Sue's News

Filtered Through

As an artist, one of the toughest parts of my job is filtering through feedback… Considering the source and where the feedback is coming from.

The other tough part is letting the ideas that I have percolating in my heart and mind make their way to the page, without letting those ideas become compromised.

It’s a process… but it’s worth it.

–Sue

Add comment September 30th, 2010

A Little Patience Goes a Long Way

I’m high off writing a new scene… I literally just put my pencil down a few minutes ago, and will give myself the night to sit with it before typing it tomorrow.

Immediately when I set the pencil to rest on the paper, I started thinking, “Now where the hell do I go from here?” But I’m trying to pull back and just “be” with this as it is in this moment.

It’s human nature to want to know where one is going and getting there…and I used to make outline after outline as I revised scripts, so I could know where I was going through each revision… but as the years have gone by, I have gotten better at pulling back on the reigns a bit and letting a scene speak to me in its own time and way.

It’s just a matter of patience and time…

–Sue

Add comment September 29th, 2010

Blooming… Blooming

I’m in the hatching stage… hatching my plan for how I think the rest of this act might go… entertaining ideas and emotions and getting to the heart of things.

It sounds a little pie in the sky… a little bit like my head is in the clouds. That’s because it is. Right now, I’m inhabiting the space of the play and letting it open up before me, like the petals of a rose, blooming and opening one by one.

I haven’t made any final decisions yet, but at least now I’m sitting with it actively again…

–Sue

Add comment September 28th, 2010

Banking on Star Power

It’s no secret that Broadway has become obsessed with celebrity buzz and loading marquis with big names (usually in revivals). This practice is nothing new, and there’s nothing revelatory here.

It’s also no epiphany to state the obvious, that when stars leave, box office slides, usually landslides, and shows close, even more quickly than producers would have liked.

I’m just wondering how long producers are willing to keep this up? Or how long they feel they can sustain this cycle? Headliners are a big investment of time and money, as well as audience interest. And while it works for the first year a star is willing to establish and stay on in a certain role, once that star is ready to leave, where is a show supposed to go from there?

I’m no banking or investment genius… But doesn’t it make sense to build a solid long term investment, that might build slowly over time, but returns the greatest dividend (in this case a longer run), than a short term investment with high initial dividends that then fizzle out?

Something in the current equation just doesn’t seem like a good bargain to me.

–Sue

Add comment September 27th, 2010

Broadway Bazaar

This Sunday is the 24th annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Flea Market and Auction. Photos, costumes, and assorted memoribillia will be on display and for sale. In addition, Broadway celebs will be on hand to be seen and sign purchases.

An all day event, from 10am-7pm, is being held in Shubert Alley and 44th street. It’s not only fun, and a great way to support a cause dear to many in the theatre community, it’s also a great way to be a part of the community.

–Sue

Add comment September 24th, 2010

Theatre is Nothing Like Going to the 7-11

In The Stranger’s interview with Broadway producer Kevin McCollum (Rent, In the Heights, Drowsy Chaperone) there are some pearls of wisdom and tasty morsels to chew on and contemplate. (His drug dealer analogy is killer too.)

Amongst all, my favorite quote (regarding how he chooses which shows to produce)was this:

My shows initially sound impossible. If it sounds like a sure thing, I run away. Theater is an inconvenient business, and you have to surprise people. I am an enemy of cynicism, and the cynicism comes when you aim too low.

With the advent of movie and jukebox musicals, it seems like so many producers, and audiences, keep going for the “sure thing”… but the problem is, it insulates and isolates producers and audiences so far from risk that new works suffer. Yes, a show might suck, but it might also be great — and that’s what makes theatre great… stumbling on the show that turns out to be a gem.

Sometimes, something might seem inconvenient on the surface, but the payoff can be truly amazing.

–Sue

Add comment September 23rd, 2010

Epic Fail

School’s back in session, and though it seems like it’s too early for report cards just yet, an interesting one was circulated today by The Americans for the Arts Action Fund. It evaluates our senate leaders in terms of their performance via arts legislation. A tally of their voting was the measure by which the grades were given.

See the report card for yourselves here.

A few things to ponder:

Of the 28 senators who got a failing grade, most were Republican… I’m not making judgments, I’m more interested to know why that is… and hope these senators aren’t just playing to the stereotype.

New York’s senators, home of Broadway, MOMA, the Met, Carnegie Hall… did fantastically well. They obviously know how vital arts are to our economy. How can we spread this to other states/senate leaders so that they get this message as well?

Much of the East Coast senators did well… Is it due to the fact that they are still in close proximity to New York, or that our values in this part of the country are different? (West coast senators also happened to do well, and it’s probably because of their robust film and theatre communities and economies as well.)

But what about the middle states? What are those school aged children learning in the absence of arts legislation and subsequent programming that never sees the light of day because there isn’t any funding to support it?

More than these “failing” senators, it’s their communities, that are suffering.

–Sue

Add comment September 22nd, 2010

Ain’t it the Truth!

Husbands, bless them, sometimes need to hear from a stranger what their wives have already told them to believe what they’ve heard. It’s nothing personal, just a universal truth. I shared this truth with a friend over email, and through her email response I could hear her laughing in agreement, having seen it for herself.

It’s in that universal truth that comedy is born. Something strikes us as funny when we know it to be true.

Writing comedy for theatre is such a challenge for this very reason… but it’s also so satisfying for the creators and the audience. As people, we want to see ourselves and be able to laugh from time to time. Writing a comedy will be a challenge to be sure, but definitely one I’d like to undertake in the future.

–Sue

Add comment September 21st, 2010

Human Being

This past weekend we celebrated the second half of the Jewish New Year. A little more challenging than the first part which is all about a sweet upcoming year, the second part is about atonement and reflecting on the person you’ve been in the past year and who you’d like to be in the coming year.

One holiday wouldn’t make much sense without the other, and there are things about both that I really enjoy. What I like most is that it’s a time specifically earmarked for reflection individually and as a community, as it’s so easy to stumble through our days without giving the “bigger picture” a second thought. We get so caught up in doing all the time, that we sometimes forget about being… and what it is to be human, and even humane.

That’s part of why I like theatre so much. It is a time earmarked specifically for us to get off the hamster wheel of life, where errands and obligations are magically suspended in the air as we, as individuals and as a community, take time to reflect on the human condition, and be entertained while we’re at it.

–Sue

Add comment September 20th, 2010

A Window Opens

I awoke this morning to a call from my composer. He was bummed… something he’d been working on fizzled out. He had really been hoping for some traction.

I could have been bummed too… but this theatre’s physical restrictions had inspired us both a few weeks ago to take a new spin on how we’d like to tell this story, and given us a new artistic direction to pursue that will help set us apart and strengthen the integrity and some of the elements of the show. And so, I was glad that in trying to solve a logistical problem (that we were only considering because of this theatre’s restrictions) we were able to be creative.

This new direction is also inspiring us to pursue other venues once we’ve refined the show… This experience reminds us once again that when one door closes, a window opens. We had to search for the window, and we’re the ones prying it open, but a window is still a window!

–Sue

Add comment September 17th, 2010