Picture of Man With Bic Lighter at Rock Concert Goes Viral

According to a study by The Hollywood Reporter, a majority of moviegoers ages 18-to-34 believe using social media while watching a movie in the theater would make their experience more enjoyable, and nearly half would be interested in going to theaters that allowed texting and web-surfing during a screening.

A growing number of theaters and performing groups across the USA are setting aside “tweet seats,” in-house seats for patrons to live-tweet during performances, including the Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, N.C., and the Dayton Opera in Dayton, Ohio.

Desperate times call for crazy measures.

I was recently at a Coldplay concert ( ummm, girlfriend’s birthday) and at the apex of the encore of the world’s biggest band, with confetti raining down from the rafters, with 18,000 bracelets lit up in the dark and with lead singer Chris Martin bathed in sweat and pouring out the most energy I’ve ever seen a human being muster, I couldn’t help noticing the girl a few seats down.  Texting.  In that oh-so-familiar texter’s trance.

And her friend next to her.

And the guy two rows in front.

And the couple to our left.

Actually, they might have been tweeting. Or facebooking.  Or pinterest’ing.

This “present but not engaged” effect is an increasing site at sporting events, movies, catch up coffees with long lost friends, weddings and I imagine, these days, funerals.

We are everywhere at once and nowhere all the time.

At this point in the conversation, the technology zombies will scoff.  The more defensive will assume that you’re a technology rebel, that you’re “old school” and a “dinosaur”, rather than simply questioning current technology’s stranglehold on our attention.

The young’uns, with their gadgets in hand 24/7, grasped in pre-arthritic bird claw clenches, tend to give blank stares to any questioning of the need to sleep with one’s iPhone.

In Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows”, he talks about this culture of distraction, citing the neurological differences that have been charted in the human brain as a result of the increasing use of social media and portable devices.  The ability to focus in a linear fashion for a lengthy period of time is being compromised by our seeming inability to compartmentalize the use of our gadgets.  We can’t seem to put them aside in favor of being engrossed in the moment and concurrently, studies are starting to solidify the findings that anxiety, depression and sleep deprivation are on the rise.

Author Fran Lebowitz, from her recent documentary:  ”If you’re doing this” ( she pantomimes a person typing into a little box on a little gadget),  ”That’s where you are. These machines allow people to not be wherever they are and since I have none of these machines, I’m forced to be where I am all the time.’” Ms.Lebowitz, who does not own a cell phone, believes that she is the only one who experiences the streets of New York City when she stands outside her Manhattan apartment or sits on a park bench.

Must be a powerful drug, these devices of ours.  We can’t seem to put them away and focus on the beauty of a singer’s voice, the commitment of the impassioned actor, the awesome physics of the athlete, or something as benign, as say, well….driving a car?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any of us actors who have been distracted on stage by a ringing phone or a flash of light from the audience know well the rage that can boil within at that moment.

A lesser but still profound emotion exists within me whenever I’m a spectator at live entertainment, or  bathed in the darkness of the movie house, or at Game 7 of The Stanley Cup Finals (yep) and a goodly percentage of the viewers simply cannot be won, cannot be engrossed, cannot be a captive part of what was once a communal and exciting human experience.  I must accept what I cannot change so I plunge ahead, trying to put my blinders on and enjoy what’s in front of me in isolation of my surroundings.  I tell myself, like one does when flies land on the skin in measures beyond avoidance – “Keep calm, these bugs are really not all that irritating.  Mind over matter.”

I suppose it’s not an emotion singular, but rather a mix of anger, sadness and resignation at the loss of an age when we could come together and be hypnotized by the moment at hand.  The loss will never be recognized by the generations who never knew what it was to experience a largesse to human communion, but I feel it deeply.

Am I alone?

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.  How many times has that been tweeted today?

Your Son May be Gay and Have a Wicked Slap Shot.

I replayed the clip over several times, wondering why it so captured and moved me.  Brian Burke, NHL general manager and hockey overlord was being interviewed by George Stroumboulopolous on CBC’s “The Hour”.  Anybody who knows hockey is well aware of the brash, blunt and highly opinionated persona of Mr.Burke.  He is a burly tough Irishman through and through, the kind of man whose picture could be in the dictionary beside the definition of masculinity.

After quizzing Burke on the latest fortunes of his Toronto Maple Leafs, “Strombo” segued into a topic that instantly changed the temperature of the interview.  In 2010, Burke’s son, a hockey player and student manager for Miami University’s hockey team, came out of the closet publicly.  Headlines abounded in the hockey world and were still dominant in the press when Brendan was tragically killed in a car accident just a few months after making the announcement.

Since then, Brian Burke has been an advocate for the gay community, especially on the topic of homophobia within the athletic world.  He has stated publicly that he is following through on the cause in honor of what his son started and has since been vocal publicly about the importance of closeted athletes feeling safe to come out.

When Stoumboulopolous started engaging Burke on the subject, I expected a fairly composed and straightforward set of answers from Burke, knowing that he’s a man who has a very staunch public image.  You’ll have to watch the clip to see what unfolds and what he has to say about his son and the future of gay athletes.

This clip can do more to shift the molecules in a homophobic parent’s brain than a million gay pride parades.

After watching the interview several times, I came to the realization of why I so deeply connected with it.  It’s because for the first time on the issue of gay rights, I empathized instead of sympathized.

As an actor, many of my closest friends and colleagues are gay.  As supportive as I am of gay rights and equality, I couldn’t honestly say that I empathized with many of the trials and inequities that a gay person faces.  How could I as a straight man?  I could relate by hypothesizing a world where gays and lesbians marginalize us heterosexuals (Prop 88?), but that seemed silly and condescending, even in my thoughts.  In my grappling for relevant experience, I felt like a white guy in a black nightclub trying to unlock his hips.

I was left with a libertarian conviction that every human has the inherent right to pursue their own  happiness and to be treated equally.  We’re all human and we love who we love.  Adequate understanding, but somewhat textbook and lamely sympathetic.

True empathy provokes a deep and involuntary emotional connection to another person. After watching this interview, it didn’t take me long to realize the threads of contact that I had.  Burke is a hockey man, I’m a lifelong player of the game and a passionate fan.  I identify strongly with his tough facade and his straightforwardness, not to mention the Irish blood and quick temper. I find myself in agreement with many of his values, both in the hockey world and outside of it.

Above all, Burke lost a young hockey playing son in a car accident.  My brother was killed in a car accident at age 15 – driving home from playing in a hockey tournament.

Hearing him talk about his son’s legacy, I drew a connection to his conviction and felt something of real depth on the matter for the first time.  I never knew or considered what life might have held for my brother, he was only 15 and I’d never considered that he was anything other than a straight young athlete.  But if by chance life had held the same path as Brendan Burke, I became empathetically aware that I would want the culture of sports to shift as much as Burke obviously does.  Such is the power of identification with the messenger as much as the message.

Anybody of my generation who grew up as an athlete in team sports knows the locker room machismo.  The words “faggot”, “cocksucker” and “homo” were passed around as part of the currency of proving one’s toughness. Likely because the cultural institution before us passed it down, and so it goes.  How do we change it?

Do we wait for the aging homophobes to die and label everybody else who isn’t on the support bandwagon as a bigot and an ignoramus?  One need only look at the political divide in the United States to see how scary a culture becomes when sides are entrenched and the listening stops.

In the minor hockey world, as I speak, the “bigots” are cheering on their young kids on rinks throughout small towns all over Canada.  The gay community may flock to friendlier climes in the big city and we can all sneer at the unwashed conservatives, but the prejudice still lingers and suffocates.  It’s 2012 , but none of the major sports leagues in North America have an openly gay athlete.  What does that say about how far we’ve come?

Conversely, I see awareness of the gay community raised every day, in the media, in the education system and in living color on the streets of my native city, Vancouver (boy, those rainbow floats in August sure are entertaining).  I can’t imagine the Dad with the Tim Hortons coffee in the bleachers, loving his son but eschewing “fags”, is as exposed or open to the ideas. It’s doubtful that the opinions of Ellen, Dan Savage, or our liberal intellectual elite hold much sway with him, but he does hold a mountain of sway over his son’s future self image and the perpetuation of homophobia in the locker room.  How can we write him off and not endeavor to shift his perception?

That is why the message delivered by Brian Burke is so powerful and so valuable.  The messages of tolerance and understanding have been delivered ably for years by gay activists and icons who are able to reach the centrists and topple them off the fence.  But those more closed off to acceptance will, frankly, need the message delivered from somebody who they perceive to be like them.  It’s not pleasant to acknowledge tribalism, we try to pretend that we’re throughly objective, but psychological studies prove that on the whole, we’re not.  A white, rural blue collar guy with a more straight laced outlook (no pun) is going to relate more to Brian Burke than to Jane Lynch.  Sometimes you have to fight a battle on another’s terms and if we’d stop being so damned politically correct we just might affect change.

The ideas need to be delivered on an emotional level from somebody like Brian Burke in order to penetrate the consciousness of those not as open, those who identify with outdated thought but who can’t so easily deny the words of a tough guy, a lunch bucket personality, a hockey lifer, and most important, a grieving father whose love for his late son would rattle the nerves of any parent with homophobia in their heart.

The toughest son of a bitch I can think of looks into the camera and says “There is a chance your child might be gay.”

This clip has had only 4000 views as I write this blog.  Let’s make it 4 million.

What “brand” are you?

“Brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed.” (Brandweek)

Walking out of the movie theatre, I felt thrilled, invigorated and renewed. I had just seen one of the most original, complex and visually interesting films of recent memory, “The Tree of Life”. While it was certainly a heady film needing patience and an open mind, in my naivety I thought the film would spark some great conversation amongst movie goers.

Instead, what I heard leaving the theatre was a chorus of disgust and downright resentment. Rather than discussing the film’s abstractions and themes, the conversational tone was heavy with betrayal that they, the audience, had paid to see a Brad Pitt film and been handed something quite outside of their expectations.

Fast forward to watching “Drive” with Ryan Gosling earlier this week. It’s a slow moving, off beat crime film in the vein of the antihero films of the 1970′s, complete with retro music and long nuanced silences from the lead character.  This time, I expected somewhat of a negative reaction from both genders, given the title’s suggestion of heavy action (which there isn’t) and the star’s strong romantic appeal (he’s strangely removed and eerily violent in the film).

Still, I was shocked at how vehemently user reviews tore the movie apart. Men spewed bile, expecting there to be more action scenes and shoot em’ up car chases. Women were offended at the violence and irritated by the film’s slow motion grittiness, often scolding Mr.Gosling on a first name basis for being involved in such a project. I suppose his dreamy face on the poster suggested another type of movie. “The Notebook”, maybe?

Had any of these audience members done a touch more research on the purchase of their ticket, they would have discovered that the directors of the films, Terrence Malick and Nicolas Winding Refn, are known for work that requires the audience to engage more patiently than your average Hollywood fare.  Subtext: “These movies might strike you as artsy fartsy crap”.  Had the prospective buyers known this, most of them likely would have stayed away.

It’s a certainty that Mr.Pitt and Mr.Gosling have been encouraged many times in their careers to embrace the trend of “branding”. Certainly the common working actor is sold on the notion constantly – refine what you are into a tightly packaged and highly specific quality so as to placate the consumer of your talent. The buyer wants to know that when they hire Sherry for the role, they’re getting the quirky young yoga Mom that women in Orange County can relate to.  Just give them the archetype at your audition and get out, the entirety of the performance isn’t really all that important.  They’ll know that you’re the brand within 10 seconds of you opening your mouth, after which you’ll start to feel the room temperature rise as everyone itches to check their iPhones.

Where branding used to apply to the sale of Coca Cola or Apple computers, the ideology has crept into many other areas of salesmanship and now people are categorized as products for consumption with the same clinical sales analysis as a piece of software. Thus the histrionics that people go into when Mr.Pitt or Mr.Gosling disappoint their customers with a left turn instead of the expected right. Thankfully, these two actors have decided to eschew expectations of them and take some gambles, thereby sidestepping the trap of branding and acknowledging a truism:

Today’s hottest brand is often tomorrow’s Rubik’s Cube.

As developing technology pushes the gas pedal of lifestyle pace to the floor, branding has become more necessary than ever, as there’s simply no time to explore the market as a consumer. We want to see the logo, the name, the nutshell sales pitch and we want to know what we’re getting before we get it, full stop. Of course, the security of brand name recognition certainly has its place. If one buys a Volvo, they’re entitled to the experience of driving the safest car in the world. If a honeymooning couple books into a Hilton, they should expect crisp linens and chocolates on the pillow.

But are we really going to submit to the soothing yet stale comfort of brand name satisfaction in every area of our lives?  In our rush to keep up with incoming bombardments of stimuli, are we no longer dividing the pragmatic essentials (toilet paper, kitchen utensils) and the ethereal aspects of life (culture, entertainment)?  Are we following the “branding” trail of bread crumbs that leads us perpetually down the garden path of our reinforced comfort zones? “Dear valued customer, you previously purchased this book/movie/life partner. If you enjoyed your experience, perhaps you would be interested in this novel/film/soul mate”.

Where’s the Joie de Vivre? The excitement of walking into a darkened movie house not knowing exactly what to expect?  The reward of risk taking when we gamble on an adventure and accept the possibility of either disappointment or pleasure?

If the branding effect continues to worm its way into our consciousness, imagine our sex lives in the future when the speed of life and the rigidity of expectation has strangled our autonomy completely.  ”I’m sorry honey, let’s just crawl into bed and stick with missionary tonight. It’s guaranteed to feel good and the kitchen counter is so cold and not what I expected”.

Is that really a stretch, given that internet dating has commodified people in the quest for romantic bliss?  I’m not questioning the result of the medium, as it ends in domestic fulfillment for millions of its participants.  One just can’t help feeling the branding effect in this online shopping spree for a mate – “Geoff, late 20′s, fit, 420 friendly, enjoys traveling, the outdoors and Brad Pitt movies.”  Proponents of the online dating exercise espouse its virtues, usually proclaiming that it is helpful to cut to the chase and avoid the dreadful inconvenience of sifting through the bargain bin (aka – the nightclub/ultimate frisbee/Chapters bookstore).  Some enterprising person should start a clothing line that customizes t-shirts for singles with their brand emblazoned on the front.  Example: A tank top with a colorful sunflower logo and blazing pink text : “Jennifer, mid 30′s, lover of martinis and chick flicks.  Likes to work hard and play harder.  BTW, these are real.”

The old cliche states that the journey is more important than the destination.  Branding seems to have spoon fed us the destination and provided a user guarantee that the destination will meet our preordained desire.

One would hope that we would all have the zest for life to expect certainty in our lawn mower brands while graciously exploring the more intangible and right brained of life’s experiences. If that ideal is too high minded, I still find it worrisome to witness such vitriol expressed by hurried consumers when their tastes are not fully satiated by something as benign as a movie.  The impatient foot stomping reaction reminds me of a baby screaming for its pacifier.

It’s ironic that in western culture, the cult of the individual continues to thrive in an era of such branding importance.  If we feel “put into a box” or limited by the expectations of another, we immediately react in offense, taking umbrage at their judgements of us and the prideful among us will inform the offending party that they are “stereotyping us” or “judging us” and how dare they, for we are far more complex and undefinable than we seem.  We defy being branded as the individual outside the marketplace.

Interestingly, this defensiveness runs lockstep with an increasing demand that our marketplace meet our narrow expectations, whether the product be an espresso maker or a flesh and blood entertainer.  Mr.Pitt might as well have a barcode embedded in his forehead.

Funny, the term branding originally comes from the hot iron stamping of cattle, indicating ownership and differentiation of the animals.

Hurts, doesn’t it?

First class theatre, where can I get a drink?

Being the critical, shit disturbing, theatre-ruining, incendiary male bimbo that I am, I thought I’d put my money where my mouth is and see a show last Saturday night.  After a few cups of coffee at 49th Parallel, some Facebook scrolling, a whiskey sour at Sandbar and a quick check of Roberto Luongo’s Twitter page, my gal and I headed out to Pacific Theatre.

If you didn’t make it out to “Re:Union” at Pacific Theatre, you missed not only a wonderfully complex and interesting take on some little-known American history, but also a world class performance by one of Vancouver’s own, Andrew Wheeler.  I had seen “The Fog of War” and a few other documentaries about former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara and so was familiar with his persona.  You will simply not see a better performance anywhere than what Andrew Wheeler put on that stage.  The nuances in his voice, the physical subtleties, the absolute commitment to MacNamara’s creepy cerebral demeanor – Mr.Wheeler’s performance was a stunning achievement and I could have watched him for hours.

Hats off to playwright Sean Devine for a very ambitious and intriguing piece, bravely intellectual and wonderfully theatrical in its execution.  The content of the play, the visual storytelling and the texture of Mr.Wheeler’s performance was something to behold and is in a league with any theatre I’ve seen in New York or London.

I love Pacific Theatre’s setup inside the theatre, a raked audience on both sides of the stage makes for an interesting permanent alley theatre with great theatrical possibilities.  I imagine the lobby resources are somewhat restricted by the fact that it’s shared with a church and senior’s centre, but I do wish there was a liquor license in place and a bit more ambience in the lobby before and after the show.  Mainly because I’m a relentlessly heavy drinker.  But mostly because my eyes are a bit wider open these days to how we might better sell theatre to local audiences.  Luckily the people who work at Pacific Theatre are fantastic and so the friendly vibe is very charming along with the quiet lobby and self serve coffee.  I’ve often told people outside the regular theatre circles about the venue, but even though it’s right on 12th and Hemlock, many people don’t know where it is.  I guess a big ass marquee with lights wouldn’t fly with the venue’s other occupants.

I’ve done a show there before and have seen many shows since and only in the light of recent commentary have I begun to think about answers to help sell more tickets to local theatre.

Our venues have to start feeling more like nightlife and less like the waiting room at VGH.

We need more life to the whole experience of theatre, an example being the recent run of our company’s show at The Cultch.  Here you have a gorgeous venue, ripe for attracting audiences who prefer a bit more comfort and upscale vibe to their theatre experience.  The lobby provides no couches or real seating area, the unforgiving lights are on full blast and there’s not a stitch of music before or after the show, not to mention they try to limit the bar staffing to an absolute minimum while rushing the audience out after the show.  Not the fault of the workers on the floor who don’t make the rules, but  the venue is cold, clinical and downright institutional in the presentation of theatre.  I’m surprised they don’t get more people asking where the PTA meeting is.

Meanwhile post-show audiences at the Cultch take their dollars down to the cafes and bars on Commercial Drive, further limiting the city’s exposure to a great performing arts venue.  Wouldn’t the Cultch, with its wine bar, cafe and two theatres make for a smoking hot Parisian-style artsy hangout on show nights?  What’s with the short-sighted outlook from the arts bureaucracy?  Where’s the fun?

This has been my experience with so much of theatre-going in Vancouver.  Great stuff with the lights down, ugly with the lights up.  It feels like a bad one night stand.

I faced some heat in the last post over my ranting and my lack of pro-active answers to the problem (even though there were some offered).  For years I’ve asked a huge cross-section of people outside our little “community” what would motivate them to get to the theatre more.  Some of the answers: “Make the venues more fun”.  ”I don’t want to spend my money and sit in a stuffy uncomfortable box”.  ”It felt like a cult”.  ”The ambience sucks”.  ”I couldn’t get a drink”.

It’s not elitist or un-artistic to suggest that theatre take a step up in class.  It’s amazing how much we all want things to be better in our theatre scene, but how angered we get at criticism of our little tribe.  As if it somehow denigrates us rather than challenging us to step up.  Why does our truth-seeking artistic mandate  stop at our own collective self reflection?

Maybe this is a stretch philosophically, but I always hear that two things are dying in our society: theatre and religion.  With religion fading out of the younger generations’ lives, can’t theatre take up the mantle and fill the void in communal connection? Can it do it with a bit of style, something that is so requisite in order to get the consumer dollar in this city?

If we’re to seize the opportunity to fill the need for communal connection with our work, we not only need to continue making great theatre, our presentation of it from entrance to exit simply has to be more inspiring, more entertaining, more….soulful.  Damn, I just had to use that word again, soul.  Maybe a better word would be cool.  We could stand to be more cool.

I personally don’t really care where I see theatre, but I’m a crazy actor.  I’ve seen everything from Broadway shows at The Cort Theatre to experimental plays in a garage.  I care almost solely about the performance and what I’m seeing on the stage.  Is this, however, the perspective of your average citizen for whom theatre is not firmly on the radar and whose attendance we all are so desperately trying to acquire?  If we are to ask of your average Joe or Jane that they part with over $20 of their hard earned, post-2008 tightly-held dollars, the entire experience has to be elevated.  Theatre has to feel special, from the moment they walk in the door or hit the box office.  Just as with the psychology of any sales, the spirit of the buyer’s imagination has to be stoked.

Yes, Vancouver does suffer from a lack of visible and suitable venues.  The arts also suffer from a lack of money – has always been the case, always will be the case. However, it doesn’t take a lot of pennies and it certainly doesn’t take much perspective shift to create an ambience that energizes and creates a well-rounded experience for the audience.  As one of the previous blog replies mentioned, Christopher Gaze does a masterful job at making the audience feel like they’re having an experience at Bard on the Beach, not just seeing theatre.  Point very well put.  Maybe with some venues it’s just a matter of covering up the linoleum floors with some colorful area rugs, dimming the lights and piping in some Dexter Gordon?  Anything other than shabby, cold and clinical.  We have plenty of fine gay folks in our industry, so where’s the flair?

I was raised with the idea that you dressed up for the theatre.  To this day, I can’t go to a show in jeans or sneakers.  Maybe that’s a dated sense of manners, but I stick to it out of a reverence for the art.  I don’t believe going to the theatre should feel like going to a movie –  it should feel more special, more unique, more of an event and thus justify the extra effort and the heightened sensibility of our potential audiences.  I don’t think we need to shorten shows to cater to attention spans or resort to sensationalism in order to differentiate the medium of theatre.  I don’t believe we  need to make all theatre a lowest common denominator, ultra casual and accessible venture like it’s fast food or a drive in movie.  Done well, the live experience is enough in itself to be attractive to an audience.   Heightening the overall experience at the venues can make our art shine more brilliantly, attract a more particular audience niche, include people from all walks of life and still incorporate the discount performances that allow the lower income folks to have a night at the opera too.

Is it such a crazy idea to not pander to people’s default setting for lowbrow and instead inspire with a bit of highbrow?  Is that too idealistic, too elitist, not Canadian enough?

You walk into a lobby with, say… mood lighting, local art pieces hanging, music playing and waiting audience members chatting and imbibing, energy in the air and the feeling of a night out on the town.  Or you walk into a silent lobby with blasting white light, dull scenery and everyone drinking stale coffee and wearing their Sunday worst.

I think great plays deserve the former.  Our theatres need to be the new temples.

God bless.

Theatre and Vancouver: A Difficult Relationship

“Vancouver is not a theatre town”. “It’s too beautiful here, people don’t want to go indoors”. “Nobody knows where to find good theatre in Vancouver”.

As a native of the city and being heavily involved in theatre as an actor and producer, I have spent years trying to disprove these constantly repeated cliches. For the last year, my theatre company has worked essentially full time on our recent two week run of a play called “Fifty Words” at the Cultch. It was the Vancouver premiere of an incredibly bracing, darkly funny and emotionally explosive piece.

Our ensemble was filled with some of the most talented people working in our industry. The material was universally relatable, starkly and beautifully simple in it’s concept – a married couple sends their son to his first ever sleepover and they are left alone in the house, forced to reckon with years of unspoken truths and fragmentations within their marriage. Playwright Michael Weller’s script for “Fifty Words” is uncompromisingly truthful and poignant, with emotional twists and turns both painful and hilarious – a great piece of writing.

This was not a slap dash production, thrown together without form by neophyte actors looking to impress their agents. Nor was this a paint-by-numbers rendition of a stuffy old play, comfortably produced to provide fluff for the aging masses. This was an intense passion project produced by seasoned veterans and was marketed very extensively and creatively.

In the last year, we had an online fundraising drive and a party fundraiser, we attained business sponsorships, got wardrobe sponsored from hip local clothing retailers and had the set donated from furniture rental companies. We organized prize giveaways for patrons and mailed out gift cards to all our major donors. We likely pitched and advertised the show to over one hundred independent businesses.

Unfortunately, we received no public funding despite well-crafted grant applications. Seems producing a play by an American writer is a death sentence when it comes to getting a grant in Canada, even if everyone involved but the writer is Canadian.  Write a play about Canadian soldiers in World War I or about a love story between fishermen in Newfoundland and the Canada Council will deliver you a suitcase full of money.

I digress.  We soldiered on optimistically and marketed the living daylights out of the play. It was featured in the Province newspaper on our opening weekend, it was in every conceivable arts listing, it was on theatre websites, it was Tweeted and Facebooked and emailed to literally tens of thousands of eyeballs. Our website is a cool flash-designed site with an urban upbeat feel that is visually catchy. I interviewed on several local arts blogs in the months prior to the show and the press releases went out to every major media outlet in the city.  The play was widely marketed amongst actors, acting schools and talent agencies.  We offered several discount performances and a 2 for 1 night.

We tracked down the playwright, Oscar-nominated writer Michael Weller, who provided us with a sparkling interview that we shared all over the web. Posters and flyers were strategically placed in all of the prime places in town and we went door to door with hundreds of flyers in the neighborhood of our venue both before and during the run of the show. Great press shots (another in-kind donation from a talented local photographer) were in the papers, on our posters and online. This play was everywhere for months prior to its opening and its plot, visuals and pitch were clear and transparent for anybody who was looking. Anybody in our vicinity could see how much we all cared about this thing.

This much preparation and marketing simply does not happen with independently produced work. We went above and beyond in our salesmanship of this play, using old and new means of marketing tactics.

Once the show opened, the word of mouth could not have been any better. Emails started pouring in to us and our show quickly started showing up all over people’s Facebook and Twitter pages, urging friends to check out our show during its short run. While the material made for ambiguous commentary from the local critics, the vast majority of the audiences talked up this play like crazy and the quotes we received were overwhelming, many people saying it changed their perception of what they thought theatre could be. The responses were definitely not the tight lipped smiles that accompany a lukewarm play – the enthusiasm was crackling every single night!

In order to break even, and not lose money after a year of work on the project, we needed to attain about $8000 in box office, or about 400 paid people over 11 performances. Considering all of the preceding work, and given that we were performing in the beautiful confines of the Culture Lab Theatre at The Cultch, a popular venue,  it seemed like it should have been achievable. We had fired every bit of ammunition in the war to achieve a Vancouver audience, a notoriously difficult pursuit.

I was one of the two actors in the show, performing material that was off the charts in its emotional difficulty, demanding every bit of our vulnerability, ease and concentration for two hours a night. It was very difficult to shake off the financial concerns and still pour myself onto the stage every performance. When eleven people showed for our opening Saturday night, I knew we were going to lose some money and I resolved to fight off the anxiety attacks that were threatening my sanity.

In the final analysis, we lost over $3000 on this show. We didn’t come close to breaking even, even after a year of fundraising and marketing.  The theatre wasn’t even full on 2 for 1 night.  Before every performance I was praying for the house to fill, not a big asking seeing as the theatre was an intimate venue with 74 seats. How could everything we’d done result in such a lackluster turnout? How could such a great piece of writing, well-executed and beautifully staged, yield such an apathetic response from potential audiences?  I will not be so arrogant as to say the play was great, I only echo what the audience response was and that my own conviction tells me that we did a very solid job.

Lest it seem that I’m stewing in a narcissistic pot of my own whiny artist creation, I know that I’m speaking for every ambitious and self-motivated actor, musician and artist in the city. I am not the first to care about a project, nurture it, finance it, market it well and then have very few people give a damn about it.

This city is beautiful – full of tolerant, eco-friendly, well-educated and diverse people. We’re mostly healthy, attuned to nature and appreciative of our surroundings. We have a fantastic hockey team that unifies the city every Spring, nobody cheering louder than me.

This city also has no cultural soul whatsoever.

We want to be sophisticated and culturally savvy, we pose and preen as if we’re a truly cosmopolitan place, but in comparison to the great cities, all of whom possess a strong indigenous arts tradition, we are rank amateurs and wannabe’s.

The same small audience cults (mostly actors, musicians and their friends) show up at the theatres and music venues over and over. Same goes for the rest of the performing arts in the city, save the large and familiar institutions with their elderly, affluent and Caucasian audiences.  During our two months of real summer in the city, some of us wander through the Jazz Festival or pop down to Bard on the Beach so that we can feel connected to something, vaguely wondering why Vancouver doesn’t have more going on, why we’re such a “No Fun City”.  During the wet winter, we focus an absurd amount of myopic attention and journalistic ink on Roberto Luongo’s save percentage.

Our city continues to grow in the same architectural and cultural direction. No theatre district, no new performance venues in visible areas, no touting of the local arts movements. We build more condos, more chain restaurants and more sports bars without a whiff of artistic presence anywhere in the growing cityscape. People talk of economically hard times (“I can’t afford $20 for a theatre ticket”), yet alcohol consumption continues to absorb a staggeringly high percentage of people’s incomes. Throw up a restaurant with mood lighting, some light acid jazz and a few New Orleans-style drinks and you’re a hit.  Open a coffee joint with free wireless and you’ll have every table full with dripping wet Mountain Equipment Co-op jackets slung over the chairs and a symphony of Blackberries clicking. In this city, we down caffeine by day and guzzle martinis by night.

But put on a live performance, try to engage the public imagination in a more intimate and engaging way and you’ll receive blank stares.  Somehow this city does not compute this brand of information.  On Saturday nights supremely talented artists play to tiny appreciative crowds in little back alley spaces while the Yaletown and Granville Street bars are packed with people wondering how they got so drunk, sitting on the same barstool passively for hours on end. Inebriated or stoned college kids wander the strip looking for something to do, faces pressed into their iPhones.

On Granville Island, theatre companies madly advertise their wares to indifferent middle aged passerby on their way to get plastered at Sandbar.  The agoraphobic and commitment-phobes sit in their apartments and endlessly scroll Facebook and Twitter, breezing past all of those boring event notices about plays and concerts in order to see what the latest is on Justin Bieber’s baby.

The local media feeds this endless obsession with banality. Why foster interest in local talent when it’s easier to plaster the pages of Metro and 24 Hours with Hollywood gossip? Why even bother returning emails, calls and inquiries from enterprising theatre companies looking to get coverage on their show?   Nobody is interested in the local arts scene anyway. Better to cover the routine, the branded, and the familiar.  Any local arts coverage is left to the same small group of writers and critics who hold court over the success of the city’s artists with the same tenured boredom as a burnt out university professor with a bottle of whiskey and a revolver in his desk.  A few fine folks in the media take notice, but the majority are either indifferent or slightly patronizing of American-sized ambition and hustle.

The suburbanites skim the arts section, yawn and check what’s on the PVR, the hipsters buy more vintage clothes and sip expensive coffee and the busiest play in town is “White Christmas” at The Stanley, playing to a crowd who are old enough to remember the movie.

And us? The artists? We go to the plays and concerts of our friends, who have begged us to come out. More than one degree removed from of us and we shrug and delete the email in our inbox or scroll past the posting, slightly ashamed that we don’t do more to liven up the local industry but just not quite motivated enough to help pump up the cause. Maybe because we’re pissed off that nobody came to see that show we were in last year. Never mind that if every artist in the city supported five events a year and dragged a few friends out, we’d have an in-built audience that would have a huge ripple effect on the local population. It just seems, oh, a bit too hard.

This might be read by some of the local establishment and I might be biting the hand that feeds me.  I don’t care.  The hand is tight fisted and old anyway, better to find new avenues of satiation.  Better to anger the minority and get some head nodding going from the majority who I believe harbor this same sense of frustration.  This town breeds apathy and as a lifelong citizen I believe I’ve earned the right to disparage it, just as those Canadians to the east do.  Maybe we need some biting cold weather and a cup of Tim Hortons coffee to drive us inside and make us commune with each other in some way other than texting.

If this sounds cynical, one first has to be idealistic in order to reach cynicism.  I’m a mad idealist and it is supported by hopeful evidence.  We had many people at “Fifty Words” who were naive to local theatre but had discovered this particular play.  Seeing the genuine excitement in their eyes afterwards in the lobby, shaking their hands and sensing the thrill of engagement that only a live performance can bring, it keeps my artistic heart beating amongst the overwhelming discouragement.  When people make the commitment to go a play and engage in that oldest and most vibrant of storytelling traditions, they take the risk of yes, perhaps being bored, but also with the possibility of sometimes being blown away. Somehow we need to get that into the cultural zeitgeist of this young, evolving city of ours.

I tried and I will continue to try to do my small part to provide interesting and exciting work as an artist to my fellow Vancouverites. I do it because I truly love my colleagues, so many of whom are insanely talented yet unknown within their own city. I do it for the small pockets of theatre lovers who do seek out our work and appreciate it. I do it for the young guy who came to see “Fifty Words”, the first play he’d ever seen, and who was speechless with emotion afterwards.

I hear they’re renovating the Raja Theatre on north Commercial Drive. That would mean The Raja, The Cultch and The Havana theatres all would be in the same few blocks. Is city council smart enough to put up some signage promoting a theatre district on the Drive? To advertise theatre visibly amongst all of the bars and restaurants and cafes?  Is anybody listening, or are we all too cool to care?

Just an idea. I’m trying Vancouver, but you’re a tough crowd.

http://www.mitchandmurrayproductions.com