Theatrical Intelligence

August 31, 2010 - 2 Comments;

Designer Roger Morgan: Mighty Are His Preparations

This post is based on my interview¹ with Roger Morgan, Tony Award winning Lighting Designer, and (full disclosure) my husband. Roger is my business partner at Sachs Morgan Studio -Theatre Design Specialists and I’ve written about him in this blog. When I asked Roger about his toughest work challenge, this conversation began.

Well, you know I always enjoy challenges. The toughest? Probably when I’m short on the three basic ingredients required to plan theatre spaces: Time. Space. Money. (TSM)

Keeping TSM in balance makes a happy owner and a successful project, so the first challenge is to convince the owner to invest some T. This is a tough sell. Why? A comprehensive Architectural Program is necessary to predict TSM, and a Program is hard to grasp.

Architectural Program: ar•chi•tec•tur•al (adj) pro•gram (n)

Quantified list(s) of rooms, spaces, floor areas, expressed

in net square footage and/or diagrams; prose descriptions of

qualities that can’t be characterized in data.

I think of the Program as the recipe for the design and construction of the project. Here’s the catch: an owner often expects to begin the project with the design. With no program. And with a budget.

Our job is to communicate the value of the Program to the decision makers, who are not usually in the business of building buildings. It can be tricky: we’re designers and we love to draw; owners are bottom-line-driven and want results. So it’s tempting for all of us to rush, and discipline is required. Otherwise the project gets out of hand, costs more than it should and doesn’t meet anybody’s expectations. That’s not the way we like it.

Here’s the way we do it:

THE DESIGN TEAM WORKS WITH THE OWNER AND USERS

Interviews + Observation + Comparisons + Documentation = THE LIST

THE LIST:
How many?
How big?
Why?
For whom?
For what purposes?
Near what?
Why?
+ How often
Sq Ft, Ht + adjacencies

TRANSLATE THE LIST INTO BUBBLE DIAGRAMS

Bubble Diagram Draft

REVIEW DATA WITH COST ESTIMATOR OR QUANTITY SURVEYOR

CONVERT:
Net Sq Ft to Gross Sq Ft
Apply $psf cost values
Synchronize with local construction costs
RESULT: a prediction of project cost

In 40 years, no one has ever said “We’ve gotta spend more than that…” I’ve never seen a preliminary cost estimate meet with contentment. It’s another challenge of my job, cuz accuracy and qualifications of the team are usually questioned.

This is often the most intense time of a project because its very life is threatened. Assumptions are challenged: “What can you live without?” Soul searching begins and programmed spaces may be reduced. Difficult decisions are made. Eventually the Program is brought into alignment with the budget. TSM is clear.

You know what’s amazing? This all happens before anyone has drawn a line. 90% of the most important decisions for the project have been made!

We’ve agreed on the recipe – now we’re ready to cook. For me, that’s the fun part.

¹An earlier version was published in Theatre By Design, the Studio’s Newsletter

June 29, 2010 - 6 Comments;

A Foreword For My Book… Or A Backward?

(A Loony Moment of Escape)

An eminent person is sometimes said to be helpful...

For weeks I’ve been obsessed with whom I might ask to write the Foreword to my book. Tonight, my husband offered to write a “Backward”.

Granted, this was probably a gesture intended to shut me up. My husband, however, is a guy with wild ideas that often work, so I listened. A “Backward” would be the opposite of a Foreword, he explained; instead of laying out why the book matters, it would summarize what people will remember. He went on to persuade me that “Backwards” will be a forward trend in publishing.

I ignored the fact that his idea reminded me of Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University, because I was convinced. We all know that people don’t read any more – I mean books are written about the fact that nobody reads them! Who cares that I have spent this year consumed with writing, re-writing, cutting, purging, drilling down, down, down into this concept I am passionately committed to? Chances are that nobody will read the damned book anyway! A “Backward” sounds reassuring to me – a momentary escape from the thought that maybe no one cares.

So I’ll finish writing the book. I’ll find an eminent person to write the Foreword. And Roger will explain in his “Backward” exactly what readers would remember if they had actually read the book.

But do you suppose I should spell it “Backword”?

May 30, 2010 - No Comments

On Writing: “A Deep-Sea Dive…”

This week I’ve been immersed in another solo writing marathon in New Hampshire, cast in my current favorite Theatrical Intelligence role: Writer. Several times when Studio projects required my input, I’ve stepped out of Baker Library and into my role as Producer or Manager. I have a quick-change-agility at jumping from Manager to Performer to Producer to Director. I am not, however, agile enough to change roles when I’m writing. So it’s been a challenging week.

“Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you’re called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can’t ever get back down.” That’s writer Dave Eggers, quoted in a recent article:¹ There’s the rub, as that Danish fellow would say.

Eggers’s “hours to get into it…” are many. And I am slow. Before I write one word I’m compelled to prepare my writing space, adjust my light, arrange my reference materials and make sure I’m stocked with old fashioned supplies known as pencils and erasers. I get pretty sick of myself.

I remember reading that Ernest Hemingway would sharpen twenty pencils before beginning to write. Alice Walker meditates. (I begin to feel a kinship with those two great writers.) There’s a ritualistic quality to it.

To quote the mighty Virginia Woolf: “Arrange whatever pieces come your way”. That is the one that stirs my soul today. Inspires me. I realize how fortunate I am that millions of pieces have come my way! Every single day I am aware of one piece or another from an early decade or a more recent one; I act on many of them and file others away for later. So whether or not I am in an Eggers deep-sea dive after answering a phone call or an email, I can arrange my pieces.

So that’s what I began to do. Arrange my pieces. As I pondered and reflected, more pieces kept coming at me and it was harder to pay attention to the phone and the emails are still waiting.

Oh, what a wonderful day.

¹ The Observer, by Rachel Cooke, March 7, 2010

May 13, 2010 - 4 Comments;

Feeling Grateful (In Rhyme)

Scene: Caroline’s Comedy Club, NYC, May 3, 2010.

Event: Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Benefit Gala

Picture: Me, with EST member (and teenage friend!) Jerry Zaks, who presented the “Distinguished Member” Award to me. He recalled that I was in the first play he ever did, and thus was his first leading lady.

My husband Roger got the Award too (see photo below) what are the chances of that? And the highly esteemed actor Dominic Chianese received one as well. We were told the awards honored our outstanding achievements over the past 40 years. Flattering doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Dominic’s band, the New York Sidewalkers got the entire audience to sing along in a rousing rendition of That’s Amore! and many attendees said the whole thing felt like a family reunion. I was glad that I threw away my impassioned but oh-so-serious acceptance speech before the event, and (as is my tradition) expressed my thoughts in rhyme:

I stand here tonight with the clear sensation
That I am just one in the 4th generation

Of Irish Catholics and German Jews

Who arrived in our country and paid their dues

In order to plant the roots of a tree

Whose branches have grown into my family.

Roger Morgan, you’re part of my tale
And Sam, with your bright-bellied sis: Abigail!
The Morgan family is so far-reaching
It’s hard to fathom the depth of their teaching.

I could list the Sachs-Morgans, one by one
With their spouses and children: for me, t’would be fun
For all of YOU tho, t’would be mighty boring
(And it would be awful to cause all that snoring!)
So I’ll NOT list family names at this time
Though tempting it is to make it all rhyme.

My roots are my backbone and why I stand proud
In front of this highly distinctive crowd.
Agnes and John and Ernest and Maisie
(Good lord I’m listing them – I must be crazy!)
Julius and Rosa – Dad, Mom – and Jim
I carry your love and wisdom within.

What is it I’ve learned that makes me stand tall?
My children and friends often ask, when they call.

I think it’s BELIEF, or so it would seem

You gave me this gift: whatever my dream

Belief it could happen, BELIEF with true ZEAL

Would often make my vision turn REAL.

Then, the Theatre’s dose of daily rejection
Developed my armor: mighty protection
Through sadness and failure, all part of the deal
The standard, in fact, I expected to feel.
We all know, in theatre, that things DO go wrong
And staying the course tends to make us real strong.

So what was the dream I clung to these years?

That thing that kept growing in spite of my tears?

It’s really quite simple, though not to say easy

And sometimes I must say it made me quite queasy:
To merge my life and my work into one
Which included my husband and daughter and son
To create a safe place where all is OK
No matter the obstacles during the day
Has been my passion, my quest to feel free
In fact, it’s rather like – yup – EST!

So CURT, and ROGER and BILLY and PAUL
And Denny, two Jerry’s and – yes – to you ALL!
Marianna and Les, two Mindy’s and Chris: Abigail, Dave, Sam-Jamie-Nancy-Art-Peter- BetsyPollyMelodieJackSusanAnnieDonnaRita….

WHOA!

Thank you. I’m honored. In my tux and my boa.

Roger with Jim Boese, VP of the Nederlander Organization, who presented the Award after a humorous introduction about representing the FOR-profit theatre world. (Note: Roger’s Award is a beautiful, useable decanter from Tiffany’s!) Roger remembered the first play he was in at age 12, in a community theatre; he was mortified that people might think he was 10, the age of the character.

Pictured below:: the Roches (Terre, Left, and Suzzy) who sang their hilarious song from MAMA DRAMA, I’d Like Her To Be Rich. Beginning in 1987, EST member Christine Farrell initiated MAMA DRAMA as an Octoberfest project; it grew into a full length play over several years at EST. Published by Samuel French, it’s produced all over the country, 20 years later.

Four MAMA DRAMA writers are pictured below, from Left: Christine Farrell, Leslie Ayvayzian, me, and Marianna Houston. Missing: Donna Daley, Anne O’Sullivan and the late Rita Nachtmann.

There was a lot of laughter that night (and too many suggestions of a GRAND-MAMA DRAMA!)

Tony Soprano and me? Go figure!

April 20, 2010 - 3 Comments;

Engendering Trust For Our Future

I’ve been wondering recently where the future leaders in the American theatre will come from. I think it’s an age thing. A few months ago my partner Roger Morgan and I learned that we will be honored by The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), with veteran actor Dominic Chianese, as “distinguished members” at their Annual Gala on May 3rd. The minute I heard that news I found myself pondering multi-generational influence.

Having spent the past 40 years working in our country’s professional theatre, I’ve become curiouser and curiouser about who will create the vision for the next 40. Future Leadership in the Arts is currently a hot topic in the blogosphere: “passing the baton”, “re-inventing ourselves”, “no one can learn anything from looking back” and a relentless search for something referred to as the new normal. EST has consistently demonstrated a viable process for creating an environment in which the yet-to-be-created-theatre-of-the-future could birth “the new normal” (or whatever term eventually sticks). It is a model to be emulated.

Background: EST members are a living, breathing sampler of the eight roles in Theatrical Intelligence (actors, writers, producers, directors, designers, managers, technicians and critics). Members are theatre professionals from the four generations active in today’s workplace: the Silent Generation, Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y (the Millennials). Roger and Dominic are Silents. I’m a Boomer.

Collectively, EST members have won Tony Awards, Oscars, Pulitzers, Golden Globes, Drama Desks… the list goes on. With an annual budget of under $2 million, the company has been recognized with numerous American Theater Wing Awards, NY Outer Critics Circle Awards, and Village Voice Obies.

SInce 1968 EST has demonstrated unwavering commitment to nurturing individual theatre artists and developing new American plays. It runs a sort of “theatre gym”. Members gather together in partnerships, clusters and workshops for vigorous workouts and de-briefs. It is a model of collaborative creativity based on trust, acknowledged through time to be a solid foundation of great work.

The provocative new book Outrageous Fortune: The Life And Times Of The New American Play, is the first book published by the Theatre Development Fund (TDF). It is an urgent call to our country’s non-profit theatre community to change what it is doing if American plays are to survive. Based on six years of research with American playwrights and non-profit theatres, its disturbing conclusion is that playwrights have been abandoned by non-profit institutions in favor of surefire box office sales.

The book reports (pp.252-253) that playwrights (not theatres) chose EST as the #1 theatre in NYC and #2 in the country most important to their development because of its “accessibility and active dedication to producing new plays.”

Non-profit theatre companies take note: the next generation of leaders will likely come as a result of creative collaboration among theatre artists in a multi-generational atmosphere of trust. Look at EST and do likewise. It works.

March 31, 2010 - 3 Comments;

The Actor Is What We See, But Only 1/8 Of What Is There

When I speak to groups about the way Theatrical Intelligence can make a difference in their lives, I talk about collaboration and connecting to their creative selves. The responses range from “Of course! It’ll help when I have to give a presentation” to “Not my kind of thing – don’t like being in the spotlight.” What strikes me is the assumption that the Actor is only one I’m talking about.

: What We See

In the theatrical production model, the Actor is what we see, but only 1/8 of what is actually there. He or she wouldn’t even be up on the stage if it weren’t for the Writer, Producer, Director, Designer, Manager, Technician and Critic. The specific talent and skill contained in each of these roles is every bit as important as the Actor. Without these roles the Actor wouldn’t exist!

What’s Really There

Creative collaboration requires that the 8 roles are cast with people using their maximum creative potential. It is built on the premise that all collaborators’ talents and skills complement one another. In other words if I don’t have a particular strength, one of my cohorts will.

Recently I worked with a young woman who told me “I don’t have one creative bone in my body, it’s just the way I’ve always been and I’m fine with it.” She was politely annoyed that I didn’t accept her as a “non-creative”. What became clear to the group during an improvised story and a quick writing exercise, is that she was a born technician: the only one who could get the electronic hook-up to work; and a gifted manager: organizing a group photo while keeping large egos in the room not only satisfied but grateful. When I pointed out her strengths in those roles, she explained “That’s what I always do – it’s the easy stuff!” That gave us our biggest laugh of the evening, followed by nearly everyone admitting their techno-ignorance, impatience with managing differing personalities, and that the combination of her geeky-gift and people-management-savvy was something they longed for in their employees.

The talented young Technician/Manager took all this in, and with just the hint of a grin, said: “Well, maybe there are a couple of creative bones…” My response? Damn right. And defining your own Theatrical Intelligence is the fun part of being smart.

February 27, 2010 - 2 Comments;

Scenes from New Hampshire: My Writing Retreat

Hanover, NH and Norwich, VT

For 10 days last month I retreated to the New Hampshire town of my youth. I had become increasingly frustrated with my inability to work effectively on my book in the middle of my hectic city life, and decided to just vacate. “To get away from it all”.

What a cliché from the 80s! I didn’t understand the phrase then, and wondered now: “What do I want to get away from?”

Of course it wasn’t what I wanted to get away from, but rather what I was going to that made the retreat a great gift to myself.

Baker's Tower Room

The minute I walked into Dartmouth’s Baker Library I connected to a place of inspiration from my past: the scene where my writer self had lived for a while, blossomed briefly, then disappeared for decades.

The aura of respect for the written word still permeates the hallways. How I cherished that environment! I could see my Hanover High School classmates walking the halls – same bodies, different heads – relentlessly writing and re-writing term papers and stories, all the while pretending we were in college.

I’m happy to report that my writer self fully emerged in New Hampshire and made herself comfortable. She has continued to grow even after returning to New York and I’m confident will continue to do so.The book is depending on her.

New Hampshire Lilacs

It may not be necessary to do so, but I’ve decided to visit Hanover again in the end of March. And another trip is on my calendar for the end of May when the State Flower of New Hampshire is in bloom.

Inspiration from our youth is such a treasure, irresistible to touch, and to re-capture again and again and again.

January 22, 2010 - 5 Comments;

Happy Birthday Jim, Forever 47, On What Would Have Been Your 55th Birthday…

Jim in the Adirondacks, 2001

Those of you who read my blog may remember that I wrote about my brother Jim Sachs, who died in 2002 (see September 9th). Today is his birthday, which in our adult lives we used to share with childlike relish at midnight Eastern / 9pm Pacific time, as my birthday is the day after his.

Our enormous family spent as much time as possible with Jim in the months before he died. We accompanied him on one last trip to the Adirondack mountains, where we had spent every summer of our childhood, and we frolicked together at his home in Atherton, California.

One day during that last summer we were sitting alone by the pool in Atherton, and I read a little limerick I’d written for him:

 YOU, darling young brother named Jim,

Came into the world with such vim

And vigor and smarts

In all of your parts

That your four siblings welcomed you in.

You barely were two

When your family knew

That you had your own way of thinking

You’d play in the dirt

Wearing Chris or Pat’s shirt

Making toys and inventions (some stinking!)

And when you were nine

I remember the time

I thought you were rather deluded

You concocted some stuff

An object – enough

To prove to me what you’d concluded.

You explained it to me

With great patience and glee:

The widgets ’n’ stuff (on the side)

Worked together to make it

With no need to fake it

Add – multiply – subtract – and divide!

You went on to say

In the future some day

Smart people would show up to hock it.

Your further conclusion:

(I thought, a delusion)

We would each carry one in our pocket!

At twelve you were solving

The problems revolving

Thru Dartmouth’s math classes each week.

And word got around

That the kid from the town

Was the true and original geek.

Now I was much older

Clearly wiser and bolder

(The Dartmouth men were all mine)

But YOU had the gall

To break down the wall

Into Dartmouth’s mainframe! (So fine.)

Your room in our cellar

You (solo) the dweller

Had carpeted walls plus a lab

To produce your photography

Math and geography

Your Life – As You Saw It – Way Fab!

As we all got older

(Less wiser, less bolder)

You seemed to take off in a spin.

Your toys and inventions

Broke all known conventions:

Apple's Mouse, Laser Tag, Ted Ruxpin.

And now I see YOU

With your life partner Sue

And Jessica, Betsy and Chris:

You’ve taught us to squeeze

With such joy and such ease

Each minute with its unique bliss.

And so with this ditty

Altho itty-bitty

I’m striving to thank you and say

That you’ll be in my heart

And each memory part

For the rest of my life, every day.

Neither of us could speak for a while. Then Jim: “Vigor and smarts in ALL of my parts? Like that.”

We sat silently by the pool for a long time. Sometimes there are no words.

December 31, 2009 - 5 Comments;

My Blog-o-logical* Clock: To blog, or not to blog in 2010, that is the question…

*blog-o-logical: (ADJ) 2009 term coined by Ann Sachs; often paired with ‘clock’ (N). Refers to psychological stress caused by time-lapse between Theatrical Intelligence blog postings.

Mothers Day, 2009: I birthed my blog. My blog-o-logical clock had been ticking for 13 months, and I thought that after publishing the first couple of posts, the tick-tick-tocking would go away. Ha! That is the equivalent of saying that a mother’s work is complete after childbirth.

I’m writing a book called Theatrical Intelligence, a concept that uses the theatre production model to impact business performance. My blog is also called Theatrical Intelligence; its purpose is to send my ideas and experience about this new concept out into the world to see what comes back to me. It isn’t working.

Aye, there’s the rub! Virtually nothing is coming back. Why?

FIRST: I don’t blog enough. I post approximately two 500-word pieces a month which in no way makes me a serious blogger. Responsibilities to my company get top priority. Make no mistake: this is my choice. I co-own the business with my husband and no one is tying me to my desk.

SECOND: I have been uncharacteristically shy about “sending my ideas and experience out into the world.” I’ve hinted. I’ve joined Twitter, and tweeted as @TheatreSmart. I’ve asked my kids what they think. But I haven’t launched, in the sense of sending my own little rocket into space.

THIRD: Twitter has an irresistible little feature called a Posterous Page. It is, essentially, a mini blog that is as easy to use as picking up the phone. I gave in to this preposterous temptation in November, and have posted 28 pieces of personal/professional reports and observations on what I call my (Pre)Posterous Page.

That puts me exactly 3 distractions away from writing the book. Or are they distractions? My partner Roger Morgan believes that so-called-distractions are the gestation period of the creative process; natural and inevitable, given that the muse does not descend on demand. (I have encouraged Roger to write a book on innovative procrastination techniques. He tells me that my suggestion is in the gestation phase.)

Writing the book is the goal, I remind myself. Yet my blog-o-logical clock keeps ticking, an incessant reminder that I am committing blog-abuse! My blog is hungry and wants to be fleshed out, to grow, to become the catalyst for getting the book out in the world. Every day my inner critic (the 8^th role of Theatrical Intelligence, by the way) prevents me from posting deeply shallow articles.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all!

Cowardice does not fit me comfortably. Therefore, I proclaim that in 2010 I will:

FIRST: L-A-U-N-C-H the blog, such as it is, into the world

SECOND: Finish writing the B-O-O-K

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d!

Please join me as a conversation partner in this life-changing quest, and subscribe to this blog! Pass it along to friends and colleagues. And most important: share your feedback; one of the 6 Principles of Theatrical Intelligence is that “Failure is the quickest way to learn.” If I am off the mark in your opinion – let me know. That’s the way this dream will take flight.

Thank you. And may the new decade see your dreams come true.

December 7, 2009 - 2 Comments;

The Hug Culture Challenge: A Twitter-Theatre Alliance Made in Heaven

Twitter-Theatre Alliance

Theatre people hug. We get kidded about it a lot.

Recently, I ran into a stage manager I hadn’t seen for years. Our hello hug was a prolonged, emotional, jumping-up-and-down-squeeze, sort of like Hillary and Tipper at the 1992 Democratic convention. Our shared history returned in an instant as we laughed, cried and reminisced about toiling “in the trenches” on a new play that died too soon, and a theatre family that disbanded too quickly. We promised to get together again soon. Anyone who witnessed our greeting on the street might have concluded that we were long lost siblings.

Last week I had an Ah-Ha moment at a Twitter Meet-Up here in NYC. (Don’t know what a Twitter Meet-Up is? A gathering of people who follow each other on Twitter, meeting in person, often for the first time.) It is the third such event I have attended in as many months. I simply love them. One panelist after another shared their discovery that “…there is a person at the end of each tweet” and every one of them marveled that the minute they met a Twitter pal in person they hugged each other as if they were long lost pals. It was very meaningful that the virtual had become a reality; the theoretical had become personal. It struck me that the high of the “hug culture” was so new and exciting for them, and such an everyday occurrence for us.

Many of the early adopters of Twitter are self-described geeks who were brainy kids, inevitably the last ones to be chosen for sports teams. Their thrill was using technology to communicate, not sports. Likewise, those of us in the theatre were certainly not the captains of soccer or basketball teams; we had discovered the primal form of communication through the school plays.

I urge all Twitterers who have recently joined the hug culture to reach out to those from the theatre world who are struggling to understand the value of social media. We are terrific huggers but we don’t yet speak Twitter-ese, and we need you! I’m pretty sure that when you get to know us, the gap between our worlds will disappear: the hugs will take you to places beyond your dreams, and you will teach us how to navigate in cyberspace. It will be a great adventure for all of us! Crimson Christmas Heart bauble on gold thread

Geeks: if you don’t know a theatre person, let me know by posting a comment – I’ll match you up.

Theatre folks: if you don’t know someone who can tutor you on Twitter – ditto.

We hereby launch the Theatrical Intelligence Matchmaker Agency! Who’d-a-thunk it?

Actually, Twitter gives what the Theatre has always had: collaboration, intelligence, hugs, family, and fun.

It’s a match made in heaven.