Guy Yedwab and I were invited to talk about the League of Independent Theater at Articulate Theatre Company‘s event at the The Theater Center to honor the impact and many contributions made by Circle Rep. and its members. So many incredible people were there. It was a real honor getting to share with them what the League does. Our complete speech is below the picture. I was happy with how we could earn so many laughs and applause breaks talking about arts advocacy!

Big thanks to Cat Parker for having us there with Jeff Daniels, William Mastrosimone, William Hoffman, A.R. Gurney, Marshall W. Mason, Lou Liberatore, Glenn Alterman, Dennis Parichy, John Lee Beatty, Chuck London, Jennifer von Mayrhauser, Tanya Berezin, Setphanie Gordon, Burke Pearson, Shay Gines, Cyndi Coyne, Jeffrey Sweet, William Carden, Robert Askins, Leonard Jacobs, Richard Frankel and many others. 

 

Chris: Our thanks to Cat Parker for having us be part of this incredible night.

Guy: One of the lasting legacies of Circle Rep was defining the Off Off Broadway scene. Out of that legacy, the League of Independent Theater grew out of a gathering of theater artists in 2008 in response to a crisis created by the significant loss of Off Off Broadway spaces and the constraints of the Equity showcase code. We wanted to give a voice to that collection of artists that the Circle Rep brought together.

Chris: From this, a 501c6 non-profit was born. 501c6 because this allows us to endorse in political races.

Guy: In 2013, we created a Performing Arts Platform, which you can read about on our website litny.org, and endorsed in 18 city-wide races and over 50% percent made it into office. We also made a beautiful voting guide of arts-friendly candidates.

Chris: And we got a candidate for Mayor to use the term “independent theater” on TV!

Guy: This process let us tell the story of the cultural and economic impact of independent theater in New York City. We transform neighborhoods because we make more than 3,000 productions a year in all of the 5 boroughs.

Chris: To those in politics and business who do not think arts are important, we simply ask if they are for small business. Usually they will say, “well, of course, I’m for small business.” “Then you should be for independent theater because we are an important economic driver of the city, to the tune of several million dollars annually.”

Guy: We’re now a part of the conversation; we’ve seen new tracts of affordable housing for artists, increases to the cultural budget, and other gains — because we have a voice, stay engaged and active, and bring our independent passion to city politics.

Chris: Since LIT started, we’ve lost 72 performance spaces. To counteract this trend, we developed a heavily subsidized rehearsal space program that has helped over 20 companies be able to take residence in unused commercial spaces to rehearse for long stretches of time without interruption or having to lug their props and costumes on the subway. More about this can also be found on our website, litny.org.

Guy: As codes and agreements began changing at Actors’ Equity, LIT has worked to establish communications with Equity to find common ground in treating actors well but also allowing independent theater to be developed and not have such a huge financial leap between levels of production.

Chris: We also are bringing artists together with our Green Practices working group and other initiatives to come. We continue to seek creative ways of addressing issues facing the independent territory, and we do everything on less than $200 a year.

Guy: If you want to get involved, please join us at litny.org.

Chris: Membership is free.

Guy: Long live Circle Rep.

Chris: And long live independent theater in New York!

Had the pleasure of playing Uncle Sid in Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! for American Bard Theater Company this week at one of the studios at Playwrights Horizons.  Some people like Long Day’s Journey Into Night or A Moon for the Misbegotten more but I think this was his finest play.

I used to do one of Richard’s monologues back when I was a freshman in college and got to see it performed when I worked one summer at the Monomoy Theatre in scenic Cape Cod. While this play is quite delightful, there is a subversive quality to the nostalgia.

Because the cast of this play is so big, it is rare that it gets performed. One of the great things about this staged reading was Daria DeGaetano’s exceptional reading of the stage directions. O’Neill gives certain insights with them and I think something is missed without them. This was a really great cast. Not included in the picture below were Michael Birch, Holleye Gilbert, Lincoln Hayes, and Helen Herbert. It was directed quite impeccably by Aimee Todoroff.

Special doff of the cap to Michael Heitzler, Jack Herholdt, and the rest of American Bard. It was a really fun evening!

I directed the six brave actors pictured here on break from rehearsal. They went into the East Village and found six people to interview. They transcribed those interviews and created humorous, haunting, and inspiring monologues, which they perform as their subjects, using the actual words of the people they are portraying. Each of the subjects have incredible stories and I’m very proud of my casts and the creative team for making such enjoyable evenings of performance. You can read more about the project and our process on NYTHEATER NOW. Performances will take place at the Obie Award-winning Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 East 4th Street between Avenues A and B.

The Indelible:

That’s How Angels Arranged written and performed by Lillian Rodriguez* as Jonas Mekas
Filmmaker, poet, and artist. Founder the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and the Film-Makers’
Cinematheque, now the Anthology Film Archives http://www.jonasmekas.com

¡COLORBOMB! written and performed by Jason Brown* as Jeanise Aviles
Hair Artist/Color Specialist/WigMaker/PerformanceArtist/KnitBomber

Gimmee Life written and performed by Tammy McNeill* as Jimmy Webb
Manager and buyer at Trash and Vaudeville (A.K.A. the punk Peter Pan)

For tickets, click on the dates below:

Wednesday, April 15 at 7pm. Saturday, April 18 at 4pm. Monday, April 20 at 7pm.
Friday, April 24 at 7pm. Sunday, April 26 at 4pm. Tuesday, April 28 at 7pm.
Saturday, May 2 at 7pm. Sunday, May 3 at 1pm.

********************************

The Vanguard:

Not to Judge written and performed by Randy Lee* as Corlie Ohl
Your friendly, bossy, sassy, and giving real estate agent

Negative Processing written and performed by Brigitte Barnett* as Alex Harsley
Media Artist, Founder and Director of the 4th Street Photo Gallery located in the Lower East Side.

Because You Are Good written and performed by Jody Christopherson* as Clove Galilee
Experimental Theater Artist, Choreographer, and Mabou Mines Artistic Associate

For tickets, click on the dates below:

Friday, April 17 at 7pm. Sunday, April 19 at 1pm. Tuesday, April 21 at 7pm.
Saturday, April 25 at 1pm. Sunday, April 26 at 7pm. Thursday, April 30 at 7pm.
Saturday, May 2 at 1pm. Sunday, May 3 at 4pm.

It was with mixed emotions (bittersweet but optimistic) that I drafted this note to the membership of the League of Independent Theater. I am excited about where things will go with the League. But giving up the role of Managing Director will help free me up to do more creative work and hopefully impact the world in different ways. Plus I want the League to grow. New blood infusions are good for that.

Hello LIT Members,

Nearly three years ago I assumed the position of Managing Director for the League. In that time, we have taken several leaps forward in the leadership and advocacy of independent theater in New York City. Our collective voice has given more specificity and legitimacy to the work we do.

On almost a zero-dollar budget, we made our concerns heard by both political nominees and elected officials. We held a Meet the Candidates Forum that was so successful our Public Advocate Letitia James recently enthused that we should have another. (She said this in spite of the fact that the League did not endorse her. Twice.) We created a Performing Arts Platform and voting guides to better inform our members where the candidates stand on the arts.

We were able to make endorsements of candidates because of the League’s unique status as a 501c6 non-profit arts advocacy organization. As far as my research has shown, we are the only game in town doing this. This has continued to help us have important conversations with elected officials as the majority of our endorsements took office. These politicians now see us as a big and important voting block. This will only improve with next the election cycle in the city.

We have made several positive steps in helping alleviate rehearsal space costs, including the creation of heavily-subsidized rehearsal spaces used by more than 20 companies, and tackling other issues that make it difficult for us to create our work in NYC. The League was there to testify on your behalf at the open hearing for the City Council’s Cultural Plan. We have also begun taking on artist housing issues and working to create an Independent Theater Code, with plans to have serious engagement with Actors’ Equity.

But the biggest crisis we are facing is within our own ranks. Far too often people will tell me what the League could and should be doing. While the passion is great, this rarely translates into those artists taking part in the actual work it takes to make solutions happen for us.

Of course there is much more to do. To address this, the League has created several new working groups, including Politics, Real Estate, Equity, Unification, Communication, Foreign Language, and Green. We need you to make them run. Consider this your call to action. Contact us at info@litny.org to get involved.

As the League moves into its next stage of growth and progress, I will be handing over the Managing Director duties to Guy Yedwab on Jan. 1. I cannot sing his praises high enough. Guy has done a lot of great work for the League and I know he will continue to build on what was started during my term. You will hear from Guy at the beginning of the year and I hope you will support his smart initiatives.

To be clear, I’m not fading into the sunset. I joined the League because I feel certain things are very wrong in our world and I want to make things better for the next generation of theater makers. This means shifting so I can focus on those projects. I will also be taking an advisory role with Guy and the always-excellent Katie Palmer, who will continue as the League’s Director of Communications, to ensure the League is working more effectively.

The thing I am most proud of about the League is that it doesn’t sit around and talk about the idea of making change. It does it. I believe strongly that we will look back at this time and see what we did to greatly improve things for both the independent theater artists working today and those who will come to the city in the future. I hope you will take an active advocacy role with the League.

We are the 99 seats (or less)!!

In solidarity,
Chris Harcum

I was asked by the very talented Micheline Auger to be part of Write Out Front. Part art exhibition, part peek into the playwriting process, part performance art. A bunch of playwrights sat for an hour slot in the window of the Drama Book Shop on 40th Street to do what they normally do in private.

This is the second time I’ve participated in this. I was nervous my first time so I pulled up a script I’d left undone and tinkered on it. This time I went in with a blank slate to see what the setting might inspire. It was like a private moment acting exercise (where you do several minutes on stage as if you are alone) meets an open mic (people would gather outside the window and a couple even heckled me until I looked up blankly at them) meets desperately calling out to your muse on any given day. I think it would have helped me to warm up with some writing at a coffee shop nearby before going in there.

By the end of my hour, I had something. I was flowing. I wanted to stay another hour. I’d blocked out the foot traffic and the people acting like I was puppy in the window wanting to be adopted. I worked around those disruptive people who were threatened by someone being creative in public and banging on the window.

But, by then, it was time to go. In the back of my head, it was nice to be considered a “model” playwright. More than the actual content that was created in that session, it was making a public promise of sitting still and allowing something to come to me while it felt like I was perched on a high wire.