A bad time for arts...

...a good time for entertainment.

This morning's New York Times carried a story about a resurgence in moviegoing. With the economy so lackluster, people apparently are looking for the cheapest route to forget their problems for awhile, and a couple hours in a moviehouse eases the mind without inflicting extensive financial pain. (It didn't break it down to this level, but my guess is there's also an increase in matinee/discount hour attendance.)

So that's good for folks who work in the movies (if their production companies can actually get financing with credit in the dumper), nor is it surprising: people have long turned to the movies when the world goes to hell. The Great Depression may not have been the best time for the arts, but it did give us screwball comedies, some of which are now classics. Nor is it surprising that attendance is up for lighter fare and down for serious films (or at least films tackling serious subjects). When everything seems to megasuck, it's hard to crank yourself up for a couple hours of war, famine, plague, and over varieties of suffering. People don't want to be reminded that they are mortal in a world rife with injustice; they want to fall in love, laugh, and, if they're Americans, see things blow up.

But it's further grim news for those of us who can't forget war, famine, etc., and hence reflect it in our art. As the author of two very tough-minded plays about war (and another two in progress), it's sobering to see them bounced on nearly a weekly basis, despite good reviews and strong production histories (re: "Waiting on Sean Flynn" and "Liberation"; "Next of Kin" is still in the rewrite stage and not yet on the market, and "Depth of Field" is mired down in a structural writer's block, though I trust George Montgomery, my war photographer protagonist and a character I'm intensely fond of, will one day prowl the stage).

Even I'm feeling it. Though I don't imagine I'll ever be accused of writing fluff--it's just not in my nature nor, honestly, my range of talents...it's dark (but busy) in here, folks--I feel the fabulist side of my work calling. I've kind of bounced back and forth between gritty stuff about war and politics, and more surreal, dreamlike work, and of late, the dreamlike stuff has been drawing me. It still tends to be kind of heavy, but there's usually a good deal of humor (attempted at least), and the goal is less about exploring the depths of human cruelty and more about playing with the underpinnings of psychology, the relationship between perception and the doings of the unconscious psyche, and the strangeness that grows from their intersection. As Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." I've also been playing with taking "genres"--such as the noir detective world--and twisting it around with magical realism. Less Michael Herr, more Phillip K. Dick.

It's not going to make a difference for awhile, I suspect. When your subscriber base is shrinking, grants are evaporating, arts budgets are being cut, ticket sales are down, and corporate and private donations are shrinking, theatres tend toward the familiar over the new, relying on plays with established track records or, if they're doing new plays, choosing playwrights with established names. (I guess I'm an established name at this point, but I have a very short reach.) It's not just Portland; I'm hearing this everywhere. Right now it's more important to keep the patient breathing than happy.

But, as recessions don't last forever, neither do periods of contraction in the arts. Inevitably, people tire of hap-hap-happy formulas or variations on favorite themes and want something that'll challenge them. And, as we enter--for good or ill--a time of dynamic change, I think audiences will eventually need work that helps them understand a chaotic world rather than merely assures them that the world will continue for another day. For me personally, that probably means a fallow period for productions (or productions on smaller scales), but the relationship between writing and production is cyclical as well. When you're not getting produced, you write to make up for the bum news; so I'm actually experiencing a creative upsurge, where I have so much stuff written in notebooks that I haven't even had time to type it up, much less revise, workshop, and submit it. Those kinds of periods don't last forever, either: you have ride them while you can. In short, I'm doing a lot of writing. And having fun with it because I'm relatively free to write whatever the hell I want. Freedom sometimes really is a word for nothing left to lose.

To my artist friends, especially those who don't live or die by performance, I say: work, damn it. Survive, have fun, and lose yourself in the creative process; so that when things turn up, you'll have fresh new plays and photographs and paintings and poems and songs to introduce to a world starved for the new. And for my performer friends, I guess this is a time to work on your chops, cherish and reconnect with your friends, and find solace in small projects. It's not fun. It's scary. And it's going to be hard to keep the faith. But like the good times, the bad ones don't last forever.

They just feel like they do.

Barack, JFK, and 911

I think it's pretty fair, given the pollsters and pundits track record this year, that no one knows how Tuesday's mega-primary will come out--I've lost track of how many states are in play, but it comes out to something like half the parties' nominating delegates. The general consensus is that McCain's well positioned among Republicans, though I'm not sure, given the antipathy against McCain by the hardcore right, that a lot of Republicans aren't going to just stay home.

The latest polls (see previous caveat) have Obama and Clinton running neck and neck, and since the Democratic primaries are proportional, it could be that they split the delegates, and the battle continues right up to the convention. But, after a good bit of introspection, I've finally decided that, when it comes down to it, I prefer Obama.

I'm of an odd age, coming in at the tail end of the Baby Boom, where I was too young to really remember JFK (I remember the funeral) or be part of the "youth movement," and too old to be a member of Generation X (whatever that really is). I guess that means I can dig the Stones, the Clash, and Nirvana. I do remember Bobby Kennedy, however, and I can't even listen to his voice without feeling a deep wound inside, in that he held the promise of healing a deeply divided country in 1968 and ending a disasterous war. And his death gave us Nixon, who--despite the incumbent's qualifications--is still probably the worst president in history.

But I watched the Democrats, for years, yearn for a new JFK only to nominate, over and over, competent, non-charismatic policy wonks and be defeated by the Republicans. Bill Clinton, smartly, ran towards the center and tapped into a Kennedylike spirit of hope (in the nihilistic winter of Bush I), and gave one of the most exciting, inspiring inaugural addresses I can remember, only to get smacked down by his hubris and run the country like a moderate Republican.

And here we are in even a darker winter with a worse Bush, the pendulum is distinctly swinging towards the Democrats, and, if there was any time that I've truly felt this, it seems the country is hungry for unity. There was, for a brief moment following 911, a sense of the nation as one and of the world in sympathy with its customary punching bag, and I don't need to explicate how thoroughly Bush squandered that opportunity. I think the hunger's still there, and I think the right candidate, with charisma, intelligence, and nerve, can tap into that spirit and the hunger for optimism that characterized the early 1960s before it all went thoroughly to hell in Dallas.

McCain, assuming he gets the nomination, may have an appeal to independents, but, brass tacks, if he won, he'd be the oldest sitting president in history. He has a nasty temper, disheartens the Republican rank and file at a time when they're demoralized to begin with, and his goofy humor and military freakishness about Iraq (read: still fighting Vietnam, that crazy steel glint in his eyes) would be a pretty damn interesting contrast with Obama's poise and wit. Whereas running against Clinton would essentially be refighting Bill's impeachment battle, which might invigorate the conservatives and turn off the moderates. I know a lot of hardcore Democrats want a battler in the White House, and that's what they think they'll get with Hillary, but you need the center to govern in this country, and I think the Republicans, who are poised to lose more seats in November, might be off their game when faced with a statesman rather than a warrior. When you fight warriors, you look tough. When you belittle statesmen, you look churlish.

An Obama nomination still seems like a long-shot. But it's an exciting long-shot. And maybe, just maybe, one that genuinely wears the mantle of hope.

The Long Fade

The other day, I heard myself ask another theatre practitioner, "So how many dimmer packs do you guys have?" And it kind of struck me what an utterly obscure question that is to the majority of people. "Uh, you mean a dimmer switch?" Kind of. I'm not even a lighting guy. I've hung a few lamps, moved some barn doors around, but the whole of black cables and gel combinations remains some weird alchemy to me.

But I do love the lights. When I go to someone else's show, after I've finished checking out the program, I sometimes find myself looking at the grid and counting instruments, trying to figure what's focused where. And I think that's because I'm hooked on the fade. It's just so damn beautiful when it's done right. The way the color drains and carries your emotion from one place to another. And a perfect crossfade? It'll sometimes take me right out of a play because I'll be thinking: my God. Go back and do that again.

It's curious because it relates to where you are when you write a play. Are you inside the characters, looking out, or are you among the audience, looking in? That shifts around for me. But when I write fade in the stage directions, I am most definitely in the audience, and I can feel those lights moving me.

A number of years ago, I saw a one-man show that had, at the end, the longest, most achingly beautiful fade I had ever seen. I mean, staging a fade that long was sheer nerve, somewhere between utter arrogance and genius. Here's why: the piece was about a character with all these different opposing facets to his personality, and, as the light so slowly drained, the effect tired the viewer's eye so it seemed that the actor's face itself was shifting, rearranging itself, over and over. Forever changing without resolution, which was the point of the piece. What else so reflects the human condition but unstoppable change? Yet the act itself, essentially just slowly turning off a light, was so simple.

That image is still in my mind's eye. It's still changing. And so am I.