Jim Fitzmorris

new orleans' theatrical pugilism

Catch the Wall

March 22nd, 2013

There is so much infuriating and thrilling going on around Gabrielle Reisman’s Catch the Wall that it is hard to know where to begin.

So, let’s start from the beginning.

Ms. Reisman has written a play that is both a celebration of bounce music and a look inside the New Orleans public school system. It is a multiple story narrative that tracks the struggles of parents, teachers, and, ultimately, students in one of the country’s great educational petri dishes. Incorporating song, dance, and a touch of the supernatural, The NOLA Project production, under the guidance of director Chris Kaminstein, has set off a bit of a concussive grenade over issues of identity, race and authorial privilege. In others words, questions have been raised of not only whether Ms. Reisman has gotten it right, but also whether she has any right to tell the story at all. She, and members of her company, have been called misguided, uninformed, insensitive and, on more than one occasion, outright racist. If you join the Facebook post-show discussion group, you’ll get the sense of what is going on with the show.

If you decide to wade in, there are some compelling and challenging ideas to parse over, and you should maintain an open spirit. However, keep this in mind: you will feel provoked. A number of the respondents will attempt to put you into either the defensive position of arguing against your being a racist or force you to establish your credentials to join the conversation. If you do the first, your defensiveness will then be used as evidence of your racism. If you do the second, you will be met with sanctimonious bromides about ways to educate yourself in things you already know a great deal about. Nothing is worse for people in the theatre to be educated by non-practitioners about subjects likes story circles and The Free Southern Theatre. If you find that some of the “dialogue” feels like it came straight out a re-education camp, a show trial, or a Maoist cell, you are not going crazy, because those shadows are there. Part of that strategy is to keep people out the action by holding the fear of accusation nearby. Do not let silence or acquiescence be your only options. Get in the game.

As engaging as the discussion on social media is, the more important, and more thought provoking, response comes from Rachel Lee whose essay/review In The Shadow of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Responding to The NOLA Project and Catch the Wall is a painstakingly fair and incredibly nuanced analysis of the show. Essentially, Lee, while praising both Reisman’s action of writing itself and a great deal of the artistry of the piece, is highly problematized by issues of accuracy, the authority of the writer, and a number of images and scenes that she feels cross the line into enculturated, albeit subtle, racism.

I do not take issue with Lee for her opinions of interpretation. Disappointment with staging choices, the questions she raises about performance motifs, and even her troubled reception of images that she felt called back to ghostings of racist tropes from the 19th Century are all fair game. After all, she saw the show she saw. To allude to Herbert Blau, the audience is what happens. Therefore, for her, that was the show that happened. However, where I do take issue are in her prescriptive suggestions for scope and her assertions of facts that are simply not so. To put it another way, much of her writing is musing about a show she would have liked to have seen rather than the one that was, and there are assertions she makes about the structure of public schools, much of it pulled from Sarah Carr’s Hope Against Hope, that are not true.

Let’s start with the first. It is the more practical. Lee talks of exploring “racial landscapes”, agonizes over the absence of a police presence, muses aloud about Reisman’s failure to tell the story of the lack of black males in the schools, and on other occasions looks to have the story expanded and deepened. Those are all good threads worth investigating in numerous future works, but Reisman and company have just over two hours to move through the time and space of an entire semester. Catch the Wall is not a HBO series nor a compendium of novels. It is a compact, ensemble exploration of the life of a school. On these occasions, Lee’s notes move away from genuine criticism and dangerously close to the mentality of a dramaturgical workshop where a teacher tells their student a radical idea how to fix their play.

On the issue of accuracy, I will use Lee’s own words to frame my counter:

The production misses the mark in other key ways, particularly in its characterization of the racialized and gendered dynamics of education in New Orleans. In the play we see the following power hierarchy: poor Black students answer to young, middle class teachers (both Black and white) who are newcomers to the city; these teachers are under the supervision of a female Black veteran principal who bemoans the death of the teachers’ union to her supervisor, a Black male charter company CEO (Martin Bradford) who in turn submits to an unidentified white woman in a suit (Kristin Witterschein) who appears to represent the state department of education. It is true that there is a rigid hierarchy in place, but it is not accurately personified in Catch the Wall. In Hope Against Hope, Carr explains:

“The vast majority of Recovery School District charter schools are overseen by either white male or black female principals, with a comparatively small number of black male or white female school leaders (which in and of itself sends an interesting message to New Orleans schoolchildren about who has authority in their community––and who does not). The black female principals tend to hire veteran New Orleans teachers, while the white male administrators rely more on younger teachers brought to the city through alternative recruitment programs.”

Thus the depiction of a Black veteran educator running a school staffed by TFA recruits and adhering to KIPP style discipline and culture policies does not quite ring true when it is much more likely that she would be running a school staffed by the few remaining veteran teachers (such as the embattled O. Perry Walker on the West Bank or Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School in the 9th Ward). Neither does the casting of a Black man as the embodiment of authority in the charter hierarchy. This ignores the conspicuous absence of men of color in school leadership and obscures the racialized power dynamics at play. Placing some of the most heated ideological conversations in the play in the mouths of people of color dilutes the natures of these debates, feeding into the myth of a “colorblind” education system and letting white reformers off the hook…

This runs counter to my own experience of working in public schools. Because of my position, I had access to four schools structures over the course of any given day. In those schools, I encountered a middle school principal who was a veteran African-American teacher and that, for reasons both ideological and financial, cleaned house of fellow veteran teachers and stocked her pond with TFA members. Just down the road a male African-American high school principal sought a mix of the young and old and was beloved by both. Finally, the majority of my time was spent in another middle school hallway where three African-American men presided over their own classrooms, another was the head counselor, and a fifth was the dean of students. I simply cannot believe that I happened to find the three exceptions to Carr and Lee’s rules.

My counter to her, and Ms. Carr by association, is that each school is an independent entity created by its diverse mix of neighborhoods, socio-economic forces, cultural traditions, and day-to-day life. To suggest otherwise, is to fall prey to the reductive thinking that dominates corporate organizations that either turn the population of every single school into a monolithic entity that operates under uniform guidelines or creates a binary of grizzled, wise veterans versus eager, bustling reformers. Just as no city is alike, no school has the same energies. Given my understanding of school organization, Ms. Reisman’s fictional place of learning is completely believable and all too sad. If you are genuinely interested in how such a place could come into existence, just ask, it can be explained in a paragraph.

All that being said, I will once again encourage you to not only attend Catch the Wall in its last weekend but also read Lee’s essay. Both are worth it.

Ringing Our Bell

March 20th, 2013

Something big is brewing in New Orleans’ theatre. It seems we’re ahead of the curve. We even managed to beat reality television to the punch. You see, The NOLA Project’s own Gabrielle Reisman’s Catch the Wall premiered last week at Dillard University, and that means, when you couple it with my own Urban Education Smackdown, New Orleans’ theatre addressed a hot topic issue in the city in a way it never has before…

The topic is still hot.
Artistically, we got there first.
Our take is different from mainstream consensus.

Both shows were conceived and created before Blackboard Wars was even a rumble. Furthermore, both shows point to systemic administrative dysfunction as the problem rather than laying the blame at teachers’ feet.

The mainstream opinion (with the notable exception of Bill Maher) has been tough on teachers. They have been betrayed by people who should have been their allies like Michelle Rhee and the creators of Waiting for Superman, and they have been out-and-out called the villains in contemptible trash like Won’t Back Down. I am proud to say that New Orleans’ theatre has not only avoided piling on, it has called foul. Both theatrical offerings roar back at those who would seek to absolve parents, administrators and government officials while laying blame on the overworked and the underpaid.

It seems that we’ve moved so far ahead of the curve that the press hasn’t noticed. The coverage has been spotty and the trend has been missed. I had hoped I could avoid ringing my own bell, and I was willing to do so. After all, I had a very nice preview piece written about me in Gambit Weekly. However, after seeing the production over at Dillard, I decided not keep silent on this. Guided by its hyper-gifted director Chris Kaminstein, Catch the Wall is a rather stunning multi-media production that moves seamlessly from projection to intimacy to song to outright celebration. The work is at times infuriating, misses the jugular on more than one occasion, and loses narrative control from time to time. However, it’s voice feels genuine, alive, and will fill more than one teacher with an awful sense of recoil bordering on PTSD. Most importantly, it feels like New Orleans both inside and out. If you know me, you know what a compliment that is.

How many times do you have a theatrical insurgency of original work that pits itself against the general consensus? In New Orleans no less. This is a national story. So, I beg you, local press, tell people what’s going down. We’ve earned it.

A Mad Scientist’s Guide to Playwriting: Intro Chapter

December 5th, 2012

On a dark and stormy night, the mad scientist begins work in isolation. From high in their castle tower or deep in the bowels of a hidden laboratory, the crazed inventor draws up their nefarious formulas and gathers their insidious tools. They fill their tomes with stolen arcane formulas and drawings of distorted anatomy. They pick the perfect instruments for cutting, dicing and splicing. Searching crypts and morgues, they unearth and pilfer cadavers and body parts for dismembering and assembly. These lifeless objects from the past will provide the form for future life. Once the monster-in-waiting is sewn and bolted, it is infused with dangerous chemicals to quicken its senses. With the assembly complete, our anti-hero then searches for the spark of life that will unleash their monster into the world. And when that source is found, eyes flicker, fingers move, and a voice roars as the beast’s creator exclaims in delight…

It’s alive!

Illustration By Nat Kusinitz

That series of events is exactly the structure this book will be following.

For you see, playwrights are mad scientists: mastering their art, dismembering, reassembling, injecting life, and unleashing their creation. They to must learn to work alone. In this solitary time, they increase their vocabulary, rely on active verbs, and come to understand the power of punctuation. They hone their skill in executing a format that requires discipline and restraint to maximize their imagination. And that imagination must cultivated through reading, observing and, most of all, constantly writing. These would-be Victor Frankensteins can only become practitioners of this dark art through constant experimentation.

The location of these investigations comes in the playwright’s version of the laboratory: the journal. That dusty tome will become a place where flights of fancy are indulged, explosive acts are executed, and ancient concepts are engaged. In the journal, nothing is sacred and all is risked. The whole point is to fail spectacularly and then fail again until nothing is left to chance, and then, they can begin to lay their monsters upon the table.

Having mastered the tools and form, they must charge life into their slumbering dreams by electrifying the heart of drama: conflict. Theatrical writing is all about collision courses of desire. Someone wants something from someone else, and they will stop at nothing until it is achieved. Bringing all their previously learned skills to bear, the playwright/mad scientist creates a conflict that will drive a play to its stunning, heartbreaking, or hysterical conclusion.

But it does not end there. The conflict must be sustained. A simple lunge for the prize that results in its achievement or denial is not enough. There must be a back and forth between the two competing forces that creates suspense about the outcome. So, in order to make this happen, a series of tactical actions must be employed to continue tipping the balance from one side and the other until the tension builds to a climax. Then, and only then, can balance be restored and the play be brought to an end.

The goal of this book is to help you transform your students from playwrights into mad scientists and, in doing so, free them up to become more vibrant creatives. Using that metaphor, this book teaches a series of writing experiments meant to allow your students to break free of any pre-conceived notions about dramatic writing, to unleash their imagination, and to create plays with less self-censorship. Rather than struggling, novice playwrights, your students will become crazed inventors for whom the monstrously imaginative is the destination. Perfection is no longer the goal. Instead, the end game is to shock, excite and bring joy with a good story.

With this is mind; the structure of this book is done as a formula.

1.    Mastering the Tools: The first part introduces students to their principal tools as playwrights: words and grammar. It focuses students on increasing their vocabulary, using verbs to drive action and allowing punctuation rather than prescription to control rhythm and tempo.

2.    Building an Anatomy: There are two experiments that are the center of this section. They both deal with conflict. The second one addresses the inevitable reversal that must occur if a dramatic work is to continue to move forward.

3.    Dangerous Mixing: The four experiments contained in this section are actions of combustion. They add something to the text by igniting further reversals. They inject words, objects, and music into the body of the play for heightening the theatricality of the work.

It is a series of experiments that lead to the destination of a dramatic monologue and a ten-minute play. If done in the suggested sequence, there is a good chance your students will have created these forms before they realize they have done so. That is part of the design. Too many young writers think about the completed product before taking the first step, and in doing this, make it impossible to even get started. The thought of bringing an entire world to life while looking at a table of seemingly unrelated odds and ends can be a demoralizing experience. The journey ends before the first step is taken.

Instead, the experiments become the point. Contained and highly restrictive, these experiments force the student to focus on the task at hand rather than the completed product. To put it another way, it is just a matter of doing one darn thing after another. The experiments are something to look forward to, something that are an end in themselves, and something that bear instant results. Of course, it might be better to say most of these assignments are a lot of fun.

Your job is to keep them focused on the task at hand. This is the benefit of the mad scientist metaphor. Do not talk to them as writers. Talk to them as if they had their own super-secret lair at the bottom of the sea. Speak to them as if they were going into ancient crypts in search of lost relics. Challenge their work as if the next breakthrough will result in an angry mob coming for their creation. It is not about perfection; it is about completion. It is not about how to make it good; it is about how to make it thrilling.

I also hope to provide models for criticizing the work of your students. Rather than telling them what is “wrong”, you are, instead, looking to help them solve the problem. You must always begin by asking the question of yourself, “what was this play trying to accomplish?” rather than “helping” your student write the play you had in mind. This is particularly true of the youngest and most inexperienced of writers who will write in an attempt to please rather create.

That is one formula we will not be following.

Throughout the course of the book, I will be making references to plays, movies, and television shows. Hamlet, A Doll’s House, and A Streetcar Named Desire figure prominently into my discussion, so some familiarity with those works might be helpful for you. However, those references are more for your benefit rather than your younger students. While teaching Hamlet to high school juniors is never a bad idea, you might want to focus on something more accessible for your seventh graders. On the other hand, some of the movies and television programs should provide ample demonstration of what the experiments are trying to achieve. Therefore, feel free to use them. That being said, do not feel limited to only what I am suggesting. As the examples begin to mount, you will inevitably begin to see the patterns of these exercises in almost everything involving dramatic literature.

There are a number of plays suitable for middle and high school students that fit very nicely not only with the technical requirements of the experiments but also with the spirit of the metaphor as well. Containing a terrific theme, Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street is a clinic in conflict and reversal. W.W. Jacob’s creepy The Monkey’s Paw provides a great model of how an object can move the plot of a play. A modern update of the H.G. Welles novel, The Invisible Man by Len Jenkin is particularly useful for demonstrating the power of playful language and a kid’s imagination. And, for the truly ambitious, Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is a terrific demonstration of the spectacular possibilities of theatre. All could serve as teaching texts for what this book is ultimately trying to accomplish. But, by all means, find your own plays, your own stories, and your own adventures to share with your students. The more enthusiasm you have for what you are sharing, the quicker they will catch on to the overall project.

The rest you will have discover as you make your journey into that dark and stormy night…

One Last Play; A New Adventure

November 10th, 2012

I recently agreed to a commission to write a new play. I am very excited about it. It is a big one, and it ties together a lot of stylistic and thematic concerns I have had over the last decade. I am equally pleased that I have a great admiration for the people that offered me the opportunity. Needless to say, you’ll being hearing a great deal more about it once the first draft is done.

It is also the last play I am going to write.

Now, before you start wondering what is wrong or making internal comments about “famous last words…”, let me also add this: I am not done with playwriting, nor do I think it is done with me. I am simply changing directions.

Over the last decade, I have written or co-written over ten plays. They have included a thriller set during The Louisiana Purchase, a re-creation of The Pacific Battle of Midway, a look at the last days of notorious madam Norma Wallace’s celebrated career , a gangster piece that imagined The Greek Pantheon as New Orleans political operatives, and finally, my own Katrina play that I wrote in response to what I believed to be wrongheaded views of that crisis.

With the exception of possibly The Last Madam, most of you have not seen them. This is not your fault; it is mine. For while I have done my job in regards to creating art, I have fallen well short in marketing, promoting and selling myself to either local or national audiences. Some measure of this has been a reticence on my own part. One of my great flaws is the bureaucratic day-to-day of playwriting. Letters, envelopes, flash drives, and memory cards have never been my strength. I am not the do-it-every-day-machine that I need to be.

To make matters worse, I have let self-doubt begin to build into that already powerful resistance. The few times I have given my work to people of power, some of whom I consider friends, I have been met with indifference, large dollops of criticism, and ultimately rejection. If you think a rejection letter from strangers hurts, you should try one where you think you have an inside track. It makes you doubt your talent, your ideas, and, ultimately, your worth. This has led to a creeping sense of why bother. After awhile, I didn’t think people would do my plays, so why send them out or even try to get them produced elsewhere?

However, much of what those people were saying, or not saying, was that something was missing. Too long, lack of narrative control, or a failure to understand the new economics of playwriting are all part of my flaws as a writer, and despite growing immeasurably in certain areas, I still struggle with that trifecta to this day.

And this day, this entry, is where I find myself as I type these words.

And this returns us to that idea of why bother. Some people write, act, and create theatre, because they would not know who to be if they didn’t. For the most part, this is true for me as well. I love it so. It has saved me from drinking, lifted my despair on many a morning, and given me some the best friends a person can have. Anytime I think of writing speeches, teaching inner city kids, or being a journalist, I know in my heart of hearts it cannot be. My thoughts would simply pull me back to that place of read-throughs, opening nights, and the spark of the next great idea that I am sure will turn my life around.

But it is not enough. Writing and creating theatre in as lovely a place as New Orleans might be rewarding enough for some, but for me, it is beginning to become a source of great pain. I cannot bear to read American Theatre; I fly into rages at shows being produced elsewhere that touch upon themes or ideas I have; and, most damagingly, I am drifting into resentment towards the successes of friends of mine.

That last quality is not only unattractive, but it is also something that fills me with incredible sadness. I have always prided myself in being genuinely thrilled for the triumphs of those whom I love. To stare across great distances with seething envy at people whom I respect and admire is a bad place. It is the act of digging a hole deeper.

I never thought that mindset would become such a dominant part of my thinking. It puts me at a crossroads. I need to break this fever. There are two ways to accomplish this. Why bother? Either I figure out a way to jumpstart my career by answering the question in a positive fashion, or I answer it negatively and take my chances in the worlds of political hacks or at-risk-youths. All-or-nothing, it seems to me is the only way to go. I mean why bother if I cannot travel to regional theaters, prestigious universities, and fascinating conferences? Why bother if I cannot create theatre with young up-and-comers and wise veterans? Why bother creating a theatre in a vacuum where people ask you questions of why aren’t you more famous, when are you going to get your big break, or, my favorite, why aren’t you writing for Treme?

So, I think I will bother. And in order to do so, I am writing my last play.

You see, I need to go back and look and everything I have already written. Some of those plays simply needs pruning, others needs substantial reworking, and some need to be changed altogether. The last kind are the ones that interest me the most, because I have learned in the last year that what I am best at is telling stories when I am the storyteller. My joyful experience with Urban Education Smackdown! has reinforced a lesson that three very good friends of mine told me over the last five years. My most successful theatrical experiences have been with a notebook, a table, and an intimate audience.

So, along with this final play, that is what I am going to do. I am going to bust my ass to become a spoken word artist of the first-rank. I like the freedom, I love the writing it brings out of me, and I find that when I do it, I am more willing to cut, have better narrative control, and have no issue with theatrical economic realities. Along with Smackdown!, I have one show almost ready to go about Halloween and a Christmas play that would work better as a one-man-show. Doing this will allow me to tell stories with all the theatrical flourish I desire and none of the attendant economic headaches that flourish normally requires. Shadow puppets, complicated soundscapes, and spooky stories are all there for the taking, I only have to bother.

I shared these thoughts with my brother John, and he has generously offered to handle bookings, promote my shows, and keep on me about staying in the loop. In short, I have a manager. I now realize that I have talent, love, and a few friends on my side. This give me an advantage that many who are also staring across great distances do not have.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a very big play to outline.

A Professional Critic Must Be Paid

October 8th, 2012

It seems I am not alone in my concern for the state of professional criticism these days. The New York Times recently dedicated its Room For Debate page to a discussion of whether or not professional criticism is still necessary. If you read every response carefully, you will see, despite a wide variety of divergence on the details, there is a consensus answer: yes. Whether it is an artist bemoaning exposure to novice hatchet jobs, a critic’s concern about creeping relativism, or another understanding the need for the critic to shift his or her role, all the views see a poorer artistic landscape without trained or experienced eyes surveying the field. Even the two “hippest” answers arrive at that conclusion.

I feel qualified to speak on theatrical criticism, so I will focus my comments on that area. Unqualified noise or blandly polished encapsulations are no substitute for the real action. But in order for that action to occur, someone needs to be paid. Furthermore, they need to be paid either a living wage for their efforts or allowed to construct livelihoods that not only support but also nourish their work. What I mean by the latter is that other institutions (including universities, think-tanks and foundations) should view such work as rising to level of publication and research, provided the quality of the work reaches to that level, and support it as they would data driven fields.

A critic scrambling for advertising dollars or beholden to metrics quickly becomes exposed for a compromised status. Pay allows for independence, research, and development. Most importantly, pay allows for consistency. A real critic only makes optimal impact if their work is seen on a regular basis, crafts an overall narrative of either a local or national scene, and develops a voice that speaks to or against a community. That level of dedication allows for concurrent shows to enter into dialogue with one another, a particular artists development to be tracked, or a specific artistic movement or scene to have an accessible overview.