Italics are mine

Price increase at the Roundabout

I read in The New York Times last week that the Roundabout Theater is increasing its prices, under the eye-catching headline "It may be a nonprofit theater, but the tickets look for-profit." I've been to the Roundabout a few times before and, as a matter of fact, not only had I not realized it was nonprofit, but in hindsight it actually made perfect sense to me to hear that it's struggling financially.

Here is what I know of the Roundabout, in one sentence: the theaters it operates are lovely, the revival of Anything Goes was excellent, and the marketing team is, in my humble opinion, significantly better than whoever selects the plays. I discovered that last point when, in a moment of boredom or shortsightedness, I bought a ticket for Common Pursuit in the spring of 2012.  What you need to know about Common Pursuit is that it's a play of unbearable predictability about snobbish, grandiose students in Cambridge, England who want to change the world with their literary magazine and ultimately don't become anything much. (Cardboard characters from the beginning to the end.) Now, I studied Latin and Russian in high school - I can be snob with the best of them. If I say the play was unbearable, you can trust me on that one.

I still remember two elderly ladies chatting with each other while they were trudging toward the exit after the performance, with one explaining to the other that she wouldn't renew her subscription, and I couldn't blame her. In fact, I thought the talent of the marketing team made the situation much worse because the marketing materials, which always follow the same approach (I get all their brochures in the mail) connected the play with some important universal feelings (I think for Common Pursuit it was following one's dreams; for now-playing Dinner with Friends we get "Tony winner Pam McKinnon... directs this modern masterpiece about the path you choose, the millions you don't and the detours that make it worth the ride"; for forthcoming Violet, "Along the way, Violet forms unlikely friendships with her fellow riders, who teach her about beauty, love, courage and what it means to be an outsider"), and then, after reeling the audience in, letting the audience alone to face this trainwreck. Ever since Common Pursuit I've eyed any advertising material from the Roundabout with suspicion precisely because the marketing team is consistently so good, and I always have to wonder about the hype. (I did enjoy The Big Knife last year. The play has its flaws but the production itself was outstanding.) 

If the numbers in the New York Times are to be believed, I may not be the only one:  the article states that "Roundabout is facing the biggest squeeze after a $5.5 million deficit last year on a $60 million budget, a loss that previously had not been made public," and "Roundabout has lost millions of dollars because of a decline in subscribers: people who buy seats to multiple shows in advance. That number has stabilized at 28,000, Mr. Haimes [the Roundabout's artistic director since 1990] said, compared with roughly 45,000 in 2008."

While there are certainly demographic trends at work, with younger audiences reluctant to commit far in advance to going to the theater a specific night of the week, losing over a third of the subscriber base in six years doesn't appear to be the sort of challenge that should be answered by raising the top ticket price to $162 (the highest level ever). This is going to make audience members even more reluctant to commit to spending such amounts of money before they have seen the reviews. But don't take my word for it - who am I to tell people how to run theaters anyway? Read any book by Kennedy Center's (soon-to-be former) President Michael Kaiser instead. The Turnaround Artist in particular provides compelling stories of how well-intentioned cultural organizations ran aground - their long-term survival at stake -  before Kaiser stepped in and, along with dedicated staff members, was able to, you guessed it, turn the situation around. I'm currently reading his newest book, The Cycle, where he touches upon crucial concepts such as programmatic and institutional marketing. I was particularly impressed by the marketing efforts he describes for some of the festivals hosted by the Kennedy Center during his tenure.  

While the Roundabout has tried to build connections with audiences by hosting conversations with the cast on some performance nights (among other things), and while programmatic marketing has been superb (perhaps too much so), I can't help but feel institutional marketing has been lacking. The Roundabout's nonprofit identity is left unspoken in the promotional materials, including on the website's landing page, so even people who'd support nonprofit theater in general don't particularly feel invested in its success. I had to browse through the "Teach and Learn" page to become vaguely aware of some educational efforts - although the write-up is very generic and thus singularly underwhelming (and I love, love, love the idea of bringing theater to schools and transforming students' lives through theater - but where are the testimonials?). Most unfortunate is that the Roundabout does put together excellent brochures to help students understand the plays - a rare, commendable effort in the theater's scene - but you have to click through several links before you get to them. Teachers may make the effort; many others who would have benefited (including non-students) will not even be aware those resources exist. (Here is the brochure for The Winslow Boy, which received rave reviews this past winter.)

And yet after writing 900 words about the flaws in the Roundabout's website and its pricing & marketing strategies, I can't help but feel renewed admiration for this remarkable New York institution. (Click here if you'd like to become a member. I'm particularly intrigued by the "Friends of Roundabout Playreading Series", which reminds me of a similar effort by the Comedie-Francaise in Paris to engage with audiences beyond the traditional "post/pre-performance chat with the cast" that just about any self-respecting theater seems to be doing at the moment.) Although raising prices was a bad idea, the Roundabout has a lot going for it. It's too bad its story and current efforts aren't better told in the media.

PBS American Masters on Dalton Trumbo

 I attended a TEDx event in DC last year where a PBS staffer happened to give out free sample (review) copies of PBS programs during a break, so I picked the sole copy of a documentary I had meant to see for a long time: the American Masters episode on Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the "Hollywood 10" who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 and was blacklisted for many years as a result.

Since he couldn't find work in Hollywood anymore, he first moved his family to Mexico - which proved to be a bad idea - and then he wrote screenplays under assumed names or with the help of his friends who served as "front". The stress was significant, in particular when his youngest daughter was ostracized by her peers following their parents' orders, but Trumbo apparently never wavered. In the end he was one of the lucky ones: he had loyal friends, won Oscars under others' names and lived long enough to see the end of the blacklist toward him in 1960. Others died before the same could happen to them. Those who didn't had to fight their own drawn-out battles to see their own blacklist lifted.

The documentary is remarkably well done. Movies stars such as Donald Sutherland read/act letters written by Trumbo, which adds a "Hollywood" flavor to the movie, based on a play by Trumbo's son Christopher. It forces us to think about an always important theme: why do some people choose to do what is right at great personal cost while others prefer to make easy choices and behave disgracefully? (If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know this is also a theme I explore in some of my fiction, but now is not the time to plug my novella.) While Trumbo's story has a happy ending overall, he was only awarded the Academy Award for the screenplay of the 1953 movie Roman Holiday starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in 1993. By then he had been dead seventeen years.

Here is the trailer to the PBS documentary:

 

Jordan Pavlin in PW

(Photo credit: Poets & Writers pw.org) I came across this feature on long-time Knopf editor - recently promoted to executive editor - Jordan Pavlin online - it was first published in the September 2013 issue of Poets & Writers, and is currently available for free on the web. What I like about this lengthy interview of Pavlin, who has edited famous writers such as Jennifer Egan, Nathan Englander, Karen Russell and Julie Orringer, is the absolute love of the book-publishing process that shines through - the clear commitment she has to her writers and her obvious pride she feels when their books succeed in the world.

The interview has a good balance of details and stories (Pavlin's beginnings in the business, some of the books she has edited recently, struggles about book covers) and generalities about the business that will be helpful to young writers. Pavlin comes across as very gracious toward the people she has worked with - mentors as well as assistants - and while book publishing will always remain a business where books have to sell copies, I enjoyed being reminded of its softer side, where editors hope to help develop an author's career and work tirelessly to make the book as good as it can be.

(Of course in today's environment not every editor has that luxury, especially if she doesn't work in one of the big houses, but people don't decide to pursue a career in book publishing for the acclaim or the money - they do it because they love books and dream of being that person who brings into the world a book that will truly inspire and affect readers. Then sometimes reality gets in the way.)

The article made for a really informative feature, and as a bonus Pavlin mentions a few of her newer authors with star potential - ideal if you'd like to know before the rest of the crowd what the next bestsellers are likely to be. Highly recommended.   

Getting the Shadows Right

I struggled with the title of this post for a while. Since my last two posts were on Julie Orringer and Thomas Mallon, two writers known for their high-caliber historical fiction, I knew I wanted to discuss my own fiction writings for today's post - especially Isolde 1939, where my main protagonist is a made-up character inspired by a real-life opera singer who sang for the Nazis, and my current project, where I write fiction about well-known musicians who fled the Third Reich. I usually come up with a title for the blog post almost immediately, but this one stumped me. I had a very good idea of what I wanted to express but couldn't summarize it into a few words, until the words practically wrote themselves: getting the shadows right. 

I used the fictitious character of Yvonne Chevallier in Isolde 1939 because the opera singer her story is loosely based on - Germaine Lubin - saw her career irremdiably tainted after the war by accusations she had fraternized with the enemy during the Occupation. She lost her French citizenship, lived in Switzerland for several years. She also sang Isolde at the Bayreuth festival in 1939 - a festival that was attended every year by Hitler himself, a long-time friend of Winifried Wagner's (the composer's daughter-in-law) and had an active operatic career during the war, including in 1941 when she sang Isolde in Paris with the Berlin State Opera and Herbert von Karajan.

If you do a Google search on her name and Hitler's, you'll find a picture where she sits at his feet at the Bayreuth festival. A French biographer who wrote about her in the 1970s absolves her of any wrongdoing. Saying that the woman had a complex personality is an understatement. I chose to use a fictitious character instead of because, if you are going to give center stage to real-life controversial characters,  you absolutely have to get the shadows right - you have to see the real person and not the person you wish he or she had been just because it would make for a better story. Who am I to pretend I know for sure what Germaine Lubin did and why she did it? In this case, using a fictional character seemed an absolute necessity.

For the project I am currently working on, on the other hand, the real-life protagonists are very positive characters: multi-dimensional people without a doubt, but with high integrity, a compelling personal story, and a network of similarly famous friends. I am still debating how many names to change, but it is not as important as in Isolde 1939 - because my characters and the people who have inspired them are fundamentally good people. The book will not be on their shadow the way Yvonne Chevallier's (shadow) drives a lot of what she does during the war.

Recognizing the inherent goodness of a character is not nearly as fraught as shining a light on her dark side. It is also more difficult to portray deep flaws in biographies since it may leave the reader with the impression that the author is "finding excuses" for his subject, who may have caused tremendous hardship to living people and not be deserving of the slightest excuse whatsoever. On the other hand, writing fiction about positive people who really existed allows members of the general public to become more aware of a real-life story they may not have known, while making it come to life thanks to the liberties fiction writers can take by creating lively dialogue or tightening the story line. I'm not sure when I'll be done, but it should make for an interesting new book.

Thomas Mallon's Historical Fiction

 I first discovered Thomas Mallon's work when he gave a seminar at the Muse and the Marketplace festival in Boston a few years ago, and bought his book Fellow Travelers on the spot. Later I picked up Watergate, which was about the same time that I learned he lives in DC (he teaches in the English department at GWU) - a great choice in retrospect, since he writes so much about the city and its inhabitants, fictitious and otherwise. The sense of detail in his books is remarkable. I love how he is able to write about famous historical characters and seem credible in the thoughts he ascribes to them - neither sycophantic nor disparaging, just exactly the way they were - from what I have been able to cross-reference from other reads, for instance when it comes to Alice Roosevelt Longworth in Watergate.

Mallon reads an excerpt about Longworth in this short video below (uploaded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences).

He makes what he does look effortless, but using historical characters in works of fiction is an exercise fraught with pitfalls. How do you honor the essence of the real person you are writing about? Of course, you have to do a lot of research, but that doesn't guarantee you will pull it off. And sometimes you forget to check the tiniest details. I remember how he mentioned, at the Muse and Marketplace event, that he had been approached, at an event where he was promoting Fellow Travelers, by someone who pointed at the cover of the book (a black and white photograph depicting two men, shown above) and saud the younger one was a relative.

The book describes a relationship between two men, so the cover is supposed to descrive those two men, but the art work is actually a real photograph from the times. No one had ever expected a surviving relative to come forward. It turned out the person liked the book and was happy that the memory of the man, now deceased, was living on through the cover of the book, but things could have turned out differently. Mallon's talk helped me articulate how important it was to show respect for the real people who have been part of history, perhaps not in a deferential manner (you don't write good stories if you need to be deferential toward your characters) but in a rigorous manner - respecting who they were, not making them do questionable things or things against character just because it'd help your story. And frankly I don't remember what else Mallon said that day, but the anecdote and the message stayed with me - which is more than I can say of many of the talks I attend.

For a longer video of him, the broadcast of his appearance at the 2012 National Book Festival (uploaded by the LibraryOfCongress YouTube account) is also a great watch.