Comments on Longenpalooza!

Do you have a life?

As in, interested and involved in local theater in a big American city and paid to write about it? Seems lively to me.

Jeez. Will you two fuck already and get it over with?

Tom -- Jesus Christ, you may well be right! Longenbaugh'd better be up to sexy-snuff, as he's, uh, sorta cut-doctor-losing so far. He'd def have to come outta nowhere, move-wise.

Dammit, I got so caught up in the idea I totally erased my sock-slippers joke about gramps @1.

nice concluding zinger.

I really couldn’t be more excited.

The rest of us will have to use our imaginations.

John Longenbaugh is smarter than you. Please treat him accordingly.

I read this post, scrolling down, thinking WET WET WET and then bam you hit him with both barrels. Good for you. the Ensemble regularly works miracles on $1.98 budgets. Ticket prices are a steal. Performances are electric. The sets are professional and SOOOO different from show to show, it's like you are not in the same space. My friend ELB put it this way, "I want to see every show they do. I don't care what it is."
Lightning, bottled, on 19th Ave E.

Dear Annie:

I think it's sweet the way you call me "Mr. Longenbaugh."

I didn't really feel like your heart was in this critique. It was actually sort of tepid. I'm sure you'll be able to muster some more indignation in the weeks to come though.

I'd write more, but unlike you, I don't get paid for writing in your blog.

Best,

John

Actually, I don't think Annie gets paid for writing for this blog either.

get him, annie! kick that scanctimonious turd and his tragic metaphoring right in the theatrical nuts! i wish at least one seattle theatre (yes, i said theatRE) would close with HIM still LOCKED INSIDE IT. then whe could bulldoze it for condos. saving perhaps pike/pine and ridding the world of john fucking loggenbaugh ot whatever. never mind. the weed just kicked in. but, GET HIM ANNIE!

Hmmm....Dude, just keep your gloves up. Trying to put extra spoonfuls of powerade powder into your nalgene isn't going to help.

Despite the obvious Hepburn/Tracey love-hate overtones between you two, I have to say in all honesty that John's "commentary" (technically, not the same as "criticism", at least as I understand the practice), is an old one, as arts writers in this town have been lamenting the loss of our "theatrical edge" since companies like Skid Road Theatre went belly up in the late 1970's. Theatre, like any other dynamic organism, has its own cycles of growth and decay; the past five or six years have perhaps seemed to many who've only been here a relatively short time as indicative of a decline in the overall health of the organism, but in reality, it's just been another dip in an on-going boom/bust cycle, and from what I can see at least, I think it's pretty much bottomed-out for this round.

Certainly, the death of any mid-tier organization is a blow to the larger community, if only because it tends to knock out significantly important rungs in the ladder that allow young artists to progress from the no-pay, shoe-string budgeted fringe, and progress upward to gradually more professional, and higher-paying companies. And yes, losing EST was a blow perhaps more keenly felt, because of all the effort put forth on the part of many people just a couple of years ago to bring it back from the brink, only to watch in shock and horror as its new board, most of whom had little or no experience in the non-profit realm, kneecapped the organization just when things were starting to look up again for it. That too is an old story, as similar incidents such as have occurred at On
The boards, 911 Media Arts, and ConWorks in recent years can testify.

And yet, despite the "recent" demise (c'mon The Bathhouse went under nearly 10 years ago! - take off the black armband already!) of these companies, there have also been some success stories, a few of which John's article mentioned. Taproot (which, BTW has considerably softened its "ecumenical imperitive" over the past four seasons, in favor of plays with more universally moralistic themes), Seattle Shakes, and Book-it all started out more-or-less as fringe companies that have grown to at least partially fill the niche vacated by older mid-tier companies; Tacoma Actors Guild, which two years ago was effectively as "dead" as EST is now, just hired a new artistic director and is on the way to full recovery. In the meantime, smaller semi-pro companies such as Mirror Stage, Strawberry Theatre, and Wooden O have emerged on the scene, while venerable fringe companies such as Annex, Live Girls! and Theater Schmeater (and throw in venue Theatre Off Jackson for good measure) have either recently built new spaces or are refurbishing older ones.

And this doesn't even include the proliferation of new start-ups, WET being only the most notable example. Throw in new, noteworthy troupes such as Balagan, Absurd Reality, BrownBox, Our American Theatre Company, Straight Edge Theatrics, and The Community Theatre, just to name a few. Top it off with a burgeoning local playwrighting scene, new spaces cropping up outside the CapHill/Lower Queen Anne theatre districts (Art's Theatre in Beacon Hill, Youngstown in West Seattle, Live Girls! in Ballard, Building 30 at Sandpoint, the Chapel in Wallingford, just off the top of my head), and it seems pretty clear to this 20+ year observer of the Seattle theatre scene that, while we've certainly had our share of bumps along the road, things are still pretty good in this town.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and inevitably new and emerging companies will rise to the challenge of filling empty niches in the ecosystem, thus keeping it vibrant and healthy. So, John's dire prognostications to the contrary, I'd have to say Seattle does in fact continue to deserve its well-earned reputation for being a "theatre town".

I just read this week's Seattle Weekly cover to cover (you guys delivered the Stranger late to my fave coffee shop in Fremont ...) and it's just going downhill faster and faster.

CC--

Re: criticism: I was referring to his forthcoming column. But John emailed me to say his column won't be criticism, so we can relax on that score. Though I'm equally excited to see him go head to head with Brendan in the theater news department.

John Longenbaugh is smarter than you. Please treat him accordingly.

So you know him personally?

Motion of necessity requires a change in perspective. But stop defining theatre in Seattle by its institutions. These organizations come and go and change personalities; the Empty Space Theatre that the Trustees closed in 2006 in no way resembled the Empty Space of 919 E. Pike in 1976. Could any of the Empty Space's 2006 Board members even name the Trustees of the Empty Space thirty years ago?

When these theaters go belly-up, and the volunteer Board members return to their real-world occupations, the artists and craftspeople, who did the heavy lifting - subsidizing the theatre through low or no wages, are the ones left behind.

The theatre artists of Seattle are hanging in there.

I love the fact that you guys have enough time during the day to stroke your own ego rather than produce good fact-based news that you take time out to hit those who do and to not respond to a reader who's annoyed that you aren't delivering on time. I went out Wednesday night to a restaurant on Broadway and I saw the paper being delivered at about 5 p.m. 5 p.m.! the Seattle Weekly had been out for well over six hours by that point... up the anty a little and get off of here and focus on your own paper!

Well, the Weekly is published a day earlier than we are. You Wednesday readers are the early birds.

Duh, read the publication date Stiffler - The Stranger has always listed it as Thursday.

In fact, The Weakly used to come out on Thursday too, but switched to Wednesdays a number of years back, presumably so as not to have to compete head-to-head with The Stranger for eyeballs on the same day.

This is a great Blog!

I love how no one addressed the rest of my comment, but went straight for the easy answers.

OK, Stiffler. To state the obvious, my job description encompasses editing, writing film and theater criticism, and blogging. I am only incidentally and occasionally a reporter of "good fact-based news." We have a news department. Go complain on their posts, if that's your real beef. I kind of doubt it is, because a) Longenbaugh's article was a think piece, and didn't contain much original, fact-based reportage; and b) Brendan Kiley wrote a fact-based column on the closure of the theater two full months before Longenbaugh's feature ran.