Do Theatre in Basements
The obstacle makes the art.
When you stand back and look at it, independent theatre is an almost impossible being. It requires passion, sacrifice, patience, tenderness, self-love and care, collaboration and tenacity. It requires a very, VERY special group of artists to believe in it to see it through. But one thing this amazing, impossible group of artists tend to have in common is experiencing doubt when things go bump along the way.
Why am I doing this? Is all this worth it in the end? If you’ve ever asked these questions about your art, then this is for you.
Allow me to start with a bit of my own theatrical history…There is something delicious and dangerous about theatre, and whatever that something is, my body and mind are attuned to it. Rarely do my body and mind agree on anything. I find I can’t stay away, and honestly, I’ve tried. An incipient anxiety disorder and scores of angry voices in my head convinced me failed audition after failed audition that I was too wrong and too fat to chase that dream. After years and years of doing theatre, I entered my freshman year of college as a student in graphic design.
I find myself at the Department of Theatre open house anyway.
I arrive expecting to see tables with stand-up tri-folds but instead, I am ushered into the Arena Theatre, which is, believe it or not, an arena theatre and honestly, a nightmare of a space. Located in the basement of the labyrinthine auditorium building on the MSU campus, it is only accessible by knowing the right combination of doors and stairwells. The stage and floor and seating are painted that familiar black that is nothing and something at the same time. Musty black curtains are poorly attached to the back of the seating platforms with black gaff tape. Four very conspicuous black pillars stand at the four corners of the stage, holding up a low ceiling, and providing an obstructed view in almost every seat of this theatre-in-the-round.
Turns out the MSU Theatre Department Open House features a live show that was written, directed, and performed by students in the program. The show begins, and I am taken. I sign up as a double major by the end of the week.
I think of the Arena Theatre when I think of LA’s independent theatre scene. I see that black box theatre, lying in wait for the next artist’s vision to transform its nothing-something into a something-something. I see the four pillars standing defiantly against the concept of easy work. They are the obstacles that push the artist to abandon the ideas they brought to the space. We are not dreaming any longer. We are doing.
They are the problems that cause all-night stress-a-thons to figure out how the hell we’re going to stage a show in the round with four gigantic square pillars in the fucking way and nobody’s even bought a ticket to the show and we’re three weeks away and why the fuck was I doing this anyway?
They are also the problems that introduce you to the smartest, kindest, hard-workingest people who can help you figure out a way to block a show with four gigantic pillars in the fucking way and will remind you that three weeks is plenty of time to get butts in seats and will hold you and tell you we do it because it makes us feel good and sometimes we like the people we become when faced with adversity.
This idea that we can embrace the many, many obstacles that come with independent theatre (or , I don’t know — life, even) to put on a show for no reason other than it moves us and is us is a defiant and vital idea that creates an explosion in the hearts and minds of the people who take it in and they go “What is this? Something new?”. And fantastically, they’d be right.
We cannot simply accept the four black pillars; we must embrace them.