about season planning and scene selection for acting classes, I wondered if there were any plays that passed the Bechdel Test. A quick google led me to realize that there wasn’t a database of passing plays, like there are for movies. And so I set up out remedy that gap. I whipped together a quick google doc, put out the call on facebook and twitter, and in a couple of hours, I found myself administering a rapidly growing list of plays. I added musicals and operas as separate categories, and then a friend suggested that I add a “reject” pile to see which scripts fail the test. The original spreadsheet remains available here.

Sharing the Process

Wed, 26 Feb 2014 07:16:23 +0000

I’ve been leading and developing a new project at the EMERGE residency in Plainsfield Massachusetts, and I’d like to share some images of the work-in-progress. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of development that a devised project goes through on it’s way to full production. I’ve collected some images of the rehearsal process that my collaborators and I have documented throughout the process. The project is inspired by the photography of Eadwaerd Muybridge. During these two weeks, I’ve been working with my collaborators to explore translating motion into photography, drawing, video, and sound, and then re-formating these different mediums into a performance collage. I have been collaborating with a truly fantastic group of dancers, visual artists, film-dance artists, drag performers, playwrights, fire dancers, and actors. We’ve created our own motion studies, a series of writing exercises, audio guides and performance exercises, and throwing many of these studies into a larger performance structure. These tweets, photographs and videos illustrated different aspects, exercises, failures and triumphs in our attempts to figure out a performance vocabulary.

Snow Camp Roundup

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 16:00:53 +0000

Last week, Will Davis and I got together again to run a week-long workshop for directors at the Strand Theater in Baltimore, Maryland. We were invited by Elissa Goetschius, the incoming Artistic Director of The Strand, who not only organized all the logistics of the week, she also participated in the workshop, AND faithfully tweeted our many conversations, ideas, and quotes. (I don’t know how she did it all!) The curriculum was based on the course that we put together for the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive, but with some modifications to address some questions that the directors has about craft. The week focused more on the toolbox that each director has when approaching a play, crafting and defining the vision of a director as well as two days devoted to the career and business of being a professional director. It was a great week of discussions, scene presentations, master-classes and visions of the future. I was blown away by the talent and hunger of the participants. The workshop ranged from minute text-analysis to broad directorial vision conversations, to even ways in which the industry works and proposals to change the landscape of American theater. I’ve collected many of the best quotes and tweets from the week below.

Increasing Participation in Theater

Wed, 04 Dec 2013 22:25:27 +0000

I have been thinking about the recent NEA audience figures and declining attendance. I think it is time for us to take a step back and examine ways in which theater institutions can change or create new programs that could address these declines. Most theater institutions see that their primary job is to be a show producing factory. They create a strong season, aggressively market it, hold one or two fundraisers a year and occasionally do a performance for a school as part of an outreach program. And, all of these activities are GREAT, but they don’t actually allow for the audience to participate in activities other than simply attending. Most of these activities involve a tremendous amount of staff to create, build, manage, and run and more importantly, they’re exclusively the domain of professionals. And that’s FINE. But what if it was possible to allow the audience/community to use the stage for their own purpose, or to find ways to share the stage with professionals? Taking a page from the science-museum world and their long history of citizen-science projects, I think it’s time that theaters start investing in citizen-artist projects. We need to remember that non-profits theaters are public institutions and have a responsibility to the public good. I’d propose that one of the best ways that we can do that is by creating programs that allow the public to engage with theater, not only by attending a performance but by participating in it. I’m going to quote extensively from Nina Simon’s excellent book “The Participatory Museum” because she defines four categories of participation so eloquently. Also, I would encourage you to read it/buy it/support her. In the book she lays out four major categories of public participation: contribution, collaboration, co-creation, and hosted.

An Opera Application

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 21:01:58 +0000

On a recent visit to the Met, I was thinking about super-titles and their back-of-seat titling system. And I idly wondered if the same technology would be possible on our smartphones. As part of a “Make a Thing A Day Project,” I decided to create a mockup for an iphone (or ipad) app for opera audiences. In the very early days of opera, before an opera performance, you purchased a small booklet, the libretto, diminutive of the Italian word “libro” (book), which gave you the translations, and provided some context for the performance. Ever since City Opera introduced super-titles in their opera house, we have no longer needed to bring librettos to a performance. I thought that it would be interesting to create an smartphone application that provided even more information (and functionality) than the printed book, and would allow audiences to have a deeper appreciation of the work that they’re seeing onstage. So I got my pad and paper, and made a really awkwardly drawn wireframe rendering, and then using the sketches, I created both an online playable mockup and a short video explaining the idea. You’ll have to forgive my terrible sketching ability, but I think it could be cool. It does, however, rely on the idea that it’d be okay to pull out your phone while watching an opera (GASP!). Here’s the video: Libretto, The App from Michael Rau on Vimeo. The accompanying PopApp prototype is no longer available. Anyone interested in developing this idea even further? Am I totally nuts? Does this thing already exist?

A week of Theater Director Training

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:59:45 +0000

Last week, I had the excellent good fortune to run a directing intensive with Will Davis during the NNPN Conference, at the Kennedy Center, in Washington DC. I had a marvelous time and I wanted share some thoughts about the experience.

Where did it come from?

The impetus for the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive came out of this HowlRound that Will Davis wrote last year. Will wanted to write about new play infrastructure and the role of the director in the development of production and opportunities for new work directors. Shortly after it was published, Gregg Henry of the Kennedy Center challenged Will to “Do something about it” and asked me if I would be interested in working with Will. I happily accepted and over the course of a month via phone meetings, we made plans for a series of meetings that we hoped would push a group of young directors to think critically about the role of a director in a new play development environment.

Effective Assistant Directing

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 02:08:59 +0000

Notes on assistant directing, observing a rehearsal process, and learning from another director’s practice.

A week at the O'Neill

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 05:39:42 +0000

I just spent a week workshopping Michael Yates Crowley’s play Evanston: A Rare Comedy, at the National Playwrights Conference in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in New London Connecticut. It was a such a pleasure to spend an entire week in a room working with a playwright, actors, designers and a crack team of dramaturges and assistants. It is an idyllic location, located right on the ocean. The beach provides both an escape from the pressures of a rehearsal room and is the location of many late-night bonfires. It was such a remarkable experience, and I felt that that the NPC really fostered a collaborative culture that focused on the work, and more importantly gave the writers the agency and the resources to truly hear and develop their plays. Too often, I have attended or participated in readings that do not actually allow a writer to develop a play–instead a hurried reading is staged in one afternoon, and then the playwright is forced to sit through notes from a dramaturge and director. Here, the playwright was really in charge of process, which began with a conversation about his design ideas, and then went straight to several days of rehearsal which allowed us to try out several approaches to the play, and resulted in almost daily re-writes. I was able to work with the actors present interpretations to Michael which helped him understand which parts of script simply needed some work with the actors to clarify, and which required rewrites. Furthermore, there is a truly impressive (and tireless) literary office that constantly tracks script changes and updates the entire team’s scripts with terrifying precision. The process culminates in a staged reading that is open to the public. The reading is given a certain amount of design help–my reading had a minimal set constructed out of rehearsal cubes, a couple broad lighting choices and a couple helpful sound cues, as well as a simple blocking that conveyed spatial relationships, and gave sense of place and location change (which is vitally important when doing a play about a city)….I tried to create a staging that gave just enough information to help continue the story, and also helped preserve the “reading” aspect of the production. I will say that when I started staging on Monday, I was bit over-ambitious and after the dinner break, I decided to dramatically scale back my blocking choices. The culmination of the week resulted in a production that wasn’t really designed to entertain an audience, (though that certainly did happen) but it was a production that allowed the playwright to hear and see the play with an audience, and learn which parts of the script needed to be revised. On the train back to New York, I happily spent time reflecting on the experience. It seemed so incredibly valuable to the playwright. And it provided a much needed place to play for actors, and designers that allowed them to escape the pressures of a production in NYC. I wish that more institutions could devote the resources to hosting and creating similar opportunities for new play development like the O’Neill. Or at least, that more theatrical institutions approached the process of new play development in a more holistic fashion, where they recognized the valuable contributions of a director, actors and designers, and encouraged collaborative teams to develop work on a play, rather than isolating scripts and only throwing together directors and actors for a very short process. It seems strange to me that we tend to isolate writers by giving them opportunities “to develop their plays” but only in a vacuum, where the contributions that a director or actor are minimized. I often feel that scripts are approached in stage readings as “problems that must be fixed” by literary managers and directors, rather than vehicles for artistic exploration. Perhaps if we can change the terms of artistic collaboration, we can begin to move towards a model of play development that increases artist’s contributions and ultimately engages and employs more artists. Here’s the happy team after our last performance.

No more solo geniuses

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:53:46 +0000

I think that the most interesting aspect of this article is that it’s a celebration of " creative teams" and the work that they to create together. It gives me hope that we’re moving beyond the solo romantic genius idea and further towards the acceptance that excellent theater is the result of collaborative teams. ‘Einstein’ and ‘Dog Days,’ Two Operas With Impact - NYTimes.com.

Theater and Nations

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:03:18 +0000

“The theatre is one of the most expressive and useful instruments for building up a country, it is the barometer of its greatest or decline. An intelligent theatre, well orientated in all its branches… can change the sensibility of people within a few years; a disintegrated theatre, with clumsy hooves instead of wings, can cheapen and lull into sleep an entire nation.”

–Federico García Lorca from this article. My question today: what are we doing as an industry to change the sensibility of the people? and what is the sensibility that we need to change?

Video games vs. Theater

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 00:41:31 +0000

So based on this comment:

“in the future we won’t watch scripted passive entertainment, we will watch people interacting with complex simulated environments.”

from Metafilter and this comment

Part of the magic of games is that they can give us experience with difficult social problems through this direct interaction. They are thought experiments, actualized. In games we have a unique opportunity to explore the deepest limits of our psyche to see what we’re really constructed of. The beautiful thing is, because it’s a video game, there’s no external harm done to anyone. And while the consequences may be fictional, if the game is good that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real, or at least impactful. As a net result, we come out of our games having learned something about ourselves; we are literally more complete people.