Remembering Doug Rossi

New York City has lost one of the best friends to new play development the theatre had. After a difficult battle with cancer, actor Doug Rossi has passed away in his childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio.

I got to know Doug working on new plays at the Abingdon Theatre Company, but he actually trained as a classical actor, getting his MFA in acting working with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Over the years, he played the title role in Hamlet, Caliban in The Tempest, Orlando in As You Like It, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, Orsino in Twelfth Night, Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing, and a host of other Shakespearean roles.

As an actor, Doug was always game for anything, which is what made him such an important figure in the development of new work. The number of new plays he worked on, in readings, workshops, and world premiere productions, helping authors to hone characters and originating new roles, is too numerous to name. Just a few of the plays Doug helped bring to light include Aliens with Extraordinary Skills by Saviana Stanescu, Carlett's Just Carlett by Kat Mustatea, Nell Dash by Doug DeVita, A Brandy Before Dying by Jim Farmer, and Evensong by Christina Quintana.

I had the pleasure of working with Doug in numerous incarnations of I Hate You! A Love Story, in which he acted in a two-hander opposite Sandra Maren Schneider. He also played numerous characters in the early readings of my adaptation of Moby-Dick. He played Tom in THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, my send up of The Glass Menagerie, which was fitting, since he had also played that role back in Ohio, winning a Best Actor Chanticleer Award for his performance. More recently, he appeared in a reading of Burns Night at Urban Stages, hilariously appearing on stage in a kilt.

For years, Doug came to monthly meetings of playwrights, first at the Abingdon, and then later with the 36th Street Writers Block. He volunteered his time doing cold reads of new work, and always gave valuable feedback. He took part in the very first table read that Joshua H. Cohen and I did of our musical Burned, and he was a familiar face to anyone who regularly attended readings of new plays. He also gave generously of his time to writers trying to produce their work at small festivals, including the Midtown International Theatre Festival, the Samuel French One-Act Festival, and the NYC Fringe. In 2011, he was named Best Featured Actor for his role in Duncan Pflaster's Sweeter Dreams at Planet Connections.

Doug also appeared on screen, most memorably with Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Deuce on HBO. It is for his stage work that I remember him, though, and as the loving husband of fellow actor Dianne Diep. It seems almost unbelievable that he isn't with us anymore. New York theatre has lost one of its most giving, hardest working, most insightful, brightest stars.

Why I'm not going to the Fringe next year

Today I bought tickets to see a couple shows at the New York International Fringe Festival. It will probably be the last time I do that. Here are some reasons why.

When I pay to see theater, I like to have some of the money for the ticket price go to the artists. That's why ticket fees really get to me. I know from personal experience that ticketing companies screw people both ways. They charge the theater for using the ticketing service, and then they turn around and charge an extra fee to the audience member buying a ticket.

As a playwright, my income has been compromised by ticketing companies. In the past, I have been compensated with a modest percentage of the money a theater collects on tickets sold. Notice, the playwright is only compensated on money the theater is able to collect, so the fees the theater pays get deducted from the amount on which the playwright is compensated. The fee charged to the audience member goes directly to the ticketing service, and no artist gets a dime.

In the past, I have bought Fringe passes and redeemed them at Fringe Central. Typically, I'll see five or six shows, and go to Fringe Central to avoid the fees. No more. Now the "convenience fee" must be paid by everyone. If you buy your ticket at the door, you pay the convenience fee. If you buy your ticket at Fringe Central (now one of two Fringe Lounges), you pay a convenience fee. If you use the Fringe App, you pay a convenience fee. If there is no way to purchase a ticket without it, there is no point in calling it a fee. For all practical purposes, it's just an increase in ticket price.

And by how much? This years, the fee is four dollars, though slightly less if you use the Fringe App. Since a Fringe show is $18, there is more than a 22 percent increase in the ticket price for fees, none of which will ever go to a single artist putting on the show. And does it really cost four dollars to purchase a ticket? Well, before buying the tickets, I stopped off at the post office. I sent three pieces of writing to three different cities, all over the country, and the post office charged me about four dollars for all three together. Three large brown envelopes to three corners of the country for the same amount as processing a single ticket!

Clearly, this problem is bigger than just the Fringe, but when the Fringe refuses to offer a single way around an exploitive "convenience fee" they are adding to the problem. I don't know what the Fringe's contract is, but it's possible they are charged even more, above and beyond the four dollar fee. If so, that amount might also be deducted from any return the artists make, since it is the artists who actually produce the shows. The Fringe provides a venue, but doesn't put a dime into the shows. All of that comes from the artists, who typically self-produce. Doesn't the Fringe care about artists?

Well, the answer is apparently no. But you don't have to take my word for it. When I returned from buying the tickets, I found an e-mail from the Dramatists Guild complaining about the abusive practices of the Fringe. Yes, the Guild has complained about the Fringe in the past, but according to this letter, things have gotten even worse.

The standard for theater festivals around the world (including the Edinburgh Festival) is that festivals are not entitled to subsidiary rights from authors. There is a simple reason for this. Festivals are not actually producing the work. All they do is provide the venues, the hype, and a little publicity. Every penny that goes into the actual production comes from the artists themselves, sometimes working with a non-profit entity, sometimes not.

According to the Dramatists Guild:

The NYC Fringe, however, under Article IV-B of their contract, requires an author to pay 2% of subsidiary rights revenues earned within 7 years of the festival (after the author's first $20,000). And the contract does not limit the scope of its definition of "subsidiary rights," so it includes every use of the play on a worldwide basis; this is a definition broader than a LORT theater or even a commercial off-Broadway producer might be granted.

That's right. The Fringe is asking for more than even an off-Broadway producer would get, and that's when the actual producer of the show, often a playwright him or herself, is supplying every penny of the investment. The Fringe does curate (poorly) the festival, provide venues, and do a certain amount of advertisement. However, artists pay for that, too.

Again, according to the Dramatists Guild:

In addition, the rules require the payment of a $40 application fee, a $700 participation fee, and a significant share of the box office receipts. Regarding its box office share, the Fringe reports that, in 2015, they paid producers $10.44 for each full priced [$18] advance ticket they sold, and $9.78 for each full priced ticket sold at the door. In other words, the Festival kept 42% of advance sales and nearly 46% of door sales.

So the artists pay dearly for their venues, and for any publicity the Fringe might do. The Guild claims, however, that the Fringe has no specified obligations to support a show with any marketing, nor does it require proper billing for the author. There is also no guarantee of an acceptable venue (which has been a problem with some shows in the past) or for the Fringe to provide needed technical support. Again, this has caused major issues for shows in the past.

And here's the real kicker in the Guild's e-mail:

Furthermore, it has been reported to us that the Fringe sent out its contracts to authors for this year's festival at the end of July.  If that is true, then it was a contract presented only a few weeks before the festival was scheduled to begin, after money has been raised and spent, leaving little or no time for authors and producers to assess their options in good faith.

Seriously? Contracts just went out? No wonder we weren't hearing about this before now!

In the past, I've seen some really good shows at the Fringe. I've also seen the Fringe present some of the worst garbage to ever deface a stage. A lot of my friends work on Fringe shows, and I like to support them. If I have to put up with incompetent administrative staff and some terrible venues, such is life.

However, things have gotten beyond ridiculous. If the Fringe doesn't clean up its act by next year, I will not be going. If my fellow artists want to be exploited, that's their choice, but I certainly don't have to support the people exploiting them.

Three Solos

Yesterday, I went to see a triple-header of one-person shows as the 19th Annual New York International Fringe Festival began to come to a close.

Not all solo shows can be as good as Howard L. Craft's Freight, but these three plays were all performed both with humor and an emotional core. While some were more successful than others, they were all worth seeing.

Last week, when I went to see the Fringe production of Fuente Ovejuna, I overheard an audience member talk up a show he had recently seen. "It's called The Absolutely True Science of Nerds," he said. "You've got to see it! This dude gives all the science behind Batman, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Godzilla. It's great!"

Though this show wasn't one I originally planned on seeing, my friends Holly and Laurie had convinced me to go, so by the time I heard the word on the street (and it might have literally have been on the street) I had already arranged for tickets. Written and performed by Shyaporn Theerakulstit, The Absolutely True Science of Nerds was probably the best thing I saw at the Fringe this year.

Technically,  this was a two-person show, since in between Mr. Theerakulstit's "completely scientific lectures" there are two dance breaks. In the first one, the playwright and actor proves he is also a mean tap dancer. The second dance break is performed by one of several burlesque artists. I saw Tiger Bay perform a strip tease as Carl Sagan. It was wrong. So very wrong. And I loved it.

Later that afternoon, I saw Mark DeMayo's The Broccoli Murder, DiCaprio Dance and Other Stories From My 20 Years as a NYC Cop. The show was precisely what it sounds like, but very funny. I particularly enjoyed DeMayo's account of a man who robbed the laundromat downstairs from where he lived, and just around the corner from the police precinct. Not the brightest guy in the world.

Then in the evening, I was happy to run into Dennis Gleason, who directed my short play The Trade at Gallery Players this summer. Dennis was the venue manager for the space where Venus and Adonis was playing. This one-woman show by Misha Bouvion took its text from the (sort of) famous poem by Shakespeare, with a few pronoun changes so Bouvion could perform the whole piece in the person of Venus. Her voluptuous body and melodious voice added a great deal to the poem, even though there isn't much dramatic action in Shakespeare's text.

If you missed these performances, don't fear! I have a feeling all three of them will be back at some point in the future.

Fuente Ovejuna

Yesterday, I saw Ducdame Ensemble's production of Fuente Ovejuna at the New York International Fringe Festival. It refreshed my memory about this great play by Lope de Vega.

Based on real events from 15th-century Spain, the play features King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had only recently united the country. The Ducdame production plays up Isabella's role, giving her many of the lines assigned to Ferdinand in the original, but otherwise their adaptation of Adrian Mitchell's translation was fairly faithful.

Sam Gilroy is appropriately villainous as the military commander who terrorizes the town of Fuente Ovejuna (especially its female citizens). It comes as no surprise when the villagers decide they must defend themselves by killing the commander, an act director William Oldroyd stages with shocking violence.

The heart of the play is the sequence where one by one the villagers are tortured to determine who cast the blow that killed the commander. Each peasant gives the same reply: "Fuente Ovejuna." They will stand together, and if necessary, die together.

Fuente Ovejuna is only playing until August 26th, so if you want to see it, act now!

Last Chance to See OVER HERE

Last night, I saw Mortal Folly's production of Over Here  at the New York International Fringe Festival. This wonderful play by Meron Langsner only has one more performance, this Sunday at 2:15. If you haven't seen it yet, go! It is not to be missed.

The play starts out like a bad joke: So an Israeli and a Palestinian are working together at a construction site just after 9/11.... Yet from that beginning comes a story that is by turns terrifying, beautiful, and at times very, very funny. (As one character quips, "If we can't joke about deep-seated ethnic hatred, what can we joke about?")

Mohit Gautam plays Issam, a Palestinian-American who grew up in New Jersey and watched the Twin Towers fall. While others want to destroy, he wants to build something, to create something new. But when Issam finds out his cousin was a suicide bomber who killed people in Israel, he finds himself unable to completely condemn a member of his own family who seems to have snapped after years of putting up with oppression.

Naren Weiss plays Gilad, a former Israeli soldier with a Greencard and a study-abroad opportunity at NYU. He is all jokes and laughter, and claims he only took the job so he could get some sun. Yet when Issam asks him if he ever killed anyone in the army, we know the answer without Gilad having to say it. In spite of the confidence he expresses, Gilad is haunted by his own demons.

Rounding out the play is veteran actor Micky Ryan as the racist foreman, who in spite of the obnoxious and offensive things he says, manages to be sympathetic. He helped build the World Trade Center and knew people who died when it was attacked. While the part could come off as a caricature, Ryan makes him all too human for us to hate him, in spite of some of the seemingly unforgivable things he says and does over the course of the play.

Director Katherine Harte-DeCoux's staging is impeccable, aided by projections by OMTA and original music provided by Brook Pridemore. The fight choreography, done by Nathan DeCoux is highly realistic, which makes the sometimes questionable choices made by the characters seem motivated. The sense of fear is palpable, even as the characters strive to find ways to trust and accept one another.

Over Here  is playing at 64 E 4 Mainstage. Check it out!

Kemble's Riot

Last night I saw Adrian Bunting's play Kemble's Riot at the New York International Fringe Festival. It was a fun show, and reminded me of the facts surrounding the "Old Price Riots" at Covent Garden in 1809.

To understand the story, you have to know a little bit about John Philip Kemble. He was one of the great British actors of the eighteenth century. Kemble was in his 50s and perhaps already past his prime in 1809. He often appeared opposite his (more talented) big sister, Sarah Siddons.

My first encounter with Siddons was seeing this portrait of her as the Tragic Muse, painted by Joshua Reynolds:

The picture always stood out to me in art history books, not just because it is stunningly beautiful, but also because it has to do with the theatre. I didn't know who this Sarah Siddons was, but I wanted to find out.

Siddons first came to prominence in 1774 when she played Belvidera in a revival of Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved. This was only a year after she married the actor William Siddons. William never reached her level of fame, however, and she instead tended to play opposite her little brother.

Kemble gradually rose to fame playing such roles as Raymond in The Count of Narbonne, an adaptation of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. He frequently appeared with Siddons in Macbeth, in which both garnered acclaim for their passionate and realistic acting. I will always remember Kemble as the first actor to play Rollo in Pizarro, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's adaptation of a melodrama by August von Kotzebue. Here's a portrait of him in that role:

In 1803, Kemble became the manager of the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden. Unfortunately, he never insured the building, and he was nearly ruined when it burned down in 1808. Kemble secured funds to rebuild the theatre. When it was finished, it was more elaborate than before, with beautiful mahogany doors and lush interiors.

Kemble felt he had a right to recoup his expenses. Never mind Covent Garden and Drury Lane had a monopoly on legitimate theatre in London, due to holding royal patents. Never mind also that some of the richest men in the country had given him "loans" that ultimately amounted to free gifts. Kemble had built a grand theatre, and by golly, people were going to pay for it.

The gallery traditionally set aside for the general public was reduced, and Kemble converted space formerly allocated for these cheap seats for luxury private boxes which he rented out for 300 pounds a year. The price for regular box seats went up a shilling. Worst of all, however, Kemble took the price of a basic seat in the pit, which had always been three shillings and sixpence for as long as anyone could remember, and raised it another sixpence to four shillings.

Could average people afford an extra sixpence per seat? Perhaps. But that wasn't the point. Kemble profited from a government patent that granted him and the rival patent holder a virtual monopoly. The construction of the new theatre had amounted to a government bailout, at least in the eyes of many people. Plus, converting part of the gallery into luxury boxes was a deliberate attempt to upscale the theatre. Common people were essentially told that they weren't important anymore. Theatre would now be a luxury for the 1 percent. And to top it all off, the poor souls who occupied the pit, the ones least able to afford it, were being asked to pay nearly 15 percent more for the pleasure of being looked down upon. This was England, and theatregoers were not going to take this outrage lying down.

When Kemble and Siddons appeared in the newly built theatre in their most famous roles, the two leading parts in Macbeth, they were met with jeers, boos, and a very public protest. Though peaceful, these protests became known as the "Old Price Riots" or "OP Riots" for short. Patrons paid the full price of a ticket, but once inside the yelled at Kemble every time he appeared on stage, demanding that he bring back the old prices.

Opponents of the new priced called themselves "OPs," while Kemble's supporters were known as "NPs." There were OP banners, OP chants, OP songs, and even an OP dance. The OPs even pelted the stage with specially made old price tokens like this:

Kemble hired boxers to rough up the protestors, but when his thugs "arrested" Henry Clifford, a prominent lawyer who was a member of the OP faction, it backfired. Kemble was found guilty of false arrest, and public sympathy went more and more to the OPs. Finally, after nearly three months of protests, Kemble publicly apologized and announced a return to the old prices.

The play Kemble's Riot, playing until Saturday at The Players Theatre, dramatizes all of these events. Guy Masterson plays Kemble while Beth Fitzgerald plays Siddons. Matt Baetz and Marla Schutz, however, are the heart of the piece, portraying two rabble rousers, one OP and one NP, who stir up the audience, getting them to chant, sing, and even throw (soft!) objects at the actors on stage.

If you're interested in seeing the play, check out the website here:

Kemble's Riot

http://www.kemblesriot.com/

Bharatanatyam

Last night I got to see a performance of bharatanatyam for the first time. This is a form of dance particularly popular in the Tamil region of India, but now performed throughout the world. The form experienced a renaissance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it is based on the teachings of The Natyashastra, which was written about 2,000 years ago. Today, women usually dance bharatanatyam, though men can perform it as well. There was only one man who danced at the show last night, but he was particularly good.

This performance, Shyama - The Legend of Krishna, was a series of meditations on episodes from the life of Krishna. The program began with an invocation composed by Sri Andal, a devotee of Krishna. This was followed by an alarippu number, which involves neck movements typically associated with Indian dance. The centerpiece was a varnam, a technically difficult piece that weaves together movement and lyrics. The lyrics in this case were taken from the 17th-century poet Sri Thyagaraja. There were then four more pieces, a padam, a javali, a thillana, and a concluding mangalam. I will not even pretend to understand the differences among these types of dances, but they were all lovely to watch!

All of the dances were conceived and choreographed by Ramya Ramnarayan, the artistic director of the Nrithyanjali Institute of Dance. She performed some of the dances solo, and others in combination with other dancers. A couple of the pieces were performed just by her students. Ramnarayan has studied with some of the most famous practitioners of Indian classical dance, including Adyar K. Lakshman, who actually received his early training from Rukmini Devi Arundale

Beginning in the 1930s, Rukmini Devi began teaching and performing Indian classical dance, and she is largely responsible for the art form's tremendous revival in the 20th century. Together with her husband, George Arundale, she established an academy of dance and music that trained numerous performers, thus establishing the tradition that has come down to Ramnarayan and other practitioners today.

Though there was storytelling in the dances Ramnarayan and her troupe performed, it would have been difficult to follow any sort of plot without knowing it in advance. Fortunately, a voiceover before each number explained what was going on in each dance and how it related to the story of Krishna. All of the dancers, but particularly Ramnarayan herself, conveyed tremendous emotion through facial expressions as well as through bodily movements.

Shyama will be performed again this Saturday and Sunday at the 14th Street Y as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. For more information, go here:

Nrithyanjali Institute of Dance

http://www.nrithyanjali.org/index.html

En Avant!

I very much enjoyed opening night of En Avant!: An Evening with Tennessee Williams. William Shuman's one-man play meanders around Williams's life, giving us a kaleidoscope of reflections rather than a linear telling of the writer's life story. Fortunately, it goes beyond just the highlights, telling us the stories behind even some of Williams's lesser known works.

For instance, when Shuman relates the story of Williams's relationship with Kip Kiernan, the young dancer he met in Provincetown, he acknowledges it as the inspiration behind The Parade, or Approaching the End of Summer. Only as an afterthought does he mention that he later turned that one-act play into Something Cloudy, Something Clear.

One of the highlights of the show is the part recounting Williams's time in Mexico, getting away from it all down on the coast while all of his checks and telegrams went to his old hotel in Mexico City. That experience surely helped to inspire The Night of the Iguana, though Shuman is clear that Williams's work is not always autobiographical.

"My mother was not Amanda," the play tells us flat-out. "And I was not Tom." Still, so much of Williams's life informed his work, and En Avant helps to illuminate many of those fascinating connections.

The play is showing at the New York International Fringe Festival until Saturday, August 24th. You can get the full schedule here:

En Avant!: An Evening with Tennessee Williams

http://thetennesseewilliamsexperience.com/upcoming-performances