http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity: Artistic Commentary Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:27:45 -0700 http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#15
I’m talking about a package to stimulate the “creative economy”. Because we artists need to get back to work! These are hard times, but that’s okay. Artists deal with hard times always. That’s just the way it is. Artists get pushed back and knocked down. We pick ourselves up and get back to the canvas. We return to the studio. We light the stage again.

My partner Helene M. Rasanen and I founded Arts Equity in 2005 because we believed then, and more so even now, people need to make an investment in and take a stake in the arts. We poured ourselves into the Main Street Theatre, and for three years we produced “serious theatre with adult themes.” That’s what Jack Booch recently said this community is missing, writing in these pages (see “Here There and Everywhere,” Vancouver Voice, 1/15/2009). Maybe Jack was talking about our absence.

When we lost our theatre last year, it hurt. But that is back-story to our current script. If you have the time, I’ll spell out the details. For now I just want to state that we did leave a legacy. For one, we created from scratch a functioning theatre at 606 Main Street. Stop by sometime. It’s a lovely performance space carved out of and then built into an old hardware store in downtown Vancouver. Magenta, a community theatre company operates there now. We wish them well. Believe me, we do. We wish all the artists who live and work and try to survive in this art-starved city the very best.

The truth is, the legacy we left stretches further than just the space we left for another company to fill. For three years Arts Equity put on theatre that challenged our patrons. We invited people to participate in and enjoy great works of comedy and drama. We tried to fill Jack Booch’s prescription by presenting works from “the annals of avant garde and classical theatre.” During the three years Arts Equity operated in the Main Street Theatre, we staged plays by Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. And we kept local arts people busy. We generated work for 70 actors, 21 musicians, 8 designers, 7 local playwrights, and 8 directors. If you visited Arts Equity at the Main Street Theatre, thanks for coming. We survived as long as we did due to your support. If you didn’t catch our act there, sorry you missed Act I. But read on, please.

We believe that now is the time to implement our own stimulus package, one for the arts. Arts Equity is re-organizing and re-energizing. If you know me even a little, you know I dream big. That hasn’t changed. But I’m taking a new tack. In our next incarnation, Arts Equity is taking small steps toward what we are calling “sustainable theatre for southwest Washington.” We mean to develop a venue that can survive and thrive by presenting a variety of experiences for discerning and diverse patrons in southwest Washington. When we call it “sustainable theatre,” we also mean to adopt and promote ecologically minded practices in any space we are developing.

These are the kind of events I have in mind: We will work with a group of students from Washington State University-Vancouver to produce taped live radio theatre. This project designed around the 1st Friday Art Walk will showcase “new writers for a new soundscape” on am580koug.com . Cara Cottingham, a local multimedia electronic artist, will join us as an artistic associate. We love the idea of linking up with college students and giving them a canvas on which they can present their ideas.

Carolyne Haycraft MFA is going to head up our kids program. We’re not talking about kids as actors—there are several local organizations providing that kind of experience already. This is theatre for kids, not by kids. Ms. Haycraft, a director and educator, will develop and direct productions that “create wonder and capture kids’ imaginations”. We envision this as a Saturday morning program. On Sundays, we’ll speak to an audience that wants to tap into the “transcendental qualities of music”. Local Actor-Director Tony Bump will collaborate and direct this Sunday morning series. We think there’s an audience in this city that will meet for Sunday brunch, convening to celebrate the performing arts.

We’ve been talking to performers with great followings in this region. You’ll see the tap-dancing musician Shoehorn. He’s a magnetic orchestra of one, a beat/rap poet of the streets and on the stage. We’ll feature artists like pianist Thomas Rheingans in an intimate setting that our audiences are used to. Our collaborative relationships with other composers like Jack Gabel of Cascadia Composers will add to our musical lineup.

And I hope this is no surprise: We will stage the kind of productions that Arts Equity does best—theatre that is passionate and exuberant. There’s an audience for serious adult theatre in Vancouver. These are the patrons we seek.

So, keep any eye out for the re-entry of Arts Equity onto the local landscape. You can keep track of our progress by accessing our website www.artsequity.org. And if you feel the passion that we want to express, you can join us. Joey LeBard is our local casting director. We have spots on our Board of Directors and collaborative partnerships to build with diverse parts of our community. We have a mountain of work as we prepare a new venue for performing in Vancouver. Join us now or join us later. We invite anyone willing to take a stake in the arts to do so, it’s your Vancouver.]]> http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#15 Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800 Entertaining The Ideas - Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity - Artistic Commentary http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#14
In order to continue producing this caliber of theatre, we need your help.

We are also looking for a small group of real estate
investors willing to form a limited partnership in order to secure a
building of our own in which to produce and perform.

To support our artistic endeavors call the theatre or donate by sending a check to the address below or...
Telephone: 360-695-3770

If your corporate entity wishes to contribute via THE UNITED WAY,
you can do so by stipulating that you are donating to Arts Equity
Onstage. Here is the link
http://www.unitedway-pdx.org/

We want to thank Teri Elioff of Vancouver for setting up
our donation account with The United Way. It is set up to handle
payroll deductions as well. Things you need to know about donating
through United Way are that there is no transaction fee, but it takes a while for us to receive the funds.

So if you really want to make a patriotic difference in the arts send a check and it will also save us the credit card fees. But of course you can use PayPal we are

*Arts Equity Onstage has tax exempt status from the IRS.
Contributions to the Theatre are deductible under section 170 of the Code. Arts Equity Onstage is also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests, devices, transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106 or 2522 of the Code. Please consider us in your charitable giving, as ticket
revenues cover only a portion of the costs.

To receive a copy of our IRS tax exempt status send an email to
taxexempt@artsequity.org

Contributions and snailmail can be sent to P.O. Box 1735 Vancouver,
WA 98668-1735.]]> http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#14 Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Entertaining The Ideas - Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity - Artistic Commentary http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#11 The fight to establish an artistic consciousness

I am an independent producer director. Prior to coming to portland I developed telemarketing subscription strategies for the john F. Kennedy center for the performing arts, and arena stage the 1st non profit theatre in america. I begin my testimony with words by Zelda fichandler the founding director of arena stage. And i quote:

"since the late 40's and early 50's the american theatre has been engaged in a revolution, a long revolution filled with stops and starts, periods of renewals and periods of plateau , moods of high energy alternating with despair--a kind of manic-depressive roller coaster whose ups and downs are especially acute at this time.

This revolution began with a small group of people who were fed up with the current ways of making theatre and committed themselves to finding the new ones and having them prevail.

What has been built in roughly the past third of a century is an american national theatre--the fastest growth of a new art form for the arts in history. It is a theatre admired now the world over (and especially in eastern europe) for its energy, its level of artistry, its originality, its playwrights, its amazing power of survival with a minimum of government support--and admired and envied for its freedom of dissent, up to now unhampered. We draw closer, the eastern european theatre and ours, as the tyranny of the box office becomes known to them in their shifting economies and the tyranny of censorship, which they have lifted, threatens to become known to us."

The originating thought at the base of the revolution was that theatre should stop serving the function of making money, for which it has never been suited, and start serving the revelation and shaping of the process of living, for which it is uniquely suited--for which it exists. This new radical-though simple thought was that theatre should be reclaimed from commerce and restored to itself as a form of art: an ancient and everchanging art form, where life in all its complexity happens before our eyes. " testimony given to the subcommittee printed in american theatre july/august 1990

End quote.


To represent fiction with our bodies

If we as artist in the theatre could act, as easily as we have the desire for it, we wouldn't need to discuss very much more. But there are a number of interferences with this simple human desire to represent fiction with our bodies. The state of world affairs makes it necessary for us to question why we want to act (politics), and how we can get ourselves to the point where we are permitted to act (marketing, box office and funding). Instead we have to fight for the right of the theatre in which to act at all! The artist has become a double person in the theatre today. An artist who wants to do theatre today, is a fighter and helps themselves by helping others preserve the place in which they live, act, design, or direct. This is our home, our platform, and we have to fight for it.

The politics of paying for art

People want art and they pay for it. Art is a product exchangeable with the material things earned by people. Artists and the people have that kinship to exchange. Forces sometimes frustrate this exchange of poetry for money. As is the case in funding, something is wrong when this exchange is dependent on money and those who have it. Artists ally themselves with the people who have the power to displace them. The antagonist is a world that creates the crassness of power and money: values by which the world measures itself and tortures its poets. But the artists realize that we cannot stand alone, just the poets together. We need and are needed by the people. So the end, must show some realization of this alliance. And then the people flourish with art. They need it and sprout with it like a tree. The theatre functions to serve society! We serve the uncensored playwrights who speak about our problems.

So what does it mean to be this revolutionary theatre? To use our political sense of truth to create the theatrical truth of the moment? The revolution propelled by people who are politically interested in what is going on in the world. Whose objective is to to do productions that have to do with the "meaning of contemporary life. In america"and "the state of the union". We understand these problems and want to express what we understand. Politics and the personal go together and, apathetic as we might have been for years, we are not apathetic about this moment in american history.

People may say we are theatre of the left. Left, right, middle, a lot of meaningless words when there are these "situations" in america..there are hungry people; there are angry pe0ple, the theatre lost another of our finest to aids recently. We can't produce all our plays on these subjects, but the plays need be about our lives, and how we see the world. Plays about our living and daring., our enthusiasm and our hope. So we go out

On a limb where the fruit is.

If we are to maintain the position we have hewn out for ourselves we must first of all be pioneers. This means a consistent hammering away at our fundamental problems until we solve them, and not lose sight of what is most important. What we achieve by reaching our destination will not be nearly so important as what we will become to reach it.

Most of us have become people
Who don't want to compromise ethics,
Who know what we really want.

We dislike compromise when we do it,
And we know it when we do.

Art at this time in america calls forth the idealism in our natures. What is our role in life? We have much more to give to people, much more to say about our own life. By examining ourselves anew we are compelled to become aware of the world in which we live. For, it is not only ourselves that seems out of touch with reality and with truth, but the very world that makes us. We can not forget that we are artists in an emerging world consciousness. We see visible signs all around us, and since the experience of being an artist is intimately and organically bound up with the world we live in, it follows, with varying intensities of belief, that through our work we must affect, even change this world.

It is questionable if there can continue to be theatre at all in this country, unless it is put back where it belongs. It's got to be out of the profit system... Allowed to function the way something functions when it depends on natural evolution and organic growth. At present this kind of theatre is a terribly wearying profession of futility. We all know more truly gifted people who can't yet earn a living wage in the theatre. It is very depressing! Everyone tries to get us to give it up. That's like trying to get someone to give up living. So, one tries to be an optimist when it's not good, but then the whole country's not so good either, and the life of the theatre is a pretty accurate reflection of the larger life outside.

Artists must be heard, even though they may be vague and not seem as practical as the big world of business. Their voice can often be the way to a better world. The theatre is one clear, strong, definite form of the expression of the meaning of our life.
It steers us into what we feel is: a life under our own control. A life where we will not be tossed back and forth.

The group theatre of the 30's was the first theatre in american which emphasized in its work the fact that the theatre can have a meaning. The meaning is related to the artists who are working in the theatre and where the artists come from. We intend to fight for this meaning because it is good for our life. Which is the life of our families, our city, our state, our united states, our world! We cannot be locked up or driven away or shamed!!

As my fellow artists know, it is not easy to live on the firing line, but that is where we are whether we like it or not, and we must inure ourselves to living there by a united focused effort, and, not by scattering our energies on so many important projects that the main ones are left to chance or inspiration.

The arts in the america suggests a cosmos; our function, even our duty in reauthorizing the national endowment, is to become a cosmos. The endowment has to provide what society itself fails to provide artists...it has to create a society within a society, a protected unity, a utopia, an oasis within the city, in which we can work out our fate and our salvation. Zelda fichandler is fond of saving:

"before the city, there was the hamlet and the village; before the village, the camp; and even before these, there was the cave. And inside the cave, there were great natural chambers covered with paintings of astonishing vividness of form and facility of design--exquisitely realistic animals or highly formalized and stylized men and women, art of enormous aesthetic mastery. One paleolithic drawing on the wall of a cave in france depicts a man dressed in the skin of a stag, wearing antlers on his head, presumably a wizard--aha an early actor, trying, even then, over the rim of history, to imitate some other presence, in order to influence nature and imagine his fate.

An old egyptian scribe tells us that when cities were first built, the mission of the founders was "to put the gods in their shrines" art. And thought. Giving form to the imagination. Recording the past and the activities of the present--extending time backward and forward. Attending to the care and culture of men. "

I testify that we must nourish our storytellers, for without them we will have lost our childhood, and with our childhood, who we might become.]]> http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#11 Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800 Entertaining The Ideas - Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity - Artistic Commentary http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#10 The desire to represent fiction with our bodies

I view myself as part of a movement known as American national theatre--the fastest growth of a new art form in art history. It is a theatre admired the world over (and especially in eastern Europe) for its energy, its level of artistry, its originality, its playwrights, its amazing power of survival with a minimum of government support, and admired and envied for its freedom of dissent, up to now unhampered. But we draw closer, the eastern European theatre and ours, as the tyranny of the box office becomes known to them in their shifting economies and the tyranny of censorship, which they have lifted, threatens to become known to us. At the base of the revolution is the notion that theatre should stop serving the function of making money (for which it has never been suited) and start serving the revelation and shaping of the process of living...for which it is uniquely qualified, for which it exists. This new radical-though simple thought was that theatre should be reclaimed from commerce and restored to itself as a form of art: an ancient and ever-changing art form, where life in all its complexity happens before our eyes. It is questionable if there can continue to be theatre at all in this world, unless it is put back where it belongs, and allowed to function the way something functions when it depends on natural evolution and organic growth. At present this kind of theatre is a terribly wearying profession of futility. We all know more truly gifted people who can't yet earn a living wage in the theatre. It is very depressing! So, one tries to be an optimist when it's not good, but then the whole world's not so good either, and the life of the theatre is a pretty accurate reflection of the larger life outside. The world is filled with hungry and angry people. We can't produce all our plays on these subjects, but the plays will most certainly be about our lives, and how we see the world. Plays about our living and daring., Our enthusiasm and our hope.

As the group theatre of the 30's learned, Theatre must seek it's soul, it is my role also. This search for the central radiating ingredient does not stop at the limits of a play or role. It is the shaper of life itself...If one allows it to be. Unfortunately, for ages the artist has only sought their image. We know that an artist of a convincing presence who merely reads their lines, offers us little more than advertising information! An individual becomes an artist when revealing the life from which the play's lines have emerged. A life richer perhaps than the line's literal significance. The artist is the author of this new meaning a play acquires on the stage--and the artist becomes the author of this personal subtext. Today the artist must "seek their higher Self". William Shakespeare did not imply " to thine own image be true".

This necessary habit of introspective analysis is hard to live with, and once acquired, its like the man who came to dinner--it won't go way! It dictates not only the work you do on yourself, it selects your reading, the music you hear, the clothes you wear, the plays you prefer, the hats you don, the friends you have and even the enemies you make.

One can learn to be this artist, if one does not let the racket, the publicity, the false adulation (which is often ignorant praise) rattle one away from one's Self! One must keep on track, one must study, one must do the work, and not always at one's greatest convenience. Attempting risky choices in risky plays that are difficult. Always being willing to fail. Above all, one's priority must be to stay on the stage! One cannot trust those who tell us that screen/television and stage are the same species or of equal artistic value. It simply is not true.

It's not easy to live on the firing line, but that is where one is whether one likes it or not, and we must inure ourselves to living there by a united focused effort, not by scattering our energies on so many projects that the important ones of the theatre are left to chance or inspiration.

If one is to maintain this position one has hewn out for one's self one must first of all be a pioneer. One must go out on a limb where the fruit is. This means a consistent hammering away at one's fundamental problems until they are solved. The challenge is to remain ruthless in tearing ourselves apart in order to rebuild ourselves again. By examining ourselves anew we are compelled to become aware of the world in which we live. For, it is not only ourselves that seems out of touch with reality and with truth, but the very world that makes us. As artists in the theatre we cannot forget that we live in a time of emerging world consciousness. We see visible signs all around us, and since the experience of being an artist is intimately and organically bound up with the world we live in, it follows, with varying intensities of belief, that through our work we must affect, even change that world. The world makes us simmer and the theatre brings us to a boil"

Commitment

What has been lacking is a steady sense of the kind of personal and collective discipline necessary not only to create such a theatre but to continue it. As a theatre artist one is often too considerate of one's self. As people, we want rest, leisure, money for college, not to mention a variety of experiences. We have a finger in every pie from Broadway to Marx. But, we can not afford to get balled up with a thousand and one activities including those directly related to the individual's personality. If we do we lose sight of what is most important: the process of combining subjective truth with professional skill propelled by our collective commitment.

A theatre where the profundity of the craft is paramount, and a theatre with commitment to the material. A theatre where an artist is inspired to use all of themselves, and even the scientist in every artist. A theatre based on the artist's personal truth, on their emotions, their views, and their commitments. Everything has to come from the artist's intensive Self searching, not just the quality of the acting, but the structure of the organization, the scripts chosen, created, revised, or the image of reality projected by the designers!

My function, even my duty in initiating this artistic teachng endeavor is to become a cosmos. To provide what society itself fails to provide artists. To create a society within a society, a protected unity, an oasis, in which young theatre artists can work out their fate and their salvation. The goal of this endeavor: To build an organic theatre of thinking artists.
Llewellyn J. Rhoe]]> http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#10 Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800 Entertaining The Ideas - Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity - Artistic Commentary http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#8 http://theartsequityschedule.com/news.html#8 Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0700 Entertaining The Ideas - Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity - Artistic Commentary