Sunday, January 31, 2010

ERPA Resource Guide

A Non-Exhaustive Resource Wiki for Artists, Arts Administrators, Philanthropists and Arts Enthusiasts across genres and across the board...

The Field encounters provocative information about the arts economy every day. The ERPA Resource Guide has evolved organically as a means for us to serve the performing arts community a menu of hot topic information across artistic disciplines; from The Field (us) to the field (you)!

Check out the wiki for a multitude of innovative resources and services we know will stoke your personal process of economic revitalization.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Conni's Avant Garde Restaruant: Searching for Usually

“Usually” is a word often used by friendly people asking me about our show, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. Where do you usually perform? How often? Where do you usually prepare the food? How much does it cost? These basic questions stump me: We don’t “usually” anything yet. We are making it up as we go along. But, the funny thing is that as soon as you make something, people believe it already exists. We are three years old now, but the usuallies started right away. I am very wary of them and I crave them at the same time. They signal the end of the birthing process.

The way I answer the usually questions is to say what we have done already: The first year we did three stand-alone events at a rehearsal studio with a kitchen, with the idea that we would be a once a month, low key, underground supperclub serving at most 50 people. We forged our characters and our ideas in front of the audience and the evenings we bizarre and chaotic and beautiful. I did the shopping and cooking like I “usually” do, by carting it around by hand. We charged $30. The next year, we moved into the Bushwick Starr and developed the current format for the show very much in collaboration with the physical space. We developed an internal logic and invested in the stories of the characters and the the audience’s experience over the evening. We did five productions, each with a 2-night run spaced about six weeks apart, serving 120 people over each weekend. By then we had assimilated two more characters to prepare the food and we had discovered Fresh Direct. We charged $35. We increased the run to 3-nights, serving 180 people over the weekend. We became real foodies and started sourcing locally. We charged $40. We lifted that show up and plunked it in the Ohio Theatre this summer and fall, had a design duo replicate the format with bling and style, and served 320 people over a 4-night run. We found Farm to Chef. We charged $50.

We have nicknamed this full show our “Mothership” production in order to distinguish it from the “Ah La Carte” site-specific events that we write for the location and the occasion. We say yes to everyone and everything: pass-the-dessert performances for benefits, conferences, and festivals, a bridal shower at a private home with champagne cocktails and party games, full cabaret evenings at Joe’s Pub with and without food, a full holiday dinner in the lobby and conference room of a Manhattan office, and a commissioned work for a museum cafe.

I like to think that we are developing our company by trial and trial. We try something and then we try it again with a bigger audience, or seasonal food, or refined writing, or in a different setting, or more nights in a row, or spaced farther apart, or with higher price points. In other words, we don’t know what we are until after we have tried it. The one thing we do have is an army of characters whose fiction is aligned with function (cooks, general manager, bartender, diva performers, bouncer, etc.) and we can own most new set-ups by just letting the characters do what they would do. The characters might have fictional histories, but they are always in the same time and place and situation with the audience. We don’t have to be flawless or fully prepared for everything, we just have to be able to meet the unknown with grace and keep taking care of the audience.

Still, some ‘usually’ might be good for my health. We are good at trying new things and the next new thing might be taking care of ourselves. This is the part where ERPA and the larger conversation surrounding it comes in. Usually is the way you build word of mouth. Usually is the projected budget. It’s the only way to plan your calendar. Or to live a balanced life. Or to ask for funding. Our show is something new for most of our guests. They want to say things like “they usually perform in this really cool space in Bushwick.”

With the ERPA implementation grant, we are looking for “usually” this summer: Where? A great new club space. When? Once a week throughout the season. How much? Hopefully enough. The Food? Locally grown and prepared in a viable kitchen space. I don’t want to jinx it, so check back for the next blog post and I’ll tell you where we’ll be! In the meantime, we will be serving lunch at 2pm at the NoPassport Conference on February 26, Nuyorican Poets CafĂ©, $10 at the door for conference attendees. Please come and feed us back.

Monday, January 25, 2010

OurGoods is running a storefront!



OurGoods.org is really picking up speed! I'm writing from the storefront we opened last night: Trade School at 139 Norfolk in the Lower East Side. For the next 30 days, we'll have nightly classes, daily co-working for Trade School teachers, and barter agents available to the public from 3-6pm. Sign up for a class here by meeting one of the teacher's barter needs.

Trade School classes are taught by members of the OurGoods alpha network. Sharing skills and hanging out at the storefront will foster better working relationships. I want to know what you do! Let's get to know each other as rigorous artists with a wide range of talents. Come visit in the afternoon or evening and meet other people who want to share skills, spaces, and objects.

We have a month long storefront space because OurGoods co-founder Rich Watts bartered a lot of design work with Grand Opening. From there, we made a chalkboard and built 16 tables and 16 chairs with salvaged materials- we only paid for 1 sheet of plywood and finish paint! Co-founder Louise Ma made an incredibly beautiful flag that we will fly every day. The space will be reconfigured each day. Last night at the opening, Athena Kokoronis brought her mobile kitchen and exchanged gestures for cake. Martyna Szczesna set up a portrait studio and took 100+ photos. This week, we have classes about foraging for mushrooms, business and art, running an LLC, organizing an arts festival, and making kimchee. Classes start today!

Online, OurGoods is being tested by around 100 people! We are still fine-tuning the site, and expect to launch in the Spring. Stop in the storefront and talk to me (Caroline) if you'd like to join this early group of testers online.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Field's Economic Revitalization Implementation Awardees

The Field's Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) program awards $55,000 to entrepreneurial artists working to catalyze and sustain their creative economies! ERPA Implementation Awards provide grants of $10,000 to $20,000 to continue developing and implementing projects under the auspices of The Field. Watch ERPA Artists work their magic at WNYC, featuring coverage from September 2009's Public Display of Invention at The Greene Space...



Thanks for watching, let us know what you think!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Stolen Chair: Going back to college

Howdy, folks. Jon from Stolen Chair here with my second installment on ye ol' ERPA blog.

So...I've been thinking a lot about college lately. This is not surprising, given the fact that one of my survival jobs is as a college consultant; I'm looking at the roster of high schoolers who've just signed on board with me and trying to start figuring out how I can help them find the transformative undergraduate experience I had at Swarthmore College. While I readily and frequently give a nod to my alma mater for shaping the entire course of my adult life (including the development of Community Supported Theatre), I am always surprised when I discover that elements of my undergrad experience have trickled into my Stolen Chair life. And here's what I just realized: the theatre blogosphere (ridiculously codenamed by some as the "theatrosphere") and Twitter have been fulfilling some of my undergraduate nostalgia. (I have to give a credit to Mr. Dave Charest, @DaveCharest, for suggesting the link between Twitter and college.)

The Theatrosphere
Do you remember those conversations in college which started sometime in the late afternoon and stretched out until dawn? There was an urgency shared between you and your conversational co-conspirators; perhaps if you just spoke about the issue long enough, you would together punch through the syntax and cultural baggage to arrive at a revelation. Or maybe, you had locked horns with an ideological adversary, using every rhetorical tool you could muster to bring him or her over to the side of reason (which was, of course, always yours). Or maybe, you dejectedly discovered that your truest allies actually, once the level of the conversation got deep enough, frustrated the bejesus outta you. Or maybe, just maybe, once the dining hall's breakfast started calling you out of your intense battles you realized that maybe all that syntax and cultural baggage can't actually be overcome and we are who we are and we're from where we're from...but we can still find enough common ground to talk, really talk with each other about important issues.

This, folks, is the magical nostalgia that the theatrosphere (at its best) summons from me. You can take a peek at the blogroll here for some of the best and brightest theatrical minds who are provoking such reveries. I am by no means suggesting you go out and start your own blog to join the fray (and that's a topic I'll revisit in my next ERPA installment m'thinks), but I do think that you could do worse things every once in awhile than staying up past your bedtime to get lost in some of the fiery debates and paradigm shattering conversations happening on these sites.

Twitter
My undergrad had a tiny little cafe called Kohlberg Coffee Bar, always filled with brilliant people en route to class or other activities, or sometimes camping out in the quixotic attempt to accomplish some assignment or other. Though sometimes one of the above mentioned conversations might start at Kohlberg, it was far more likely that you'd just get little snippets here and there. You'd wander into some people's conversations, eavesdrop on others, and sometimes wander into conversations on which you've eavesdropped. And because it's such a small cafe with such extraordinary acoustics, there's a certain performativity to all the proceedings. You are in public. One of the nice side-effects of this is the emergence of a certain decorum as it's probably not safe to say nasty things about people when the world (or at least your world) is listening.

Twitter is just such a cafe, a great equalizer where theatre's biggest and smallest engage in sometimes banal, sometimes brilliant chit chat. I've forged international brain trusts from colleagues I've discovered through such chitting and chatting on Twitter. Heck, three of them even joined the Community Supported Theatre! Again, I'm not suggesting you go out and start tweeting every day, but there are so many brilliant, innovative theatre tweeters (the thweeters?), it's certainly worth a latte's worth of your day to eavesdrop on the rapport. You can really follow anyone on the "following" lists of the inestimable Travis Bedard, Nick Keenan, David J Loehr, or Chris Ashworth (or maybe us)...

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Kahlil Almustafa: The People's Inauguration: Poetry & Dialogue on the one-year anniversary of Obama's Inauguration

kahlil almustafa, The People’s Poet and author of From Auction Block to Oval Office leads an interactive event combining performance poetry and critical dialogue commemorating the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration.

When: January 20th, 2010
Where: The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space
44 Charlton Street (on the corner of Charlton and Varick)
New York, NY 10014
Time: Doors 6:30pm, Poetry & Panel 7pm

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Panelists include:

  • Rosa Clemente - 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate
  • Cindy Sheehan - author of "Not One More Mother's Child"
  • Michael Skolnik - Political Director to Russell Simmons & Editor for GlobalGrind.com

From Auction Block to Oval Office Book CoverAbout the event:

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration, kahlil almustafa, The People's Poet, leads an interactive session combining performance poetry and critical dialogue. Reading from his fifth collection of poetry, FROM AUCTION BLOCK TO OVAL OFFICE: 100 POEMS IN 100 DAYS OF OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY (MVMT Publishing, January 2010) kahlil explores the hopes, fears, contradictions and complexity which come with the election of the United States’ first African-American president.

Written in the voice of a young, African-American male, a romantic revolutionary, and an intellectual, these poems capture a nation teetering between danger and opportunity, cynicism and hope.

"kahlil almustafa’s poems are extraordinary in their political complexity and aesthetic sensibility. His language in From Auction Block to Oval Office is crystal-clear and the ideas are continually provocative."

- Howard Zinn, author, A People’s History of the United States

This event will be interactive. The panel will respond to the critical questions raised by the poems. Audience members will have the opportunity to create their own poems. Panelists to be announced.

Some of the questions to be addressed:

  • How do we create a space for people to express the ways Barack Obama has inspired them and create a space for principled criticism?
  • Is this the closing of a chapter in the American narrative beginning with the auction block and concluding with the Obamas in the White House? Or is the narrative of African enslavement being used to promote the idea of America perfecting its democracy?
  • It has been said that the Hip-Hop generation greatly impacted the election in 2008. How has the Hip Hop generation been impacted by the campaign, Obama’s presidency, and how will the Hip-Hop generation continue to be engaged?

The event is powered by the Mighty Mighty MVMT

Kahlil Almustafa: Thank You to The Field

This January 20, 2010, I will be launching my collection of poems, From Auction Block to Oval Office: 100 poems written in the first 100 days of Obama's presidency. We are proudly presenting The People's Inauguration: Poetry & Dialogue on the one-year anniversary of Obama's Inauguration to commemorate this occassion. The lessons I learned during ERPA have been invaluable to the success of this project. In the ERPA lab, I learned key concepts which helped me think about both my artistic and my business approach.

Let me quickly list the way three Field Workshops have helped build this project:
  • The "Strategies for Internet Outreach" workshop with Jaki Levy in May 2009, helped me gain the confidence to work on WordPress and transformed my relationship to publishing content as an act of creating value.
  • The "Public Relations Principles" workshop, also in May and the one-on-one session with Fran Kirmser, helped my wife, Julia, and I conceive of the "100 Donors 100 Dollars" campaign to raise money for my project. It was Fran's excitement about the possibilities of my book which led me to publish and her insistence that I set a date which would make sense for my project which led me to choose the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration. She also provided some simple strategies for creating a personalized mailing for my donors.
  • The "Special Events Planning" workshop with Andrew Frank, who stepped in for Fran helped immensely with the final stages of the project's launch. Andrew's workshop focused on building community as the way to create successful events. He helped us map out our communities and strategize specific and personalized ways to engage with each of them.
In addition to the Field Workshops, my continued work with Executive Director, Jennifer Cook, and the conversations I had with the ERPA 7 have been invaluable moving this project forward. Thank you to the whole Field staff for your stance for the arts and the artists.

kahlil almustafa