Two Rooms

The Lebanon Hostage Crisis lasted from 1982 to 1992. During that time almost 100 individuals, including many American citizens, were kidnapped and held as a human shield against Western retaliation for terrorist violence. Eight hostages died in captivity.

Lee Blessing, already a recognized playwright for his Pulitzer-nominated A Walk in the Woods, went from tackling nuclear disarmament to tackling the hostage crisis. The play debuted in 1988, where it received universal acclaim, both for its importance and its artistry. It was noted as Play of the Year by Time magazine. The play was published in 1990.

How I knew about the Iran mess in 1979 (see Argo) being a historical event, but not about this ongoing situation growing up, I'm not sure. I feel like I was generally aware that this may have been going on, but it was likely just part of a larger awareness that the Middle East was a dicey part of the world.

Regardless, I discovered and read two plays about the same topic in one day, thanks to the Seattle Central Library's play files. The other play is called Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. The two plays told two sides of the same coin, two perspectives on the same story, and I was rapt.

You could say theater is all about relationships, period, I suppose, but even if you were to generalize that way, Two Rooms is one of the best examples I could give you. The characters and the dynamics are the core of it, sometimes it seems like that's all there is to it. How something so simple can be so compelling and, even, complex, is part of the magic of this show, or come to that, Blessing's writing in general.

Those relationships have been at the core of rehearsals, discovering dynamics between individuals, and it's one of the things that the actors have reported as being a very rewarding part of being involved in this show. It's also one of the things that keeps the play interesting, as the relationships and dynamics shift throughout the show.

Without ruining anything, Two Rooms is about a man who was kidnapped, his wife who is waiting for him, the reporter who wants the wife's story, and the State Department rep who wants her to remain quiet. I'll talk more about the show in future posts, but I'll try not to be any more specific. Seriously, come spend two hours with these four people. You won't regret it.

Teaser here: https://vimeo.com/65859781

Trailer here: https://vimeo.com/66049834

Q&A

These are some of the questions you get asked as you build a theater company. And here are Beau's answers.


Seattle is drowning in theater companies, why do we need another one? 

The real answer is "we" as a collective city, art community, whatever, really didn't need another theater company, for sure. Confrontational grew out of a relationship I developed with my producer, Baron Von Oldenburg. We put up Proof together, and by the time it opened, Confrontational existed to reflect the fact that we were going to keep at it. I have great respect for a number of other theater companies in the city, but when I want to do a show, one I'm passionate about, odds are I just wanna do it, not go through the submission process of putting it up via another theater company, more than a year from now.

As a secondary answer, I was thrilled on more than one occasion to have audience members tell folks involved with our shows, "I don't like plays. I liked this play." A theater professional in Seattle told me that it is a shortcoming of Seattle theater that many shows, particularly on the fringe level, are put on by theater people for theater people, which is a pretty narrow target demographic, in my opinion. Plays (more than musicals, for example) have lost the wide appeal they had during the days of Greek Drama and Shakespeare and Vaudeville. While it is not part of Confrontational's mission to directly address these factors, it's something we keep in mind when we put together upcoming shows.

How does one become a director?

Partly, the answer to this is the same as how do you become a novelist or a painter? You just go out and do it, no one is stopping you. On the other hand, unlike writing a novel, where all you need is an imagination and a keyboard, with theater you usually need a place, a cast, and so on.

So, the short answer is: Rik Deskin. I went from not having done theater in several years, to being in two plays to directing before the end of a single year. I did a Shakespeare in the park show for Rik, then his  Eclectic Theater Company started managing the Odd Duck Studio space, and I'd always wanted to direct The Dumb Waiter. He had a slot to fill, so he was willing to let me take a shot at it. After that, I did some more shows for Eclectic, and then went off to find my own way. I've been thrilled to return to the space Rik manages to direct plays I've put on myself.

If you want to direct and don't want to completely start on your own, look to join a short play festival like On The Board's 12 minutes or less, the 14/48 festival, or the catch-all Annex cabaret, Spin the Bottle. Find a short script, or create one, that you want to do and go put it on. Then, seriously, you can call yourself a director. That's it.

What does a director do?

On the "fringe" which means pseudo or borderline professional theater (rather than Seattle Rep, ACT, 5th Ave, etc), generally a director does a lot of his or her own producing. In the truest sense, the director tells the actors what to do along the way to putting on a play. That's it. They tell the actors, or help the actors to figure out, how to say their lines, where to go and what they're doing when they say them. The rest of the time, the production staff, lights, sound, costumes, set, etc, all answer to the director to make sure the show has a cohesive vision.

The further down the budget scale you go, the more the director does, in that you may (these are personal examples): Hang lights, operate the board, design the set, build the set, paint the set, take tickets, sell drinks, design the poster, design the program, buy costumes, buy props, and you get the idea. Also, unlike professional level theater, odds are actors are used to, or are willing to, help out with a lot of this stuff as well.

How do you pick plays?

You discover them, or someone else discovers them. I've had wonderful success asking actors what show they would crawl over a dead relative to get to do. It's a fun question, many actors have an immediate answer, and it means I get to discover what people are really passionate about.

I went to the Seattle central library and went through innumerable scripts. Some of the plays I read were ones I knew I wanted to do, including Two Rooms and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, which we're doing in 2013.

Other plays, including at least one we're doing in 2014, come as recommendations or passion projects for other people. I read Manuscript while killing time at Elliott Bay Books, and just that fast, I got a feeling in my gut, and I knew I was ready to crawl over a relative to get to do it. Another script we're doing next year not only fits thematically with Manuscript, but also will be fulfilling a dream that an actor has been carrying for the better part of a decade. I love when people are excited, you get much better work out of them, so starting from the point of having a play that someone is really passionate about, and then finding that I can share their passion for it, and we can do something awesome together...that's part of what gets me up in the mornings, now.

Website Launch

Hey, thanks for not only checking out Confrontational's website, but following the link to our new blog! General overview on who we are and what we do is on the site, but here would be the place to get into a bit more detail on the nuts and bolts. So that's what this post will be. Look for another post soon about our upcoming show, the hostage drama by Lee Blessing, Two Rooms.

It is our fervent hope that Confrontational will continue to be a strong contributor to Seattle's wonderful theater scene, and that as our presence expands this blog will be a useful resource.

How It Works

Confrontational exists, on one level, to prove and continue proving that a specific business plan can work in theater, and even more so, that theater can work as a business, rather than as a non-profit. After working in theater for a number of years and seeing what, to me, really didn't work, I had some strong ideas as to what would.

One problem is that traditionally, small theaters operate like big theaters, only...and try to keep up here...smaller. Thinking about it now, I don't think that works or offers best practices for anyone. You can't run a garage startup like Microsoft and vice-versa. I wouldn't run a bar with a twenty-person capacity the same way I would run a bar that could hold more than 100 people. And so on. But that's what small theaters tend to do, try to put on four-week runs of shows, which, especially if you're renting space, means you can be really deep in the hole before you even start.

To me, it just boiled down to the overhead. The hardest part of starting a theater company is building an audience. Unless you make an incredible splash, as New Century did a few years ago with their debut, The Adding Machine, it's going to be a process. That process means you shouldn't assume you can sell out three whole shows, let alone three whole weekends. Instead of doing an extended run, create an event over a single weekend, and really make it an event. Make sure people know that if they miss it, they really missed out. Every performance for Proof cost $200 to turn the lights on and pay for the rights for the script. For one weekend, that wasn't a crippling amount of money. Planning to do that for three or four weeks, before we even open the doors, is a much, MUCH bigger amount of money.

Now, there are strong arguments against this. Plenty of people will definitely miss the show if you have such a small window. Some people just won't be in town that weekend, or what have you. Even if we sell out every show, we're not in a position to spontaneously decide to extend a run. Until we start doing more shows, we'll never be eligible for a Gregory, the Seattle theater awards. You need to run for three weekends or 12 performances to be on their radar and have someone officially attend your show. Unless you can get a critic to come to a rehearsal, you'll never get reviewed, or if you do, who cares, since the review will be for a show that has already closed?

There are a few other specifics, but really, the business plan we work through makes it so that if we sell out just one performance, we're basically in the black. No one's getting rich, maybe no one ever will, but the producer gets his money back, plus his return on investment, and there's some profit to divvy between him, me, and the actors and other helpers.