Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Support Crossroads Theatre Project

I've done quite a bit talking about Crossroads Theatre Project. One thing that never occurred to me was simply saying what it was that supporting Crossroads Theatre Project means and what it should accomplish. Sure, I could talk puff myself up by talking about quality and excellence, throwing in "professional" to make it stick. I could also use hot, trendy buzzwords like "innovative" and "authentic."

But that would make me sound just like everyone else, and I hate that.

I'd rather get to the point and tell you what I mean. Like this.

1. Your money goes directly to theatre artists.

Because of the small scale of Crossroads Theatre Project, every cent goes toward tools and resources for making theatre: casting actors, rehearsal and performance space, printing out scripts, and so on. You're not covering administrative overhead. You're helping real artists make art in the real world.

2. You're giving theatre to people who usually don't get to see it because Broadway tickets are too expensive.

People want theatre. People enjoy seeing plays. But they don't enjoy paying $100 for seats in the nosebleed section. Not when a movie ticket to a 3D movie with stadium seating costs about $15. By focusing on intimate, small-scale productions, Crossroads Theatre Project makes theatre affordable for the average person's entertainment budget.

3. You're showing that theatre arts—and all the arts—have value beyond how much money it makes. 

Every day, we're bombarded with messages that tell us that what we own is all that we're worth. Theatre reminds us that our humanity matters, that our lives are interesting and meaningful for their own sake. The ability to share that humanity with other human beings is priceless.

4. You're helping the arts reflect the diversity of the world we live in.

There are enough places to find stories about whitebread, all-American people. Crossroads Theatre Project does something different by putting people of color, women, and LGBTQ people front and center. This gives underrepresented artists a chance to show their stuff and underserved audiences a chance to see themselves portrayed in non-stereotypical ways.

5. You like what Crossroads Theatre Project is about and want to see what it can do.

Trying new things and coming up with new approaches for developing theatre by playwrights of African descent will always be part of how Crossroads Theatre Project pursues its mission. Every reading, every production, every collaboration is an experiment. So, Crossroads Theatre Project will always be a work in progress—fluid and ever-changing—just like any living thing.

Some things you can do right now.

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• Tell everyone why you think I'm awesome and amazing

So I got all scientifical and found out some stuff

In the vein of there being no problem that the right tool or right mindset can solve, and shamelessly ripping off the Just Ask Them Method of Orlando Jones, I whipped up a survey to see what was going on. I make no promises about this being statistically sound or even the most rigorous method ever. This only reflects the people in my own audience (and maybe the people in their audience).

The findings were pretty interesting, especially when it came to what kept people from seeing more theatre. Here is my extremely unscientific analysis of the findings:

1. Most people (two-thirds of respondents) see plays once or twice a year, or once every few years.
2. There's a strong preference for musical theatre (67% of respondents) followed by classics and modern stuff (57% and 50% of respondents, respectively), but there's also a good audience for quirky, off-the-wall stuff (48% of respondents) that doesn't happen all the time.
3. The biggest hurdle to attendance are price (almost 75%)and transportation (almost 35%). Surprisingly, a good third of people said that having no one to go with (almost 30%) and not knowing what's playing (about one-third of respondents). In addition, lack of access for people with disabilities (wheelchair access, closed captioning for the hearing-impaired, etc.) was also something that impacts some people.
4. After making it cheaper and bringing it closer, most people (38%) want more help to find out what's on stage.
5. A huge majority of people (almost two-thirds) are willing to pay around $20 for a ticket. For people with a bigger entertainment budget, that jumps to around $50 (20%). So that means 80% of people are going to shell out for tickets that cost, at most, $50.
6. A huge chunk of people (60%) are willing to travel up to one hour to see a play.
7. If money, time, and location were not an issue, most people (70%) would see one or two plays per month or 3 to 5 plays a year. A good fifth of them would even go weekly.
8. Representation of people of color and LGBTQ people is something that gets brought up when people ask what it would take to get them to see more plays.
9. People want to see more theatre, but pricing and scheduling often makes that difficult.

When asked about what would get them to see more theatre, a couple of people made a very interesting suggestion: make recordings and/or livestreams of shows available like the MET and MTV Unplugged (remember them?).

This is gravy for a starving artist like me who's practically reattached my umbilical cord to a wifi connection because that's something I said I wanted to do, and more than once at that.

The only barrier, of course, is finding an affordable option (read: has starving artist prices) that also makes it easy for people to attend.

Can someone help me out here?

Why Orlando Jones is the smartest man alive right now (that's called hyperbole and I'm doing it on purpose)

A couple of days ago, Orlando Jones ("Not the little boy from Everybody Hates Chris. Not Solange Knowles. Not Orlando Bloom. Not the black Jeff Goldblum. Not Madea. Not Mos Def") did the smartest thing ever in the history of media folks and audiences.

He asked fans what they think (and followed up afterward).

Since diversity in theatre is a big thing of mine, I want to focus on that for a bit.

The vast majority of the time, when people talk about diversity in theatre, what the underlying question seems to be is, "What is it with Those People?"

Why aren't Those People coming to our shows? Why aren't Those People finding their work onstage? Why aren't Those People seeking out our programs and services? Why aren't Those People doing this, that, or the other thing? What is it with Those People?

(*Those People includes any group who is outside of the usual target demographic for theatre as a whole. This can include: People of color, women, LGBTQ people, working-class and poor people, disabled people, people without an MFA, young people, the elderly, and so on.)

Orlando Jones flipped the script. Instead of talking around the audience or filtering that knowledge through, say, a PR firm or marketing agency, he actively encouraged them to participate. He asked them what they needed and wanted from the media they participate in. In so many words, he invited Those People to share their thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. It was a rare treat to see such a conversation happen in such a transparent way.

I really want to see more of that.

If I'm to be perfectly honest, I'm bored with the Why It's Important to Have Those People Around discussion. It's already more than clear that there is a problem and that more needs to be done. At this point, if this or that person or organization still needs to be convinced that including and involving Those People in theatre is something that needs to be done, I'm not particularly invested in converting them. I'm about as interested in doing that as I am in trying to persuade someone that dinosaurs did not hang around Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (read: not at all).

As a matter of fact, I'm tired of talking about Those People and want to do more of what Orlando Jones did and talk with Those People (which would, I guess, turn them into You People).

How would this sort of direct contact or direct confrontation impact how we go about making structural and institutional changes in the theatre community?

"Miss Saigon" Lies about the real questions about artistic responsibility

I came across a lot of posts with pictures of people writing, "Miss Saigon lies," then I found out about this Don't Buy Miss Saigon campaign.

Now, I haven't seen Miss Saigon, but from the description of it, it's probably best that I don't. To be frank, I'm not interested in discussing whether or not Miss Saigon should exist. It already exists, so arguing for or against that would be purely rhetorical at this point. Naturally, there are many Vietnamese people giving a, shall we say, less than enthusiastic response to the portrayal of Vietnamese people, especially Vietnamese women.

And, like clockwork, somebody white is going to read all that and say, "Ugh! You people just don't want anyone else to do anything! You get offended by everything! It's just fiction! They're just trying to tell a story! Why does it have to be about race or gender? It's not hurting anybody! It's not the writer's/director's/producer's fault that they're white! You should be glad they're talking about these issues! Write your own play! You're just haters! Blah blah blah!"

I will always be perplexed and frustrated by the ability of people who have one or more kind of privilege to completely ignore and dismiss all the nuance and context from any discussion about the ways that race, gender, sexuality, and class impact a specific cultural phenomenon. The cognitive dissonance it takes to say, "I believe that race, gender, sexuality, and class are systemic factors that affect every level and every aspect of society" and then say, "You complaining about racism and sexism in Miss Saigon is just you being a hater (and if you're a woman of Vietnamese descent, you're an ungrateful hater)" is along the same lines as, "God loves you, but you're going to hell," but without the whole stripping people of their human and civil rights part.

Whether a person is justified in liking or disliking some form of art, pop culture, or entertainment is, aside from incredibly reductive and simplistic, just plain ol' boring. I've never been fond of rhetorical or semantic debates, where the whole point of conversation is merely to display or sharpen one's wits or powers of persuasion. As times goes on, I have less and less interest in participating in debates about important issues where it's clear that the stakes are higher for one group of people than another. There's a reason why I'm no longer debating or arguing about the existence of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., especially with people who are not on the receiving end of them.

Rather than strip away all the nuance and context from a very complex and very important discussion that needs to happen about media representation and who has access to and control over the mechanisms that allow certain stories to be told by certain people, I want to explore those nuances and complexities.

This most recent controversy about Miss Saigon creates an opportunity for addressing questions that have always been there and starting (continuing?) conversations that have always been happening. Questions and conversations about the responsibilities of artists to the communities impacted by their work.

I'm not in the business of providing a one-size-fits-all approach to how those conversations need to happen. However, I do caution that the content of those conversations cannot be, "How can I do what I want without anybody telling me I'm fucking up?"

I won't sit here and pretend that these things are easy to figure out because they aren't. Nothing that involves facing the historical and cultural and political roots of a society will be simple or easy. But, I think that acknowledging the difficulty and committing to working through it would be an important step, right after having a shared vision and common stakes in the outcome.

Things to do when I get back to Brooklyn (or, "Why I Went Back To Brooklyn")

There are so many different directions and approaches I can go in, which I need to decide on before I get to the, "How much will this cost again?" phase. Part of me wants to revamp rehearsals to match my tabletop RPG roots, so that would require less cramming over a longer period of time. Part of me wants to use a non-traditional performance space a la Peter Brook's "The Carpet Show" something more or less portable that also creates the magic of the piece.

All of me wants to crack open standard methods of producing theatre, stripping away the non-essential and building up from there as the piece needs it. All of me wants to discard what is dead or inert about the way theatre gets produced, those things we just accept as true about making theatre without even knowing that we do them. And I do mean everything--from auditions, to rehearsals, to performance. Note to self: I should probably write about these at some point.

I suppose using my 3rd full-length play as the fuel for this theatrical research and development (h/t Gwydion Suilebhan) is a bit foolhardy, but then again, I do think that if I'm going to experiment, I'd rather butcher my own stuff than someone else's.