Form vs. Content

So I'm frustrated.

My philosophy has generally been: I'm happy to perform; I'm honored to perform; I'll take any opportunity to perform that I can get. It's been one of embracing, as it were, the very "Power of positive thinking" that I've been so critical of in my writing.

Last season, I produced a show called "Pissing on the Great Wall." I approached it with the same degree of intensity that I usually do; months of work, writing, previewing, crafting. Found a venue, and essentially said "I'll take any open slot you have." I took Monday nights. In February. And after several shows with single-digit audiences, I had to finally say: "I can't do this anymore."

Hence: season eight. It's been a bizarre process: one that began with me sitting down with various artists who had managed to achieve success at the Fringe-level world, as well as successfully producing a year-round season. For the record? I found three. And one thing that struck me: my company is older than all three of them.

The thing is, I've always placed my faith in content: if I focus on developing an excellent script, then nothing else matters. Not the costumes. Not the presentation. If I produce enough, long enough, I'll find the audience.

One of the realizations I've been making -- one of those painfully obvious ones that I have been, for whatever reason, resistant to -- is that presentation matters. If there's threads hanging off of the costumes? If the sets were thrown together at Wal-Mart? It's completely irrelevant whether the script is excellent or terrible, because those other elements are so distracting that the audience never reaches the script.

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I did an audition for Theatre Mu recently. Handed my resume to the director, who expressed amazement at the sheer number of shows that I've written/directed. Which neatly illustrated the divide between various theatre arenas to me. After all, nearly all of my colleagues have written/directed that many shows; that's what Fringe-level theatre artists do. But at the mid-level theatre world, it's unheard of. It's astonishing. There's a completely different measure of success.

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So I've been spending the vast bulk of my energy, in the past couple of weeks, on presentation; on graphic design; on marketing-speak. It's frustrating to me, because I feel like it's wasted time. I know it's not -- it's critically important -- but it's hard for me to avoid the observation that I'm currently spending more time talking about the shows than I am creating them.

Moreover, my process hasn't changed. I'm working on developing material, exactly the same way I have for the past eight years. The shows aren't any different (beyond the expanding level of skill that inevitably must take place). But I'm getting press; I'm getting reservations; I'm getting a different kind of response, because the presentation is different.

These are all extremely good things. But as someone fixated on content over form; it's difficult not to have some degree of resistance to it.