Storefront Rebellion

A lesson in the internet

Hi. So in the post below, published last Wednesday afternoon, I linked to a blog post I had just read that had an interesting perspective on the effect that big-time downtown commercial theater has on smaller theater in Chicago. I linked to it because it was germane to some other things said in the Chicago Tribune just a few days earlier. Within hours of my linking to it, it had been removed from the internet without comment—except for the comments that had already appeared here on Storefront Rebellion about it. Because discussion had begun here, I let it continue.

Late Tuesday night a week later, after 15 comments' worth of intelligent, reasoned, cordial discussion of several theater-related issues had ensued on my own post, the author of that now-disappeared blog post I'd linked to asked me via email to take it down. They have a nascent career of their own in Chicago theater, and fear that their comments would come back to haunt them.

I'm sympathetic, but I also don't want to shut down the thoughtful conversation that's come in their wake. My crappy solution, as seen below, is to edit my post and the referencing comments so as to obfuscate the original blogger's identity.

Let this serve as a blogging lesson to all of us—a blogging lesson I learned around 2002 or so, but clearly not everyone has. The immediacy of going live on the internet makes it tempting, but DO NOT hit "return" on anything online that you wouldn't gladly print on the front page of the New York Times or broadcast in a commercial break in the Super Bowl. If you put something live on the internet, you have to assume people will see it, even if you take it down five minutes later. And it can't ever be fully taken back.

Case in bad-PR point: a dumb decision about a park district production of Ragtime in Wilmette first went public in local net forums last Thursday morning, if I'm not mistaken, and made it into the NYT by Monday afternoon. (It's back on, by the way.)

It's a tough lesson to learn, but before you hit "save" on that blog post, comment, forum entry or ill-conceived email, take a second and make sure you really mean it. Because it will be read and remembered by somebody.

Megatron vs. Indiana Jones

For a small taste of how awesome my job can be, take five minutes to watch this ridiculously juvenile short film, for which I provided the voice of Iron Man. There are also appearances by Shia LeBeouf, the Hulk and (briefly and against his will) Batman. And also a unicorn.

I've known what the nominations are for the Non-Equity Jeff Awards for a couple of days now, but we're not allowed to announce them until after midnight tonight. I may have some thoughts about them—well, I already have some thoughts about them, the first being that several of them are undeserved, but I may choose to elaborate on those thoughts in this space. We'll see how I'm feeling.

Towards a Green Theatre*

Leaning my head back to "rest my eyes" Monday night on the long Blue Line trip to the Gift Theatre, I found myself looking up at one of the many ads promoting Chicago's valiant effort in this Saturday's Earth Hour, otherwise known as the "shut off the lights from 8pm–9pm" campaign. Thanks to primary sponsor Leo Burnett's world headquarters here, Chicago is the lead city in the U.S.; the ad agency recruited the Chicago cast of Blue Man Group to film a TV spot showing them shutting off power to the Briar Street Theatre.

It occurred to me that I haven't heard from any of the many theaters with productions running this weekend—including Blue Man Group—that they'd be cancelling performances (or even just pushing them back to 9pm to match the letter if not the spirit of the campaign).

Knowing nearly as well as every TD who's maxed out a storefront venue's capacity that theatrical lighting takes a lot of juice (as do other technical aspects of many productions), I did a quick search for info on greening our theaters. I remembered Patrick at backstagejobs.com recently mentioning the prospects of LED lighting, and through Patrick I found Mike Lawler's ecoTheater blog, which looks to be an invaluable resource for information on initiatives toward sustainable theater. Mike also links to the Green Theater Initiative, which seems to be mostly a placeholder at this point.

What can you tell me, theater makers? What are your companies doing to conserve energy? What more could they be doing? And in the shorter term, are any theaters out there participating in Earth Hour this week?

UPDATE: All three Broadway in Chicago theaters will darken their marquees for an hour Saturday night, kicked off by an Elphaba appearance outside the Oriental (though Wicked and Jersey Boys will still go on inside). Nice start. Who else?

*I had to break two AP Stylebook rules to make the Grotowski reference work. It buuuurrrrns.

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Elsewhere, my reviews of Bailiwick's A Man of No Importance and Theater Wit's Feydeau-si-Deau, along with six other new reviews, are posted at the TOC website.

A Super Bowl digression.

Tonight I screamed my voice hoarse cheering for a team I don't particularly care for. That's just how much I dislike the Patriots and Bill Belichick.

Tonight has to stand as the best Super Bowl I've ever watched (and I was not yet a Bears fan in ’86, so please don't hold that against me). My friend Neal and I decided that Eli Manning will now be forever known as The Guy Who Escaped the Sack and Completed That Pass. My favorite thing spectator-wise was the overwhelming sense (outside of Boston and Bill Simmons's house) of "I'm rooting for The Team That's Not the Patriots." Even my friend Kelly, who cares about football about as much as she cares about the Carmen Electra film canon, was actively pulling for the Giants because she hates cheaters. And Eli Manning now gets to sit at the grownups' table at the Manning family Easter dinner. His prospects were looking pretty dicey for a while.

There was too much hilarious commentary within our watching party to recount, but the best to come in from the outside world was this text message from my dad: "Take that Brady. (Grandma says hi.)"

Finally, check out this video. What basically amounts to a multi-celebrity endorsement shouldn't be this powerful. But to me at least, it is. Illinois has its primary Tuesday, along with many other states. Vote, and choose carefully.

Now back to theater.

An election digression

OK, look. I know I'm mostly supposed to write about theater here. There are plenty of other theater bloggers (Don, Isaac, Matthew) who also write about politics, but I've tried to keep the Rebellion on topic. But I spent Thursday night watching the Iowa caucus results and there's something I've got to get off my chest in a venue where at least the tens and tens of readers I have here will see it.

I'm glad our hometown boy won the Democratic caucus, though I'm pretty OK with Edwards and Clinton too. But the fact that I live in a world where Mike Huckabee looks like a viable presidential candidate makes my head spin. I believe that if there were any decent reporters on the ground in Arkansas looking into his tenure there, Huckabee would be laughed out of the race.

The more things change…

I'm killing time in the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, irritated that my 3:15 flight back to the city has been delayed by at least an hour and a half by the snowstorm in Chicago, and further irritated that the airport's wi-fi access, which was free the last time I flew out of here, is now for-charge.

As long as I've got the post-holiday I-just-want-to-get-home grumps (and obviously I don't have any Chicago theater news), I thought I'd share the two things that irritated me the most over my stay here this week. (Don't worry, family, neither of them is about you.)