How to get to the Apolliad Theatre at Mesa College to see No Child...

Have you ever wondered how to get to the Apolliad Theatre at Mesa College? There's a great play,No Child... there in May and I want to see it. So I went there.

See directions and a map here, or follow me...

San Diego Premiere of No Child...

Here is a play that I'm working on with InnerMission Productions.  I'm quite proud of this theatre group, their new residence at San Diego Mesa College and the cast they put together for No Child...

The deplorable state of theatre, and the coverage of same, in San Diego

A message to theatre decision-makers and the audiences they are killing off

By Kevin Six

Yes, kids.  The Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse are theatres.  They are not the only theatres in town, unless you happen to sell advertising.  No, there are about one hundred other theatre companies who would not only kill for the coverage these two behemoths receive, they would do better with it.

Yes, I’m burning bridges at the only two theatres in San Diego that pay living wages to actors.
And pissing off all the second-tier theatres who won’t hire me either and are just copying the above mentioned theatres anyway.  No, they are.  So I loose income from acting and writing.  No big whoop.

But in my career, which began in 1977, I’ve worked at exactly one of the top-tier theatres.  For one night.  I got the Equity minimum of $25 so I stand to lose $1.40 per year for the rest of my life.  And that is freeing because the truth costs more than that and I can afford to tell you the truth, theatre decision-makers.

I can now say that the best theatre companies are the ones that actually do bad work.  What?  No, they’re not trying to do bad work; they are simply taking risks.  And taking risks means that some theatre productions turn into steaming mounds of not-very-good theatre.  Trust me, I’m working on production now and I can’t get coverage for it even though it has all the makings of a Class-A train wreck (or a runaway hit, we might never know because no one cares about a local phenomenon making scary new theatre right here under the noses of the media-hogging middle-of-the-roaders).

I will draw your attention to another phenomenon who was making excellent theatre when I was just starting out.  Evel Knievel.  That dude made a living by putting his body through a meat grinder in front of an audience whenever he could. And people came in droves to watch it (and here’s my point) because they knew he was going to fall on his face, slide on his face and ram his face into a truck, bus or statue.

Did you know that Evel Knievel’s son Robbie Knievel regularly does all the jumps his father never could manage and is successful at it 100% of the time?  Of course you didn’t!  That’s boring!  Doing everything right and making it look easy is boring as hell and, in theatre, it’s killing off audiences.  Large, medium and small theatres all over San Diego are jumping their mopeds over koi ponds every night except Monday in the form of “safe programming.”

What is safe about boring your audiences to death with the play that the other theatre did just last year?  Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, Miller, Williams – all brilliant, wonderful, talented playwrights.  But they are also as dead!  Dead as theatre audiences will be if theatres produce too much of their work.  Next in line for killing off theatre audiences if theatre-producing sheep are allowed to make “edgy” (read safe) choices:  Mamet, Letts, McDonagh, Shanley.  I have nothing against these playwrights.  I think they are all brilliant but if sheepish directors, producers and boards of directors over-rely on them, people will get sick of the “new, edgy” same old thing.

And don’t get me started on musicals!  I love musicals.  I think companies should produce them.  I think audiences should see them and I think they should be (to paraphrase Bill Clinton) safe, legal and rare.  If not, people will just watch movies and TV, which does all of it better and there’s more to choose from.

But to return to the Evel Knievel metaphor, only a precious few theatre companies are strapping themselves to a machine they have no business riding, pointing it at an impossible number of busses, sticking the throttle open, closing their eyes and just throwing their bodies onto a sure massacre.  And audiences have no way of finding them because all the coverage in this town goes to one per cent of the theatre being produced in this conservative little backwater town.

The industrial theatrical complexes wield their power in many forms.  Formidable budgets with enough advertising dollars to not only lock up all the prime advertising space but all the editorial space too.  Their board members are also advertisers at the large papers so there’s another fear factor.  Oh and everyone is scared.  Least of all audiences who have to shell out large amounts of cash for mediocre plays.  I believe that the less an audience member pays, the better the production.  Because the real edgy work is being done by people who neither afford nor fathom a $50+ ticket price.

I could sell tickets to middle-of-the-road crap all day long if I could buy a five-figure advertising contract and guarantee a preview, and a review, of every play I advertise.  But that’s not going to make it good.  That’s not going grow audiences either.  That’s going to make boards of directors happy while everyone waits for (and hopes against) that one kid in the audience to point out that good advertising and promotion doesn’t make a play great.  What makes anything great is constant and renewed effort by the lunatic fringe out on the cutting edge.  You know, stuff you can’t get grants for because granting organizations say they want “new innovative” programming, but really they don’t want to offend their own boards of directors and funding sources either.

A word on boards of directors.  They are the least qualified (as individuals and entities) to run arts organizations.  They are nice, generous people to be sure but, in most cases, they don’t write, act, direct, paint, build or, in any other way, create.  If they did, they couldn’t afford the giving requirements attached with board membership.  They are fundamentally inept at understanding what audiences want.  Do you know who knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what audiences want?  Box office clerks.

Yes, box office clerks.  Most theatres pay no attention to their box office clerks, who deal with the general public night and day and, on their days off, are busy producing theatre that people actually want to see and can understand!  Theatre decision-makers, you ignore your box office at the peril of: a) losing your audience; and b) losing your audience to the scrappy young theatrical entrepreneurs you don’t pay enough and who are actually doing the stuff you dreamed of doing when you were a wide-eyed theatrical newbie.  Face it, theatre decision-makers, you’re killing the genre and the people you respect least will build the next generation of theatre goers over the steaming corpses you made of your theatre and its audience.

Is new work the answer?  Actually, no it’s not.  New work is only part of the solution.  No, the real answer is engaging the audience by remembering that in most cases the audience does not have an advanced degree in theatre.  If they did, they wouldn’t be able to afford the exorbitant prices most theatres charge.  That’s the next part of the solution.  Lower prices!  No, don’t raise prices and then raise discounts.  Again, go to your box office, theatre decision-makers, and you’ll see what the general public wants to pay to see theatre.

Movies cost about $12. Twelve dollars for a billion dollar production that is better than theatre because if a person doesn’t like a movie, so what!  That person won’t quit going to movies because the risk was $12.  If a person risks $60 or $110, he or she might start to take that personally if they keep paying to see boring crap.  Lower prices, theatres, and do away with all discounts.  Make it easy for your audiences.  All tickets on all nights and in all areas of the theatre are $20.  You know I’m right.  Look at the average ticket price.  Take every seat sold: subscriber discounts, senior discounts, preview discounts and the thousands of comps (yes, people, theatres give away thousands of tickets so you will think thousands of people want to see the show) and you will come up with the average ticket price.

That figure is 45% less than you’re charging.

Lower your ticket prices, don’t throw compost on the weeds to make them ranker, quit giving it away and eventually you will build a real audience. Oh, and hire a local playwright once in a while.  I happen to know 20 in this town.  Do you?

Bona fide Miracle, Please!

Last time I posted here, I asked for a miracle and got one.  The same day!
The dog owner from upstairs came over to talk and became a neighbor.  It must not have been easy because of all the trouble I've caused.  I commend the neighbor and look forward to a nice living arrangement.

The landlord, however, still needs to learn how to read a calendar, join the human race and gain about 50 I.Q. points.  This will take a miracle but I'm used to them by now.

People I rely upon to to their jobs need to do their jobs.

Drivers need to look beyond their hood ornaments.

More love in politics (hey, miracles can happen, right?)

Broadway producers need to choose my play.  It made the stack (bona fide miracle!) now it needs to get the "Smash" treatment.

And I need to give everyone a break.  I am going to try this just for today. I'll let you know how that miracle shapes up.

Here's a ton of gratitude for the miracle that happened (that I didn't expect), for the miracles that brought me to this point and for future miracles.  In gratitude, I promise to take care of the last miracle on my own.  Thanks!

What is it good for?

There has been a war on drugs since Nancy Reagan asked kids to "just say no." in the 80s.  The drugs are winning.  The war on terrorism is difficult to win because it's also war on a concept more than an enemy.  No what people need to instigate, manage and finally win a war is a real enemy.

Like my friend who had a war against the cable company. He thought it was OK to take cable from a company too lazy to protect its flow.  When the cable company terminated the signal at the wires above his house, instead of right where he could tap in at the junction box, I asked him if the war was over.  His reply, "It's no longer war.  It's Jihad."

This was the 90s when Jihad simply meant living your life only to destroy your enemy.  We have come to learn that the enemy of the Jihadists is the Infidel (us) and that we started it with the Crusades.

The term Holy War is possibly the funniest thing in human history.  The idea that somehow the being charged with loving the world so much that He created it for us would stand for us killing people who don't believe in Him is ludicrous on so many levels...

War is not holy.  No, war is personal.  It began with tribes and it continues with tribes to this day.  Or have you never lived in a mixed-use condominium complex?  The idea about condos used to be to allow people who cannot afford to own a whole house or apartment building to own just one little bit.  It was a way for these people to live together and own part of the building and share ownership of the common area.  But now it's just a place for people to start and lose wars.

In my opinion, there is no winner in any war.

There are many reasons for Condos becoming war zones but my main pet peeve is people who used to believe in the condo model but who move out and rent to complete fucking morons.  People who are in the mindset of an apartment and not a shared experience, people who don't care as much as owners.

My complex had flipped.  Most of the units near me are owned by investors.  Some of them are good about the people they rent to and others are keeping oddball family members there.  Read my wife's blog on it.

The problem is that we have an enemy.  One who doesn't believe in the idea of community property, personal space, hygiene... But we're against war.

Part of me wants to go all Jihad but it takes too much time i.e. the rest of my life.  Like the Gerard Depardieu character in Green Card, part of me wants to tattoo the name of my upstairs neighbor on my forearm as a reminder that I need to kill that person and, once it's done, to have the tattoo artists draw a line through it...

The problem with that, besides how messy killing is, is that you have to live with it.  Right there on your arm and in your heart. All war, holy or otherwise, just never goes away.

How to get a person to believe or leave, then?  We've tried talking, note-leaving, appealing to the landlords and now we're appealing to the authorities and, possibly the legal system.  And just that's going to leave a mark. Imagine the mark a war will leave.

All I want is what's best for everyone involved.  For my wife and me to be able to sleep at night without hearing a whining, barking dog begging to be let out; for that dog to be owned by loving people who walk it and dote on it; for my upstairs neighbor to become a loving, intelligent member of society who is aware of the needs of other people.

I don't think war is going to solve this problem.

I guess I am ready for a miracle.

The Raffle!

The great Jennie Olson oversaw the auction and drawings surrounding InnerMission Productions' V-Day offerings this year (The Vagina Monologues and the MENding Monologues and the poet Derek Brown). The drawing and auction brought in a lot of money for the charities supported by the production but it came at a cost as you'll see in the video...

The MENding Monologues takes names

I have seen courage.  It comes in odd shapes.  Rarely, if ever, does it look like Clint Eastwood makes it look.  For he's a wiley pro who knows what we think we're looking for.
No, courage comes when ordinary people are exposed to awfulness and act like humans in the face of it.
It was the case last night (3-23-12) at InnerMission's production of the MENding Monologues.
The story of the movement is as courageous as the men who performed last night, to say the least.  As is usual in society a woman spoke up first.  Eve Ensler had basically seen enough violence done to women and decided to do something about it.

As luck would have it, Eve Ensler is a brilliant writer and her courageous step (what, if anything can one person do in the face of overwhelming awfulness?) lead to more steps and, well, a movement.
Then Derek Dujardin did something equally courageous (and maybe more so because men are raised to be stoic in the face of just about everything).  He called bullshit on men sitting idly by as the Vagina Monologues were performed, on men getting away with telling rape jokes and, really, men getting away with rape.  Really, the statistics are staggering.

Ask the men of InnerMission's The MENding Monologues.  They put those statistics up there for everyone to see.  Along with a bunch of excellently-wrought soul searching, a bunch of great words and, both my favorite and least favorite moment, the legal names of all 19 people who knew what Jerry Sandusky was up to at Penn State and did nothing.

Nineteen men associated with the scandal. Big men. Well respected men. Athletes.  Strong.
But not courageous.

No, my friends were courageous.  They stood up there.  Sp

Publish Post

oke from the heart and the gut and called bullshit and basically made everyone cry.  And it was very cool.

Hopefully the people in the audience will go home from last night's experience and think twice before letting someone get away with... a joke at the expense of women, the maltreatment of women, children and other men and maybe rape and violence will cease to exist.

Oh, and the Vagina Monologues is probably just as good.  I'm seeing that tonight.
Tet your tickets at: http://innermissionproductions.org/