I first subscribed to the Oudeis list a while back when Monika sent
something to Steve's Collab-l listserv. The Odyssey has interested me
for a long time. In fact, I used to introduce my poetry readings by
improvising on the flute in the Dorian mode and then chanting the
first 10 lines of the invocation to the Muse in Homeric Greek. I
responded to Monika's invitation to participate by joining the Idea
list, posted a few messages, and then decided to just "listen" for a
while. At the time, the "concept" was for 5 RL stages and a WebStage.
RL? I said. Do they mean 'real life'? In my line of work we talk about
'face-to-face' or 'live' or 'real time'. I could not believe that
anyone seriously proposed to put on 5 simultaneous live performances,
nor could I imagine why they would want to do so, what burning
questions would be resolved in the unlikely event that they could pull
it off.
I don't think I was like one of those people at Kitty Hawk shaking my
head and saying, "It will never fly." I tried to scope it out. I have
done live performances--acted in them, produced them, done PR, books
of plays, etc. I certainly don't know all there is to know, but I have
a feeling in my bones about how much work it takes to put on *one*
(count 'em 1) live show. Fund raising, script, pr, working with all
the artists--prima donnas included, selling tickets, light and sound,
sets and costumes, program notes and the motor for the curtain, etc.
etc. etc. It is more than a single human being can possibly
comprehend. You have to work together and you have be able to trust
and respect what other people tell you because you simply cannot be
everywhere and everyone at once.
So I reasoned like this. If we could represent the complexity (total
resources required) of putting on one live performance with a number,
say N, what is the complexity of putting on 2 live performances? Well
if they can have different scripts and one of them can start at 7:30
and the other can start at 8:15, then maybe the complexity of two
performances is about 2N. But if they are the same play and the
expectation is that they will be synchronized, then a whole additional
level of management comes into effect. When the real actor in one venu
(who is a virtual actor in the other) says "Turn over the orange card"
there must be an orange card in both places. This is not just 2N, this
is some kind of multiplier. I suspect that putting on what Oudeis
would call "two simultaneous performances" increases the complexity
exponentially. Two simultaneous performances will be four times as
complex as one. Three will be nine times as complex and so on. Five
simultaneous performances will be 25 times as complex as 1, almost
three times as complex as three. So you'd better be very careful when
you start adding simultaneous performances. That is what I think.
Shortly after I thought I had all this figured out and was waiting for
the oudeis team to get devoured by its own machinery, someone decided
that five simultaneous performances wasn't quite enough. I missed the
reasoning on that one, so you'll have to ask someone else about it.
Maybe someone decided that there were too many unemployed arts
administrators, because I don't think that the increase in complexity
(the increased demand for resources) is going to mean more actors or
more costumes or more seats in the theater. It just means more
overseers to synchronize--and to sweep the junk out of the way when a
fuse blows and some dandy piece of hardware turns into a fancy
doorstop. Going from 5 to 7 just about doubles the complexity, the
resources (like cash) required to bring it off. I have never really
been sure what we are going to be able to prove with 7 that we can't
prove with 5. Maybe someone's rich uncle just died, and we've gotta
use it or lose it. I can't really say.
Compared to doing 7 simultaneous performances, having 3 or four more
languages is practically nothing. And doing a MOO performance will be
relatively easy.
Then MMK came along and before I knew it, someone--maybe it was
Jonny--someone from "engineering" raised serious questions about
"feasibility." I laughed out loud that day. Not sure exactly why. I
think it made me feel that I wasn't as crazy as I was beginning to
think I was.
Meanwhile, no one discussed the Odyssey. I could go down to the local
bar and get more intelligent conversation about the Odyssey from a
handful of redneck loggers than from the whole of Vienna, Buenos
Aires, Los Angeles, Australia, and all those other places we brag
about in the PR. We could be doing Micky Mouse goes to Mars for all I
can tell--as long as it's the Micky who is going with his laptop
computer and a vrml mockup of a Matell rock-gathering gizmo. And his
pretty wife Penelope milked the cows and waited loyally twenty years
for him to come home so they could all live happily ever after.
<sigh>
If we could learn from experience then we would be on the right track.
Monika came back from the very first rehearsal--just the live
part--for MMK and was in despair. "We can't do this," she said. "There
is no tension, no drama, no reason to come back for the real thing.
The whole story gets told all at once." No one seemed especially
bothered by the lack of drama in the script--except Misha and
Monika--the people who actually had to suffer through it. Everyone
else was busy banging away on a keyboard, I suppose.
I mentioned to Lee and to Monika that in my opinion the script was "a
dog" -- which is an English idiom that means "an exceedingly dull and
ill-conceived piece of work that makes everybody look bad." I don't
mean to imply that Lee is a poor playwright. Some scripts work right
out of the box. Others have to be worked on with the cast. Lee has
said loudly and clearly that we needed rehearsals. We have had a total
of 3 or 4 rehearsals. RL theater normall takes about 6 weeks of
rehearsal. 2 weeks and you are pushing your luck. We have a total of
less than a week--if you count the performances as rehearsals.
Eveidently we mean to *improvise* the Odyssey on seven stages
simultaneously and the MOO and a WebStage and a partridge in a pear
tree.
Meanwhile, someone had decided that while we must do the Odyssey, we
must do it without the gods. Jonny very politely says, "What
dramaturgy?" I was aghast. I thought Vienna must be awash in tainted
drugs. Twyla--bless her heart--decided to be Artemis anyway no matter
what anybody thought. So Artemis was Odysseus in Spanish for Linz. We
have a potential for farce opening up here that is a lot more
achievable than a grim, heroical Odysseus bobbing around the
Mediterranean clinging to a piece of flotsam on seven real-life
stages.
What I don't understand, Aaron, is why you have decided that I am the
one responsible for this folly.
You have already swallowed the elephant; now you are choking on one of
its fleas. My proposal is to simplify the whole effort down to the
only *proven* technology we have--Web and MOO. I want to simplify for
the purpose of getting pieces together so that they can be assembled
at a later time. We don't have enough people to do one live
performance--never mind 49 times that number. We don't have 49 times
the money or 49 times the equipment or 49 times the imagination, or 49
times the staff. What we do have is an ungodly amount of equipment and
number of people to put one live actress on the stage. Contrary to
what the oudeis promo says somewhere, this is not a solution to cuts
in arts funding; it is one of the reasons..
What we do have is a group of people who can work together. Whether
or not we can learn from our mistakes and do better the next time at a
rate that is fast enough to produce real theater before we are all
dead remains to be seen.
-- Jim Terral South Slocan, BC http://www.netidea.com/~jterral/ http://moo.hawaii.edu/athemoo/WebMOO.html