Follow-up "Moneyball" post at TCG Circle!

At TCG Circle, I ask, "What if . . . theatres played Moneyball?"

Then I dig deeper by asking, “What if, instead of relying on gut reactions and chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for?”

Check it out and drop a few of your ideas!

What if . . . Indie theatre played Moneyball?

There's rich teams, and there's poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us."

-- Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, Moneyball

I'm not much of a sports fan, so Moneyball was a real departure for me in terms of my normal film viewing habits. That said, I was glad I went to see it because what I saw got me thinking about the way we approach making theatre.

In the film, the Oakland A's is a major league baseball team that doesn't have the money to attract and maintain star players. When they get someone really good, they're quickly snapped up by teams that can offer a lot more money. In effect, the A's were constantly hemorrhaging talent to rich teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox.

The story starts when the A's have just lost their top three players, which they have to replace on the same limited budget they've always been operating with. Having had enough of this, General Manager Billy Beane starts to question the conventional wisdom of finding and recruiting talent. Help comes in the form of Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate who has adapted a system for determining just how much a player can contribute to winning games. It completely goes against the old way of thinking about what matters when it comes to how baseball games are won. The system leads to the A's uncovering rare gems in major league baseball who were previously overlooked because they looked and performed differently from the square-jawed All-American ideal of what makes a great baseball player. The result was what Peter Brand called the major league baseball version of the Island of Misfit Toys. Once they were able to maximize and synergize the unique talents of these players, the A's had a 20-game winning streak.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

What if . . . we applied Moneyball thinking to off-off-Broadway theatre?

How would we take out the guesswork and bias of conventional wisdom to find what truly works for the theatre we want to make? How can we transform the way we relate to and organize with other people in the trenches with us? How can we maximize the strengths of off-off-Broadway theatre to uncover the hidden gems that get overlooked by the current way of doing things?

The way things look now, a lot of us are doing what Broadway does but on a smaller scale (in other words, cheaper). From our selection process to putting together a cast and crew to securing a venue for rehearsal and performance, there's nothing about the way we go about doing these things that separates us from the big guys. We even look for the same things when we do this, with a few cosmetic differences here and there.

We're all on the lookout for this vague thing called quality and striving for this thing we call excellence. Although this can lead to some amazing results, I sometimes wonder if this is despite the system rather than because of it.

What would happen if we took the search for quality out of the equation? What if, instead of relying on what we call talent or chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for? How would that change the way we talk about what we're trying to do? How would that change who could be involved in that process? How would that change where we worked? How we worked? Why we worked? What we worked with/on?

What I see happening is a move away from credentials and connections toward model where individuals come together to create theatre for a specific purpose in a distinctive way. Imagine more things like FUREE in Pins and Needles, things that could not happen in any other environment but one that made room for experimentation, encouraged the participation of non-specialists, and facilitated direct collaboration within communities.

At least, that's what I hope would happen.

Present-day African theatre forms

I came across this article about present-day African theatrical forms while doing research on a few things. It's an intriguing read, especially in comparison and contrast to discussions about devised theatre that crop up from time to time.

I'm not yet sure how I'll relate this to the poiesis as a whole, but I do know that I am reluctant to do what's always been done with African culture and limit analysis and engagement to specific forms as opposed to digging a bit deeper. For instance, I wouldn't want to end up focusing overmuch on masks and dance -- the predictably "exotic" elements -- while ignoring the different ways African cultures conceive and construct reality. I'm far more fascinated by, say, the impact of a diunital worldview upon the ways people of African descent construct and interpret story.

QBWL poiesis: go figure

Somebody beat me to it. It's worth a read, especially as a way of putting a lot of what I say in context. While the linked article described what womanist theatre is about, my poiesis seeks to be more about how to make it work.

QBWL poiesis: creating space

In my previous post about a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis, I talked about queer space and Black space and what I imagine that being like. Now that I'm thinking about how the next phases of Tulpa's journey will take shape, I am starting to believe that I was not far-reaching enough in my analysis. Rather than define queerness, Blackness, and womanhood as abstract concepts and attempting to create aesthetics from it, what I should have been doing is assuming queer Black womanhood from the start and working on the ramifications for allowing that to express itself. I should have known better than to try to force that reality into a format that was not meant to contain it.

I believe that, instead of trying to fit my selfhood into these neatly defined ideas, I instead need to start by affirming that . . .

I am Black. I am woman. I am queer.

And then asking . . .

Now what?

This shift in perspective is due in part to some soul-searching I had to do about what I wanted for Tulpa, or Anne&Me and the role that each potential collaborator will play. For a while now, I've been reflecting on some of the patterns I enabled in the development and performance of Tulpa, and I come at it from a few conflicting places. At the root of these conflicts was a question: How do I create a space where the queer Black woman voice can be heard as free of distortion as possible? Who is permitted in that space? What are the mandates of that space?

You have to understand why these questions are so essential to creating a praxis that allows me to exist in the fullness of myself.

Oftentimes, in order for the world at large to recognize my humanity, I must excise my queerness, my Blackness, my womanhood. I have to effectively erase the parts of my identity and the experiences I've had - those things that signify my uniqueness as a living, breathing human being - in order to even be allowed entrance into the human family. In a weird sort of cognitive jujitsu, I must mutilate my humanity in order to affirm it.

Given that the world is hostile to my full self - especially to my woman self, my queer self, my Black self - art becomes a sanctuary in which I can feel free to be myself for myself. Ironically, theatre allows full self-expression by giving us permission to fully be other selves. Just as a physical location creates a space that can be filled by the world of a play, the masks we wear create a space that our selves can fill. Through the dynamic interplay of these spaces and selves, a voice* can emerge.

*Here I should probably update my definition of voice as the relationship between the spaces created in the play. Plot, character, theme, and spectacle are aspects of the voice, but they do not define it as I suggested earlier.

But there must first be the space.

And, again, I must return to the question of how I will construct space. As you may have guessed, the creation of space has more far-reaching ramifications than the particulars of, say, blocking or design. It influences the relationships that artists have with each other, perhaps even the relationships that audience members have with one another and/or with the artists.

While it's tempting to simply say, "It all depends" and leave it at that, the fact of the matter is that I am creating a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis, so defining how to create such a space is part and parcel of this effort. If pressed for a concise definition, I would define a liberated queer Black womanist space as one where womanhood, Blackness, and queerness - all these symbols of Otherness - may be fully integrated into that space.  It is a space that embraces Otherness as an essential component of selfhood and one that makes room for fully engaging that Otherness without stating or implying a reduction of the self to Otherness.

In more concrete terms, a liberated queer Black womanist space expresses its Blackness through diunital cognition (both-and thinking), is queerness through embracing difference and fluidity, its womanhood through  birthing spaces via the self. Such a space is liberated because it frees those of us who dwell in these spaces to (finally!) express the fullness of who we are.

Of course, when creating these spaces, it is not simply a matter of stating, "This is what I want." Again, it must go back to praxis. What must be in place for this space to exist? What are the demands this space would place upon those who would step into it?

I honestly haven't thought about it too much, but the main thing that comes up is that it must serve the needs and interests of queer Black women by placing queer Black women at the center of knowledge and authority. This does not allow, say, a Skeeter to swoop in, take our stories, and use them primarily for her own gain. It does not allow someone who is not a queer Black woman to set the agenda, determine the terms of engagement, or control the process. Yet, it encourages self-examination. It encourages intimacy. It encourages solidarity. But it must be free of the taint of domination in order for us to find our own voices and realize our own potential for freedom.

I hope that explains it. Does it make sense?