Most of the New Leaf and Curse of the Starving Class team met up recently at one of our favorite haunts for a fantastic first read through  together.  We gathered ourselves around some good food and a few drinks and listened to these incredible actors breathe life into the dangerously beautiful words of Sam Shepard.  Rehearsals start on March 2nd and we can’t wait to roll up our sleeves and dig.

Special thanks to the awesome folks at Rocco’s Cafe & Pizzeria ( http://www.roccoschicago.com/)

After closing the books on The Man Who Was Thursday, we find ourselves with more pleasant surprises – our ticket sales and two comparatively modest but vital grants have paid the entire production budget for our spring production of Curse of the Starving Class, and go a long way towards funding the first production of the 2010-2011 season. If you have followed the national conversation on theater funding in the last few years, you’ll know that funding a theater primarily with ticket sales is highly unusual. What is going on?

The fact is, as we look ahead to our tenth year in production, New Leaf has become uniquely efficient in developing low-cost production infrastructure (we own most of our equipment, keeping our rental budgets low), exploring non-traditional venue relationships (the unique Lincoln Park Cultural Center – our home – continues to shape our company and cut us a sweet deal that allows a higher level of risk-taking), and leveraging little-used resources with partner theaters and organizations (collectively, we also work at the Goodman, Chicago Shakespeare, Marriott Lincolnshire, and many others, and we do our darndest to maintain relationships built on trust with all of ‘em). We’re good at finding reused resources rather than buying them new and tossing them in the garbage. We have friends who help us, and we help them in return.

In addition, we like solving problems with conceptually simple but powerful resource-friendly solutions. Those of you who saw The Man Who Was Thursday will remember the lamppost that helped Austin Oie and Joel Ewing guide the audience delightfully through our space, or the small collection of rocks from January’s Touch that set designer Michelle Lilly O’Brien actually pulled from and then returned to a stream bed. Those stones were transformed seamlessly with light, staging, and storytelling from simple objects into a powerful floating platform in an infinite void, or the heart-stopping ghost of an unseen character. These kinds of solutions are challenging and energizing to find, because they work elegantly, are artistically exciting, and as a result are financially achievable. Yes, that’s right, we said it: elegant solutions are always cheaper to produce than multiple, often literal, solutions. That kind of craftsmanship is worth discovering.

There is of course one key flaw in New Leaf’s current operational model, and that’s the fact that we’re living on borrowed time. We give nearly every spare chunk of income to our guest artists, the folks who devote weeks to our productions, and yet we still offer some of the lowest fees in the industry. Indeed, New Leaf’s company members go entirely unpaid for as much as 20 – 40 hours of work per week. If you’ve worked in or near a Chicago creative industry, you can also see the effect that this vacuum of financial support for the individual artist in Chicago has on the entire culture. As artistic fees are sacrificed to production budgets, venue rental fees, and licensing costs, a kind of 10-year brain drain pattern sets in. As an artist develops in their career, many “outgrow” Chicago – they move on to a career in New York or LA or less saturated regional markets to obtain more sustainable or more lucrative work. In Chicago, we experience the loss of our core talent, the loss of institutional knowledge, and over decades, we erode our cultural memory. And it doesn’t have to be that way: most expat artists we know have had to make all-too-familiar choices between their love of Chicago’s creative melting pot and their need for financial security. Even William Peterson, whose career developed in Chicago’s Victory Gardens theatre, recently left an incredibly lucrative turn on CSI for an opportunity to rejoin VG and Steppenwolf theatre as a featured artist. There is love for this community and what we do here, but somehow we’re not connecting creative professionals with the financial systems and infrastructure that could easily support them and keep them here in Chicago.

But for the city at large, weathering the economic upheaval despite a daily onslaught of volatile market and governmental changes, the central question that must be asked now is: Why is supporting a community of artists a priority? To be honest, we’ve asked ourselves the same thing. Why do theaters clamor for funding while local institutions that alleviate hunger or poverty or the effects of war or abuse go underfunded? We’ve asked what theaters have done to provide more than just indirect benefit to the community or entertainment to the very wealthy.

Our critical thinking goes deeper that that. We’ve asked how effective a theatrical call to social action could ever be – isn’t that just telling the audience what to do in a way that undercuts their enthusiasm and passion and ultimately erodes the success of the call to action? The fact is, we as a theater company don’t have complete answers to these systemic problems. But we also know that as a collective – our network of artists, audience, and supporters – we actually do have the potential to find answers for these and related issues, explore them in depth, and align energy behind them. If nothing else, theatre is a powerful and comparatively low-cost reminder that we must constantly reevaluate our perspectives, priorities and assumptions or face disaster. But it is also fun. It is radical. It is liberating. It is cathartic. It is surprising. It shakes our minds and souls loose.

A way forward became clear as we looked beyond our work to our lives: our theater must move away from a patronage model of funding and towards a partnership model. I don’t think any of our patrons would argue that art and the artists that make it couldn’t use more support in our society, both financial and social – we have all seen the ancillary benefits that are generated when you connect an artist with their passion – beauty, clarity, revelation, emotional release, simplicity, dialogue. But we also believe that society, corporate culture, and community organizations could directly and immediately benefit from a creative integration of the artistic process and the byproducts of artistic thinking into their work and daily experience. Most of America’s exposure to art is the finished “product” – a couple hours of watching a play, taking in a recital, or browsing paintings at a museum. If what we offer is an experience, our product is not the result, it is the entire experience from concept to creation to completion. And audiences routinely miss or are restricted from the meat of what that experience has to offer.

At New Leaf, we know how to integrate people into a rewarding artistic process that engages them on their own terms. We regularly offer that experience to our artists – while we haven’t always been able to compensate them, we have always invested in them. We have always taken pride in supporting the continued success and creative development of our artists on their terms, and we’re ready to extend that philosophy to our donors. We know how to provide creative encouragement, share professional relationships and connections, create opportunities beyond the walls of our theater, and even provide training opportunities to convert our theatrical and technical storytelling skills into skills applicable in any sector. The amazing thing that we’re finding is that by making that human investment and providing the right opportunities for artists to connect with the right story or audience, it sets off an actual, observable chain reaction of community alignment, inspiration, and development. The next logical step is finding a seat for the audience and funders of the theater to go along for that part of the ride.

So while this might be an odd pill to swallow, we believe it to be true: the artistic process – whether it is storytelling, design, writing, composing or collaboration – can be applied to any human connection or craft beyond the theater. I’ve seen this first hand in folks as seemingly removed from the world of theatrical storytelling as mortgage brokers, real estate agents, food banks and social advocacy organizations through my work with Marshall Creative. This isn’t about running folks through a team-building improv treadmill; it’s about thinking through problems and human nature creatively, drawing new connections between our passions, and creating a new story – a new framework for understanding – through bold action, communication, and design. Other organizations can benefit from the rich generation of experience and the investment in detail that theater offers, and our communities will be stronger for it. And, in the process, we may also hit upon a way of holding off that creative riptide and reconnecting artist with community and its need for creative thinkers. New Leaf can’t solve systemic issues like that alone, but through successful connection of existing assets like space, artisans, and community organizations, New Leaf is already reimagining what is possible on that critical hyper-local scale within close-knit neighborhoods and tribes. We’re redefining the reach that a neighborhood organization that exists to tell stories can have. And we invite you to add your voice to our process, and benefit from our thoughts, action, and creative force in your vision.

YOUR NEED

You have goals for yourself or your organization. There are challenges – roadblocks, a lack of resources, a lack of energy or a lack of focus, a lack of cooperation and common initiative. People get in each others’ way or they don’t share a common understanding or even language. And in our neighborhoods (even in Lincoln Park, where New Leaf makes our home), our history is being forgotten as the tension grows between the old and the new.

There is opportunity to build stronger connections among any group of people that learns from our shared past. We can tell stories that bring us together, even as the pace of our active lives tries to pull us further apart and isolate us.

This is where a partnership with an artistic organization that looks at the world through a different set of lenses can help. This is where the value of a local artist really lives – in the way that they carefully and creatively whittle away the piece of wood you don’t need, leaving only the part you do. They see the things that distract us from getting the broader message, and they reshape images and colors and sounds into greater clarity. In a world and society that prioritizes and measures financial profit, the artist prioritizes and measures the full experience of life, beauty, and understanding. They package intellectual messages into emotional experiences that allow us to internalize, to feel, to dream through our daily challenges in new ways. Artists team up with us to help process and shape our experience of the world.

OUR NEED

For nearly ten years, New Leaf has focused on honing our abilities to do the job of an artist really, really well. That process doesn’t ever end, but we’ve seen our successes become more consistent and the careers of our artists blossom in incredible ways in the last three years. The amazing thing is, in all that time of prioritizing the development of our body of work and the honing of our process, how close New Leaf really is to financial sustainability. In a recent company meeting, we put our heads together and drafted a financial picture of what an ideal New Leaf season budget would look like. We estimated the total, pie-in-the-sky amount of funding we would need as a company to provide solid, sustainable compensation for our artists and management in order to retain rich relationships with audience, partners, and artists. The total is a goal that surprised us in how reachable it is: $56,000. That’s it. That number still puts New Leaf as one of the smallest budgets in town, but it vastly increases New Leaf’s capacity for communication, transparency, and most importantly supporting the long-term development of a vital and permanent artistic community that is vitally connected with the entire community. We’ve already proven that New Leaf knows how to make a little go a very long way. With New Leaf’s commitment to conceptual efficiency that revitalizes found spaces, that small amount of money allows us to provide artists with compensation that matches that of theaters many times our size, and helps New Leaf become a part of an artist’s reason for staying in Chicago.

We discovered another thing about ourselves in that meeting: We don’t want to grow in size, we want to grow in scope. We love and indeed depend on the intimate diamond-in-the-rough nature of our stagings, and the unique environments we craft out of spaces like the Lincoln Park Cultural Center. That relationship with space, more than anything else, is our identity, and we don’t want to change it. Growth at too fast a rate would change our potential for sustainability. Where we would like to grow: we want to keep our artists around and help develop their careers and their work for another ten years, and we want to use those valuable artistic sensibilities and active audience participation in the artistic process to effect some real, tangible improvement and renewed connection in our community.

THE SOLUTION

Here’s where it gets good, folks. Clap your hands and rub them together. Since New Leaf is committed to working on that small, handcrafted scale, we’re therefore looking for a limited number of partners – 20, to be exact – who are passionate about our work and whose work we are also passionate about. At two levels of partnership, New Leaf will collaborate with our donors on projects initiatied by both New Leaf and donors. We want to get to know you, get to know what you trying to accomplish in your lives and in your communities, and to explore new and potentially unconventional ways of collaborating to craft tailored benefit experiences for each donor that use those shared goals as a starting point.

For $50 each month we will offer standard membership or subscriber fare, such as gifts and tickets to all our performances (which, after all, remain the core of what we do and what we create) but we will also offer unprecedented access to our artists and artistic processes, which have a range of capabilities that go far beyond the production of shows. We will shape opportunities for our members to learn or utilize the skills of our artists in their own work, and create lasting and valuable relationships from those opportunities.

At a higher level of a one-time gift of $5000, we will also offer the opportunity for a New Leaf-curated event for your organization (we plan a mean brunch), discounts for your friends to allow you to share (and, sure, show off) the theater that you helped create, and a gift tailored to your interests and passions.

You may read this and say: “Wow. If I had some money, I would do that. But I don’t.” See, that’s cool. The fact is, theater is still for everyone, and we’d be silly to think that these donors would come from our current blog readership. On the other hand, If we’ve learned nothing else in the past ten years, it’s that all the money in the world is not nearly as valuable as the connections and friendships and partnerships you forge.

So we need just a little bit of your help, to get in touch with the folks you know who you would like to share a New Leaf experience with. If you refer someone to New Leaf who becomes a member, we’ll be thankful that it was you who brought them in. And we’ll give you season tickets to our performances as long as your friend stays a member to show that appreciation. Just send us an email at newleaf@newleaftheatre.org with their contact info, and introduce us. We’ve got an invitation and some goodies to mail to them to get the process started.

It’s a new decade. We can do this, and more. Together.

You can download the full length play on our podcast.

Our next Treehouse is this Saturday at 1 pm at 2045 N. Lincoln Park West: Leocadia, directed by Jack Tamburri of the Plagiarists. As Leocadia is being licensed for this one-day performance, the only way to catch that reading will be in person… Unless you know a couple generous donors who can help us raise $150 to pay for podcasting rights for the performance (it’s tax deductible!).

So, we hope to see you there. In the meantime, here’s a few scenes from BRUTAL SELFISH RATTLESNAKE featuring Dan Stermer’s staging.

Listen to the full podcast below!

LEOCADIA (OR TIME REMEMBERED)
by Jean Anouilh
adapted by Patricia Moyes

directed by Jack Tamburri of the Plagiarists

November 21st at 1 pm
Lincoln Park Cultural Center
2045 N. Lincoln Park West

Admission is Free, though donations are accepted.

Amanda: Natalie DiCristofano
Prince Albert: Morgan Maher
Duchess: Marsha Harman
Lord Hector: Gregory Peters
Ensemble: James Dunn, Shannon O’Neill, Jennifer Santanello, Justine C. Turner

Amanda, a young Parisian milliner, is hired by the Duchess to come to her estate and impersonate Leocadia, the exotic ballerina who had a three-day love affair with the Duchess’ nephew Prince Albert – and then had died abruptly strangled by a scarf she was knitting around her neck. Part Great Expectations, part Alice in Wonderland, New Leaf welcomes Plagiarist company member Jack Tamburri and an exciting cast to reimagine this 1940 classic from Jean Anouilh.

If you haven’t experienced one of our Treehouse Readings yet, imagine yourself sipping a cup of afternoon tea with a group of people just as cool as you. Oh, and check out this excerpt from last month’s Treehouse: BRUTAL SELFISH RATTLESNAKE by Aaron Weissman, directed by Dan Stermer:

NOVEMBER 5TH
6:30 PM – New Leaf Reading of John Steinhagen’s The Mailman Knows Who Shovels at Chicago History Museum

As part of the Chicago History Museum’s Lincoln Park Block by Block exhibit and the 10th anniversary celebration of The Lincoln Park Community Research Initiative, New Leaf Artistic Director Jessica Hutchinson is presenting a reading of John Steinhagen’s play The Mailman Knows Who Shovels. The piece was originally commissioned by New Leaf for the Mid-North Midsummer Festival as an adaptation of the life stories and journals of several long-time Lincoln Park residents.

New Leaf will be releasing a recording of the original reading later this week as part of the Treehouse Readings Podcast.

WHERE
Chicago History Museum – 1601 North Clark

WHEN
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Program 6:30 p.m.*
Reception and Exhibit Tour
to Follow *please note early start time

Admission is free

TOUR INCLUDES
~ Welcome from CHM President Gary Johnson
~ Special Presentation by the New Leaf Theatre
~ Interactive Research Projects by DePaul Students

RSVP to
Fran Casey
DePaul University Community, Government and International Affairs
Phone: (312) 362-8100
E-mail: cgia@depaul.edu
Web: http://cgia.depaul.edu
Click on the registration link (lower left-hand corner of the page)

8:00
THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY Performance at New Leaf Theatre.
Delightful. But don’t take our word for it… check out our reviews

After the Show
Post-show Talkback with the Director, Cast, Crew, Designers, and Company – over Beer and Pizza
From our annual Brunch Season Launch to our monthly Treehouse reading series, New Leaf has a tradition of carefully reimagining stodgy theatrical habits. Come see why our talkbacks are different. You’ll witness the blinding efficiency of a New Leaf changeover as we strike the show for the evening and close the space minutes after curtain call, and then we’ll adjourn as a group to Rocco’s on Lincoln – where much of THURSDAY was conceived – for some beer, some pizza, and lots of conversation, stories, anecdotes, behind-the-scenes insights, and observations from you the audience. It’ll be a talkback to remember. Remember. The 5th of November.

When:
Thursday, November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day!)
11:00 pm – directly following the performance.

Where:
Rocco’s Café and Pizzeria
1924 N. Lincoln Ave.
(Ph: 312.280.8077)

It’s only a day before we open The Man Who Was Thursday and I am sitting at home fully dressed but wearing slippers, fuzzy robe and winter hat. I have been a victim of the common cold-the one that always strikes in October because it’s still fall, yet the winter weather has already started outside. I was fortunate enough to be able to work at home this week so I may spend all of my available hours dedicated to tech.

I am a little sad that the rehearsal process is over. This may sound strange to some of you, but I like the rehearsal process better than the performance process. Though, granted, it is most satisfying and wonderful to have a beautiful show, drama or comedy, I like watching the rehearsals. Seeing the first read through to the final dress, even the final show (because as we all know, opening does not stop the discovery) is amazing. As a stage manager, I get to see that process. I may be in the heart of the production, but I can take a step back and see what directors and actors cannot sometimes. I can see the discoveries. I watch as one actor makes the discovery on his own or with the skills of the director.

Thursday will be no different. Instead of finding tear-jerking, heart-breaking moments that make life seem so beautiful as I saw in Touch and Six Years, Thursday makes me bust out laughing. Belly laughs, giggles, even cackles of laughter. The work I have seen these gentlemen do under the wise direction of Ms. Hutchinson has been hilarious (yes, sometimes I laughed so hard I cried). Not all of these hilarious moments are due to the fantastic and witty script written by Bilal Dardai, they were spontaneous and meant for rehearsal only situations. But regardless, I was witness to the hilarity, and, therefore, will be laughing when no one else is. New Leaf encourages the actors to get involved, keep discovering and play. These 10 men took the word “play” and ran with it.

So as I sit here with my box of tissues and Purel, drudging along all day in a job that pays the bills, I am itching to get to the theatre. Yes, I have lots of things to do when I get there (including wipe down the light and sound board so the designers don’t get sick) but also because I cannot wait to be in the room again with the possibilities of what they will find today. Today will be the final addition to all things tech and tonight my friends (as is the way with New Leaf) tech is where the best ideas and collaboration happens. For not only do I get to watch the actors now play, I get to watch the designers.

The Man Who Was Thursday opens tomorrow. I shall be the one in corner laughing.

Kyra, directing:

Katie Genualdi as Meg:

Marsha Harman, reading Wendy:

Our fantastic artistic intern, Tyler Monroe, reading the all-important stage directions:

Peter Cieply, Kate Cares, and Whitney White as Gig, Denice, and Judy:

Steve Best and Drew Longo as John and Jack:

Todd Garcia as Stuart:

And a few from the performance:

Our SECOND Treehouse Reading is scheduled for October 17 at 1 pm:

BRUTAL, SELFISH RATTLESNAKE
by Aaron Weissman
directed by Dan Stermer

Brutal, Selfish Rattlesnake tells the story of a horrific murder in 1881 that upsets the quiet town of Serington, New Mexico. The dead seek their revenge, with music as their weapon, as a notorious prospector and a steadfast rancher fight tooth and nail for an underground fortune. With daughters and devils, saloons and six-shooters, this tale of old western greed and violence calls into question the very nature of our humanity.

We hope to see you there for more Treehouse!

Steve Best
Kate Cares
Peter Cieply
Todd Garcia
Katie Genualdi
Marsha Harman
Drew Longo
Tyler Monroe
Whitney White

ABOUT THE PLAY
WALL OF WATER by Sherry Kramer is a contemporary farce about four strong women searching for their own salvation and finding it in the most unexpected places. Described as “eloquent craziness,” this play has long been a favorite of New Leaf company members, and we are delighted to kick off our series – and our 2009-2010 season – with this exuberant script.

We’re kicking off today at 1 PM in our home at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center. Hope to see you there!

The answer: For us, the season question is always the question of everything. Now.

Last year was a year of new beginnings for us. “How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?” New Leaf was finding itself switching gears into a new kind of work, a new kind of intensity. In our personal lives, our company members were finding that the allure of career – even a part-time, low-income career, but One That Was Calling To Us – was becoming increasingly more attractive with age, somehow more necessary than a life of stability in service to ideas that we didn’t quite believe in.

So we left those jobs, and that safety net. We leapt into the freelance sector. We connected with our creative calling, and found ways of making that work necessary, and lucrative. We shopped around for non-group health insurance, and although it hurt, we paid for it, because it meant freedom and a new kind of security.

In our artistic work, we explored death, and we confronted ourselves with the inevitability of our own deaths. We explored the cost of a life left unlived, and we interrogated ourselves and identified the aspects of our unlived lives that would become regrets given the chance. We discovered the hard-won value of a path chosen instead of defaulted into, and we forced ourselves to choose our own path, and we forced ourselves to blaze that trail into a wilderness that was… Calling to Us.

And so here we are. A tribe, together, in some pretty rough and unexplored terrain. We’re a theater company that is small with a big reach. We’re creative workers with less regular (and less soul-sucking) employment who have the tools to build a lifestyle, but we need to get to work sowing opportunities and reaping small bits of income, or we will starve. It is clear: our question is changing.

So from this atmosphere forms a new question, with new work that we must do to crack open that nut and really make us look and examine our lives beyond our work. A new question that constantly pushes us to renew.

For me, I’m starting to see the patterns in how we communicate, and the patterns that form into psychic blocks. I haven’t been a blogger for very long, but I have been involved in the public discourse of theater arts for a few moons, and I’m seeing a new round of exciting energy that reminds me of a similar round of exciting energy. This new round comes primarily from this galvanizing and energizing series of posts from the New Colony, calling for a long-term manifesto and summit to organize and legitimize storefront theater in Chicago to take the helm as a trend-setting theater community. This is not the first time a flare has been fired calling for Chicago to take the helm as a world leader in creating new, exciting theatrical work. But because it comes in a time where many are chanting that call to action together – we have begun to tell that same story together with and through our lives – it feels like there is real momentum, that we are approaching a tipping point.

A story is never a complete truth, but it is always a compelling truth. A story ignores much mundane detail in the name of focusing our attention on what matters, on what needs work, on what needs focus. The story says “our work and our leadership is not as diverse as we are,” “our work is not risky enough, not bold enough,” “our work does not feature enough new voices, and so old voices retain too much influence.” A story is idealism, codified and written, with the beginnings of practical applications of that idealism – bold new ways of being – wrapped up in the myth and the fairy tale.

I empathized with this story of the New Colony’s – an entire framework for viewing the situation of Chicago storefronts – and, predictably, I was reminded of my own experiments at forming initiatives and coalitions. This is when I was an even younger arts advocate and as someone entirely new to engaging with public discourse. I recently looked through some old notes I had created for an ad hoc organization I was trying to put together – the Storefront Theater Alliance of Chicago, or STAC, I think we were calling it. I remember the meeting I had with several trusted folks in other small companies to plan out and carve a mission for this alternative organization that would represent the specific needs of independent theater – advocacy I didn’t feel happening and so I didn’t believe existed. I remember the moment when the plan all fell apart… we decided on our mission, a mission we could all get behind. And we looked up, just to check, the mission of the League of Chicago Theaters, and I saw:

Our mission and the League’s mission were the same thing. Nearly word for word. We were working towards the same goal. We were asking the same question from two very different angles.

That was, I think, a week before I first emailed Ben Thiem at the League and really started engaging him in conversation. Learning what he was working on, and giving him (public) feedback about the programs they had put on that had made a big impact on me. (Larry Keeley created this amazing manifesto for Chicago Theater to effectively simplify, unify and modernize our marketing and unite the community behind a few key initiatives that would break open the watermelon of new audience development, so to speak. I still keep that powerpoint hosted here. Read it. It’s a good story.)

That conversation led me to think deeper about the needs and situations of theaters beyond my own, and gather data, and see how my energies could be used to further other people’s stated goals – goals I believed in. Instead of writing a new story from scratch, I’d become an editor, a shaper of other stories, helping other advocates test messages and unite the community behind common purpose.

My question was changing, can you see?

I did more research, I talked with friends who had done even more research. Eventually, through Dan Granata, I read the stories of the beginnings of the League way back in the first revolutionary storefront movement in the 70s. I began to see that my efforts were part of a cycle of group behavior, and realized that if we didn’t understand the story of people like Lois Weisberg we were never getting anywhere… Storefront arts organizations have this way of proliferating and periodically you would have three or four ask the question of why storefronts didn’t cooperate to leverage their energies for cultural change. You had a lot of people get discouraged very quickly in the face of financial and political and personal limitations. I got a little obsessed with counting things in the hopes that the full picture would yield clarity, because I could see – from my initial perspective, I was not seeing the entire picture. But progress starting happening, slowly. Deb Clapp was named as the new head of the League, and on this one day Deb sat down with many of the same folks that had been involved with STAC – plus the Goodman and some other larger theaters – and bam, we planned Chicago’s World Theatre Day celebrations in a couple hours. It was easy to unite and cooperate, because it was for the collective benefit of all.

I felt that advocacy, suddenly, and felt myself becoming a stronger advocate. And I’m still not seeing the entire picture.

Here’s the thing – I believe in what the New Colony is asking, and I think – still – that they are presenting questions that we must all choose to act on. (So do it, seriously. Let’s stop putting it off in the name of our own immediate needs, get coffee together and hash this shit out, a common goal and a common purpose, because the world is waiting for change to be articulated and germinated.) Let’s also try to bring everyone to the table so we see how big this question really needs to be. Let’s learn the old questions so that we can adapt them into new questions. I believe in the transformative power of story, because I’ve seen its effect on my life, on our lives, on our city, on our country. The stories we tell rewrite what we become, somehow.

And so this year, I still believe in the old question – I still believe we must build a future and that our present is rarely one we expect – but I believe it with more experience and more choices under my belt. Some of those choices and some of that experience may be untrustworthy – I’m only human and so my failure to revolt doesn’t necessarily mean that revolution isn’t necessary.

But even the faultiness of stories yields amazing fruit. I still believe, for instance in the fanciful and perhaps hubristic story that I daydreamed about at UMass with my upper- and lower-classmen friends – that we would get to be part of an American cultural renaissance, an explosion/confluence of new science that illuminates art and art that illuminates science. Oddly enough, I believe that the act of telling myself that story again and again has somehow manifested itself in my life and my community. And the story of renaissance – that particular series of intellectual and creative reactions – has this ability to align us towards the possibility of radical creative thought (as opposed to radical destruction). It starts us running in the same direction, and starts us building and creating.

And so I ask the question: What are the stories I’m telling myself? Are they lies, or are they truths that I don’t understand yet? And how are those stories changing me, even as I fail to understand them? Do I want them to change me?

Do I need to tell myself new stories in order to become the person I want to be, or to create the community and world I would like to live in?

Choosing stories to change the world is positively mundane in the realm of theater… every artistic director does it, in their own way, every year. But even mundane things can explain the universe we live in – if we examine them closely enough.

I learned that from Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. It’s a good story. You should read it.

This post is cross-posted on Nick’s blog Theater for the Future

THANKFULLY the wait is almost over.  This Saturday, August 22nd, New Leaf will have our first-ever Brunch Launch.  In addition to announcing our 9th season of intimate, animate theatrical experiences, we’ll be celebrating all we learned over the past year.  As you’ll recall, 2008-2009 was all about exploring one question: “How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?”  We’ve had a lot to think about over the last year, and this Saturday we’ll have a chance to talk with our patrons and friends about all we’ve learned.

And Then – we’ll announce our next season and the question that’s going to guide our journeys this next year.  In case you couldn’t tell, I’m crazy excited to get this info into the world – and I’d love it if you joined us on Saturday to share your thoughts.  Here are the “deets:”

New Leaf Theatre’s Brunch Launch
Saturday, August 22nd
12 noon – 2 PM
at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center
2045 N. Lincoln Park West

RSVPs aren’t required, but you can call or e-mail us for more info: newleaf@newleaftheatre.org or 773.516.3546

Did I mention there will be treats?  Coffee & pastries from Noble Tree coffee shop will abound!  Also – have you been to Noble Tree?  That place rocks.  We’re even having our production meeting there tonight (you heard me – first production meeting of 09-10 happens tonight!  Yay!)

 photo by christopher used with creative commons license permissions