What We Mean By Diversity

by Patrick Blake | Nov 6, 2019 | Blog

Diversity

I once wrote a short play called Speed Dating for Actors. A male and female actor meet on a speed date. The encounter is going great until they discover they are both up for the same part. The casting breakdown for the part reads, “Robin 20s, bartender.” Both think the other is unqualified. The date ends badly.

I was reminded of the play when talking to our associate artistic director Cate the other day. We both agree there is not enough diversity in theater. We agree we should all be trying to increase diversity in what we write and how we cast.

At issue is how do we do this?

Here’s a Plan

I thought of a some small changes we can make that would create significant differences.

To increase diversity here are a few things we can do:

If a play specifies an actor of color, don’t change the casting.
Actively cast an actor of color when no ethnicity is specified.
If gender is irrelevant to the part, always cast a woman.
Experiment with non-traditional casting.

And remember, these suggestions don’t just apply to our casts, but to the entire production. We are looking to involve a diverse artistic and management backstage roles: designers, choreographers, directors, company manger, etc.

As a reminder, I want to end with a quote from the book Hamilton:The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

“When the Battle of Yorktown sequence ended that day, the largely black and Latino cast (singing a song written by a Puerto Rican composer, wearing costumes selected by an African-American designer) climbed on top of boxes and chairs to celebrate having done the impossible.”(Miranda 116)

That is what we aspire to!

Help us make this vision a reality by donating to Rhymes Over Beats end of the year donor drive.

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All You Need is Luck

by Patrick Blake | Oct 28, 2019 | Blog

Serendipity

There are so many readings of new plays in NYC that we could go to a different one every day, sometimes more than once a day. Even when we limit ourselves to specific types of plays, plays where there is a hip hop connection, there are still quite a few to keep track of.

We’re human. We sometimes go to the wrong one.

This happened the other day. I thought a friend of Rhymes Over Beats was doing a reading of a play she had written. I couldn’t go, and our Associate Artistic Director couldn’t go. So I asked our staff person, who is on the hip hop side of the collective, to go.

She went, and loved it.

The only problem was that I was wrong. The reading was not a play written by our friend, but was a play written by another writer – one that we did not know. Yet. But she is a talented playwright, and is now on our radar.

Luck

This experience caused me to reflect on how so much of the success in this business is due to luck.

I know you have to be talented. I know you have to be persistent and never give up. But sometimes that’s not enough.

You could have written a great play, and you can be sending it out to every theater company you can think of and every producer you know – and still not have a positive outcome.

And then there are situations where a producer you don’t know, and didn’t invite, will go to the wrong reading and fall in love with your play. Because you have “a little bit of luck.”

Do you believe in luck? I do!

Send your scripts to me at patrickrobad@gmail.com – you never know!

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Here’s an Idea: Respect the Artist

by Patrick Blake | Oct 21, 2019 | Blog

Respect the Artist

Every so often there will be a small story in the newspaper about an artist, scheduled to exhibit or perform in the U.S. having their visa canceled. It’s never very long, just a few paragraphs, usually printed in the back pages. Never on the front page.

Even though I rarely have heard anything about the artist or have any intention to go see the work, I feel a vague discomfort. As if I were in some sense deprived.

It bothers me that if I did want to see the artist, I couldn’t.

Value the Storyteller

I started thinking about the ancient Irish bards.

Bards were storytellers. In a society where few people if any could read and write, the bards remembered the common stories. The stories that connected people.

The bards were the repository of the culture. At that time, Ireland was divided into many small kingdoms. Each their own country, with borders patrolled and defended. Everyone stayed close to home. The only people to travel freely from one kingdom to another were the bards.

The performing artists in ancient Ireland could travel without any governments permission.

How times have changed.

Now, artists are singled out for special treatment in not a good way.

I propose we go back to the way things used to be. Just as there are diplomatic passports which gives certain privileges to the holder, there should be one for performance artists. Artists’ visas and passport. Unlimited free travel.

What do you think?

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What is Real Theater?

by Patrick Blake | Oct 15, 2019 | Blog

Hip Hop Not “Real” Theater?

I was reading one of the theater discussion boards I follow this week, talkinbroadway.com, and one conversation particularly interested me. It was on one person shows, and whether they can be considered “real” theater.

Since I hear all the time, similar comments about what Rhymes Over Beats is trying to do, that hip hop theater is not “real” theater, I thought to make what is “real theater” the subject of this blog.

It’s argued that one person shows are not “real theater” because theater is conflict and you can’t have conflict with just one person. I’m guessing that the people who think this have never seen a cartoon of one person with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, or watched the old man battling the impersonal force of nature – the sea.

The objections to hip hop, especially in musical theater, revolve around melody.

Hip hop is percussive rather than melodic, and some people think theater can only be “real” if you can hum it. According to them, only one kind of music is “appropriate” for musical theater. They forget that Showboat eventually replaced The Vagabond King.

Times Change

The impulse behind the idea that there is a “real theater” style is the notion that things have an essence. The essence is what makes a thing what it is.

The problem is that things change.

Theater was once written in verse, not prose. I can imagine at sometime in the past saying, “This can’t be theater, the words don’t rhyme.” The person who thought that there was something essential in theater, a specific style that musical theater is defined by, was wrong then and they are wrong now.

You may be wondering if there is a combination of a one person show and hip hop that makes a really excellent work of theater?

I’d suggest you check out Lemon Andersen’s County of Kings. It is a wonderful hip hop one person show.

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Let Art Imitate Life

by Patrick Blake | Oct 7, 2019 | Blog

The Importance of Theatre

A couple of years ago Rhymes Over Beats coproduced a play called The Assignment. The play was about a college freshman in his mid thirties who was taking a beginning English class. One of his assignments was to write about an event that changed his life. His paper was about how, when he was sixteen, he shot and killed another young boy over a jacket. He was so old because he had spent most of his life in prison for manslaughter, and had recently been released from prison. The teacher had a sixteen year old son who had a a child who had been killed.

The play was about how the two characters dealt with the realization that they shared a similar experience from opposite sides.

Watching a Play Creates Empathy

I was reminded of this by a recent case in Chicago where a white police officer was convicted of shooting and killing an unarmed black man sitting in his apartment.

At the conclusion of the trial, after the officer was convicted and sentenced, some members of the family, a black court officer and the black judge, gave the officer a hug. Social media was ablaze with comments, both pro-huggers and anti-huggers. All positions were supported by strong arguments.

The issue is extremely controversial.

We Are Artists, Not Activists

I was considering using this blog to take a side, but decided not to do that. We are artists, not philosophers or activists. Our response is not to talk about this case, but to create a play that explores it.

Life should inspire art.

Write a play. If anyone wants to write one, we want to produce it.

It’s what we do.

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