Arts Equity Onstage a 501(C)3 Non Profit Tax Exempt Theatre: Artistic Commentary

Do Something Patriotic...support the arts with part of your stimulus
check!

In order to continue producing this caliber of theatre, we need your
immediate help to mount the upcoming season.

We plan three shows to be produced in Portland while Arts Equity
looks for a suitable and permanent home somewhere in the greater
Portland/SW Washington area. We are in about the same place as
Artists Repertory was when they moved from the YWCA to their current
home. We think we can do the same during this upcoming season.

To do so 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.

HELP US TAKE OUR 4TH SEASON ON THE ROAD

We have options on theatres in Portland to do 3 shows next season.
Included in the season pending final details are:

1. 21A by Kevin Kling
Kevin wrote "The Ice Fishing Play" in our first season. This
one man tour-de-force features Joey LeBard (Eintstein in Picasso at
the Lapin Agile) playing all eight of the people on a Minneapolis bus.
This hilarious and decidedly different work had them rolling in the
isles at Actors Theatre of Louisville's famed Humana Festival, where
it won the Heidemann Award.

2. TRUE MUMMY by Tom Cone
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the theatre,
another masterpiece by Tom Cone the author who wrote HERRINGBONE.
True Mummy refers to a black luminous, clear glaze, the "best shellac
in the history of art" that was made from the ash of cremated mummies.
What is sacred today? Is any degree of desecration justified if it
is in the pursuit of truth and the creation of art? There is no
shortage of ideas in Tom Cone's probing play!

3. THE GOD OF HELL by Sam Shepard
An uproarious, brilliantly provocative farce that brings the
gifts of a quintessentially American playwright to bear on the current
American dilemma. Written and premiered during the present
adminstration, In The God of Hell aggressive patriotism puts the
characters on the defensive, transforming a heartland American
household into a scene of torture and promoting a radioactive brand of
conformity with a dangerously low half life.


HELP US TAKE OUR 4TH SEASON ON THE ROAD
*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.

There is no rule that says you have to lose.

I was born to do this.

I must remember my own integrity

My fears are nothing more than the shadows of my ever increasing success.

Real courage is putting your fear aside and doing your job.

People may doubt what you say,
but they will believe what you do.

never waste time, energy, money, people.

Whatever your mind can accept is the truth.

No one can cancel your day.

Inplementation and forward progress are the keys to success, power and great wealth.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top

Money, power, prestige, respect, love and recognition All these a human being wants, needs and truly desires.

The best way to bluff is not to bluff.

1. Who are the key players in your life.
2. Why are they there, and what do you need to learn because they are the way they are.
3 When all is said and done, how do you learn to put the non-productive elements behind.

With nothing but dreams and ability

Four kinds of People
1. people who watch things happen (spectators),
2. People who begin to wonder about what's making it happen
3. People who talk about what should happen and do nothing.
4. people who know what's happening, know how to make it happen and do .

DO IT SIMPLER, FASTER AND BETTER!

An individual without information can not take responsibility, a person who is given information can not help but take responsibility. Give your employees information and train them to use it. Information is power.

SIMPLICITY BECOMES THE HIGHEST FORM OF TECHNOLOGY

IN ANY INDUSTRY YOU CAN BE DOG MEAT ONE DAY AND TOP DOG THE NEXT.

WHAT WE LEARN AS A CHILD, WE PRACTICE AS AN ADULT.

WHAT YOU ACHIEVE BY REACHING YOUR DESTINATION WILL NOT BE NEARLY SO IMPORTANT AS WHAT YOU WILL HAVE TO BECOME TO REACH THAT DESTINATION

Creative self determination
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.

PERSONAL STATEMENT
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

Click the link to find out more about Arts Equity Onstage, or call the theatre at 360-695-0741