Theater critics Isaac Butler and Rob Weinert-Kendt unveiled their Critic-O-Meter blog last ­­­week, giving New York theater enthusiasts a one-stop site for play reviews and, in the words of the Los Angeles Times’ Steve Leigh Morris, laying bare a “philosophical divide between criticism that investigates and that which judges.”

Critic-O-Meter gathers any and all reviews it finds on a given play, translates each review into a letter grade, and averages the grades into an overall score. Butler and Weinert-Kendt then write a short blurb summing up the critical reaction. Further links offer visitors the option of browsing excerpts from the original reviews.

Morris’ piece explores feedback to Critic-O-Meter thus far, particularly in the critical community. Their responses have been divided: While some less-established reviewers express gratitude for the exposure (one gushes at the possibilities for “a lil' ol’ aspiring theater critic”), other writers view the blog disdainfully. A particularly apocalyptic critic sniffs that it is “evidence that the final stage in the devolution of the theater review has arrived.”

Morris has some beef with Critic-O-Meter—he rejects, for instance, a logic that assumes subjective reviews can be easily converted into objective grades. But even as he indulges in some editorializing on the blog’s value, he acknowledges that such compilations are already entrenched in our critical culture. After all, movie and music reviews have long drawn on thumbs, stars, and letter grades to assess a piece’s worth.

Morris ends, somewhat breezily, there: We like our criticism to tell us what’s good, and fast. Those who voice dissent, no matter how nobly, are “spitting into the wind.” While there’s doubtlessly a degree of truth to his conclusions, he leaves some strands of analysis underdeveloped. For instance, he might have examined the differences between the critics who support tools like Critic-O-Meter and those who greet it with handwringing. The detractors seem intent on maintaining a certain purity in theater criticism. It’s hard to tell whether this stems from an elitism about the theater world or more practical concerns about the future of their jobs. As reviewers in the fine arts increasingly take their cues from critics of more popular forms, these kinds of issues ought to be explored.

Image courtesy of Joel Telling, licensed under Creative Commons.

(Thanks, AltWeeklies.)

Theater has long been a catalyst for political change. The earliest Greek performances brought forth controversial topics such as power and greed of government, while today radical theater companies such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed work to present an alternative view of human history on both street and stage.

But because performing under hundreds of bright lights, handing out paper playbills, and serving coffee to patrons in foam cups is in no way forward-thinking, the Green Theater website now tracks the ways theaters around the world are incorporating environmental concerns into their everyday practices.

For example, the site details the initiative Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change, launched September 9 by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The plan estimates that London’s theater industry creates 55,000 tons of carbon emissions per year, the equivalent of 9,000 homes.  It concludes that if all actions recommended in the plan were taken, such as redesigning internal lighting systems, writing “green” policies into employee contracts, and implementing a battery recycling program, the industry could reduce carbon emissions by almost 60 percent by 2025—the equivalent of converting more than 5,000 London homes to zero-carbon.

Back in the states, Broadway is searching for ways to clean up its act without losing its signature lights. On June 11, a Town Hall meeting affectionately titled “It’s Easy Being Green” was held at the Gershwin Theater to give folks in the industry a chance to bounce ideas off each other. Though many ideas might seem trite, such as reusing water bottles and e-mailing memos, Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the Broadway League, announced the development of a committee to disseminate information for Broadway to go green. Melissa Wright of the New York City mayor’s office also announced that the city was in the process of putting together carbon inventories and an energy analysis of the Broadway community.

The site offers simple advice that any theater, or professional building for that matter, can follow to save both resources and money—especially important in an age where funding for the arts takes an unfortunate back seat. Terrence Jones, president and CEO of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, said in an interview on the site, “If you’re answering to a board of directors or shareholders—in our case, a board of directors—that’s pretty compelling evidence that not only is it good for people and good for the earth, it’s good for the budget.”

If you’re planning to see a show in the upcoming winter months, don’t rely on the theater to turn up the thermostat. Bring a sweater. It looks like they’re catching on.

Image by  John Kannenberg , licensed by Creative Commons.

Writing for the new issue of make/shift (article not available online), Keidra Chaney profiles the welfareQUEENS, a performance art group that aims to “make poor women of color visible and vocal in the U.S. dialogue on poverty,” adding their stories and experiences to the opinions of policy makers and “experts” who have rarely (if ever) experienced poverty themselves. (The welfareQUEENS’ name, of course, is a reclamation of the hideous term popularized by Ronald Reagan during his first presidential campaign.) Chaney writes:

At a time when the gap between the wealthy and the poor seems insurmountable, poverty remains misrepresented in both mainstream and independent media. Poor people, often demonized as criminals or infantilized as charity cases, are rendered silent. The voice of experience is quieted in favor of the voice of so-called expertise. Academic scholars, social workers, and pundits are allowed to represent the poor in the media while those who actually experience poverty daily go unquoted.

Back in May, I pointed to an excellent FAIR study that backs up this argument. In fact, the study notes, “If you’re poor and want to get on the nightly news, it helps to be either elderly or in the armed forces.”

The welfareQUEENS are neither, so they communicate their stories another way: Last year, the group wrote a play based on their experiences with poverty, then performed it at the U.S. Social Forum and at San Francisco’s Brava Theater.

Chronologically structured around the experiences of three generations of women, the play looks at the herstory of the welfare system. The performers speak of the lives of their grandmothers and mothers, who experienced domestic abuse, discrimination as single parents and women of color, and separation from their families through domestic work.

The Bay Area–based welfareQUEENS are part of the POOR News Network, a grassroots media organization that includes the online POOR Magazine and tons of other poverty-related projects.

For more alt-press dispatches from Blog Action Day, click here .

For nearly ten years, Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig have been staging productions in their own backyard—literally. The Off-Leash Area Contemporary Performance Works is headquartered in the couple’s garage, which they converted into a 38-seat theater.

But there’s nothing amateurish about the company’s production values, and with more than a dozen original productions to their name featuring luminaries of the Twin Cities theater scene, Ilse and Herwig are garnering acclaim for their performances and set designs.

The garage shows are still intimate, informal affairs: “While we have the full support of our neighbors, to minimize neighborhood disturbance, attendance to events at Our Garage is by reservation only,” the Off-Leash Area website reads. “After each performance the audience is invited to Our Backyard to visit with their fellow patrons and the artists for an evening by the fire pit and for refreshments.”

I suppose it’s this sort of ingenuity that has allowed the Twin Cities to boast more theater seats per capita than any American city outside New York.

The Jury opens next month in the Off-Leash garage; check the website for showtimes.

Image by dmealiffe, licensed by Creative Commons.

We all know how much fun it is to gather around a television with like-minded friends and shout snide things at the unpalatable speeches being broadcast. Now imagine doing that in a theater filled with 300 drunk liberals. 

That’s precisely what I did last Thursday, at the tail end of Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead’s multimedia satire, Shoot the Messenger. The show holds weekly performances in New York City, where Winstead and her ensemble spoof the week’s headlines during a parodic morning news show called Wake Up World (“America’s only 6-hour morning show!”)

But last week, in dubious honor of the RNC, Winstead’s troupe brought their show to her native Minneapolis for three nights at the Parkway Theater. Each evening’s events went beyond mere theater to include live feeds from the RNC and musical performances from revered protest singer Billy Bragg and local legends Dan Wilson, Jim Walsh, and Grant Hart.

Before the show, the Parkway’s seats were mostly full of chatty people munching popcorn as the onstage screen showed eminently believable ads for the “24/7 Infonewsment Network’s” fake shows, such as Poll Dancing with sexy anchorwoman Emily Rackcheck and MedicAsian with Dr. Vijay Jay.

Winstead and her co-star Baron Vaughn starred as Wake Up World’s chipper, clueless hosts Hope Jean Paul and Davis Miles. Hope Jean Paul is, like her creator, from the Twin Cities area: “I’m originally from Coon Rapids,” she chirped, to which Vaughn (who is African American) replied, “Wow! Sounds like my kind of place!” Naughty laughter erupted and Winstead replied, “Now, Davis, try not to be offended by the name, just because it contains the word Rapids.”

That joke set the tone for the show, whose mix of absurdity and topical satire has made Winstead’s more famous brainchild the Daily Show a media phenomenon for over a decade. Wake Up World, even more so than the Daily Show or its cousin the Colbert Report, is an acerbic and overtly partisan takedown of our leaders’ hypocrisies and the 24-hour news cycle’s vapid excesses.

In true morning-show form, Winstead and Vaughn hyped insipid segments like Lumpy the Cancer-Sniffing Dog, who they promised would find the one lucky audience member with a malignant tumor. A pro–big oil energy “expert” was brought in to discuss his new book The Town Pump: Alternatives to Alternative Energy. And a member of private security contractor Blackwater sat down with the hosts to discuss his new miracle fitness regimen: “Extreme Waterboard Abs.”

Pulchritudinous newsgal Emily Rackcheck delivered hourly news updates in a low-cut sweater and miniskirt. Bloviators Hunter Carlsbad (wearing a bowtie) and Daniels Midland (host of the Complication Room) shouted at each other during a Crossfire-style segment touted as “a debate between both sides of the political spectrum: the Far Right and the Right of Center!”

Winstead also tailored the show to the region with pre-taped biographical puff pieces on Laurie Coleman and Michelle Bachman subtitled “Behind the Taut Canvas.” There were ads for “a 31-part investigative series” called White in America and a gauzy video appeal from Sarah Silverman for charitable donations to private contracting firms.

After Wake Up World concluded, the evening shifted gears for its second segment, where Winstead reappeared as herself and sat down with liberal talk-radio host Ed Schultz to discuss the RNC—specifically Palin, whose fur-coat photo Winstead captioned “Wasilla DeVille.” Schultz was witty and affable, assuring us that McCain’s campaign would buckle under the weight of its own hypocrisy: “Look, everything’s going to be fine. And if it’s not, then we get another vice president who might shoot someone in the face!”

This marathon mix of political discourse, satire, and campy theatre was only a prelude, however, for the evening’s main event: a massive group viewing of John McCain’s speech. The audience, now well-lubricated and ready to laugh not so much with satirical glee as incredulous derision, filed back into the theater as McCain’s hagiographic video was playing on the giant screen, which had been tuned to MSNBC’s live feed from the convention.

As the man himself took the stage, the theater audience erupted with boos and squeals. The people around me gladly obeyed the rules of a drinking game Winstead had announced earlier: that we hoist our glasses every time the word maverick was used. Genuine cheers burst forth when MSNBC’s cameras zoomed in on the IVAW and Code Pink protestors who had infiltrated the hall.

As the speech dragged on and John McCain’s smiling rictus became increasingly creepy, the Parkway crowd got rowdier and my convention fatigue peaked. Around the moment when the last poorly programmed image appeared behind the penis-shaped stage, I fled the theater for some fresh air. When I went back inside a few minutes later, I encountered a completely different scene which cleared my head, the perfect antidote to the televised nightmare we’d just seen: Dan Wilson was playing his ubiquitous and charming hit single “Closing Time” to a much smaller crowd gathered near the front of the theater, kicking off one of Jim Walsh’s famous Hootenannies. Then Grant Hart took the stage, and the aging avatars of the Minneapolis counterculture settled further into their seats to watch their heroes perform, resting after a long evening—and week—of politicized sensory overload.

Kathryn Blume’s traveling one-woman show The Boycott raises profound questions, such as, “What do men prefer, gas-guzzling motor vehicles or their wives’ carnal affections?” Blume’s monologue, based on the Aristophanes comedy Lysistrata, follows First Lady Lyssa Stratton as she singlehandedly tries to end global warming. Lyssa vows to abstain from sex until her husband solves climate change, and she urges other women to do the same. Check out Blume’s monologue here:

(Thanks, Orion.)

 —Morgan Winters

Last weekend I went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Housed in a gleaming new building, the Guthrie is one of the premier regional theaters in the country.

Chekhov’s play is filled with privileged, angst-ridden writers, directors, and actors, all desperately trying to convince each other how miserable their lives are. The Royal Shakespeare Company managed to make this funny, exposing the absurdity of the bohemian bourgeois depression.

The characters were obsessed by their own inferiority to Russian greats like Tolstoy and Turgenev—a kind of vanity, since they believed they should be as great as those men—and allowed this obsession to ruin their lives. I and other theatergoers laughed at the melodramatic characters, surrounded by wealth, crying in abject sorrow.

Then yesterday, I picked up the New York Times book review and read this passage by Marcel Theroux: “Tolstoy thought that The Seagull was a terrible play, and that Chekhov should never have put a writer in it. ‘There aren’t many of us, and no one is really interested,’ Tolstoy told a friend.”

Maybe that’s what makes writers so depressed. —Bennett Gordon