Obies Follow Up - Reflecting after the 2014 Awards

So the Obies were Monday night, and the trend that I discussed in my last blog post continues.  In general, approximately 90% of the work rewarded has budgets of $250,000 or more, though the calculations are a bit complicated this year for reasons I’ll get into.

Before I go into that, I do want to mention, as I did last time, that these posts are not meant to denigrate anyone involved, especially the award winners.  I saw and enjoyed a few of the shows honored, and they were all good shows created and performed by talented people.  I know a few people who were on the awards committee this year, and I know their hearts are in the right place.  And I am very fond of Obie chairman Michael Feingold as a critic, I think he did much good over the years.

Which in many ways is what is inspiring me to write.  I think that we all can become prone to a certain sort of narrowness of vision over time that leads us to lose sight of the broader picture.  In this case, many of those serving are frequently working with (or reviewing) the people being honored, and it may be hard to realize that a large and important part of the downtown theater scene is mostly being ignored.

Ironically, this is exactly the part of the downtown scene that most benefits from the awards.  To many receiving the awards on Monday, the award served as a bit of a (deserved) ego boost, but had little or any impact on their career.  But it is the lesser known shows with the smaller budgets that have the artists who truly need the recognition.  And of course, that was the purpose of the Obies to begin with: to recognize those who haven’t been seen and recognized by the mainstream.  In those days, the mainstream was simply Broadway, and the small budget shows were much fewer in number.  Now Off-Broadway exists mostly in the upper middle class of theater budgets, and yet it still persists in looking up at the upper upper class and saying, aren’t we poor?  Meanwhile, the lower class, or even the lower middle class is mostly ignored.

Do we really have to reflect American society that directly?

In regard to Monday’s Obies:  There were 20 awards given to shows, some with multiple recipients.  I face a problem with these calculations about how to group them.  The World Is Round received 3 awards, but they seem to be grouped together.  The Octoroon’s playwright, Brendan Brandon-Jacobs, won a playwriting award that also covered his work on Appropriate.  However, cast member Chris Meyers also received a separate award.

So if you group the awards as Playbill does, you find yourself with 20 awards.  However, the listing on the Village Voice website seems to indicate 26 awards.  The reason the difference creates very different calculations is that two shows, This Was The End and The World Is Round, fall under the $250,000 threshold.  So the result is that either 2 of 20 (10%, right on the average) or 4 or 26 (a surprising 15%) of Obies this year went to more moderately budgeted shows.

Close to the border, I suspect, is NAATCO’s production of Awake and Sing, for which Mia Katigbak won an award.  I am counting it as over $250,000, because of the size of the cast, but I could be wrong there.  Please feel free to correct me if you have contradictory information.

I will also mention $250,000 is a very high threshold.  I have never done a show with a budget over $100,000, the closest I’ve come is around $80,000, and that was officially Off-Broadway (astoundingly little for an Off-Broadway show, but nonetheless…).  With the in kind contributions my theater company has received from the venues/co-producers, that budget has reached a little over $100,000.  I know many, probably the majority working downtown who have never passed the $50,000 mark.  I actually assumed at first the budget for The World Is Round (a show I saw and loved) was over $250,000, but some investigation revealed otherwise.  Good job on their part.  I wasn’t able to discover what support BAM provided that wasn’t on that official budget, but it was a show that easily could have broken the $250,000 barrier regardless. [UPDATE: That includes BAM support]

So, using the more generous assessment, here are the updated totals for the Obies over the last 5 years:

The Public 18, Signature 10, Playwrights Horizons 9, Soho Rep 7, Manhattan Theater Club 6, New York Theater Workshop 5, Lincoln Center 4, Rattlestick 4, BAM 4 (3 of which are for World Is Round), Foundry 3, Ripe Time 3 (also credited for World Is Round), , Elevator Repair Service 2 (both times at The Public),  Classic Stage Company 2, HERE 2, Incubator Arts 2 (counting Three Pianos, on stage at NYTW at that point), Manhattan Class Company 2, St. Ann’s Warehouse 2, Theatre for a New Audience 2.

And those which have won a single OBIE in those years:  Alliance Francaise, Ars Nova (Natasha & Pierre, which had moved to a commercial production), Atlantic Theatre Company, Barrow Street, Baryshnikov Arts Center (Fela, which had moved to Broadway), Bushwick Star/The Debate Society , The Chocolate Factory, La MaMa (Good Woman of Setzuan, moved to The Public), NAATCO, Partial Comfort, Pig Iron, The Play Company, Primary Stages, PS 122, Second Stage, Punchdrunk, 3LD Art + Technology Center (as part of Under The Radar), Transport, Vineyard.

In terms of budget: out of 96 awards, 84 went to shows with budgets definitely over $250,000, 5 were definitely under (3 for World Is Round), and 8 were in the gray area for me (including Awake and Sing).  So the percentage of lower budget shows is between 5 – 13 %.

I would remiss to write all this without suggesting some solutions.  First, a larger Obie committee.  Quite frankly, I think it is unfair to ask to few people to see so much.  There are a number of qualified possibilities, and the number could be doubled, at least. And for those new Obie members: select people who are part of the true independent theater scene.  Second, a clear way to contact the committee and let them know about your show.  Yes, if you have the right press agent who knows the right people to contact, it can be done.  But the contact should be published on the website, and the committee should be announced, as early as possible.  Finally, and most importantly, there should be a commitment from all the judges and the Obies as a whole to seek out those smaller shows.  To see things that you may know nothing about.   I know it’s not all going to change overnight.  But a commitment that, say, 33% of the awards will go to lower budgets shows is not impossible, by any means.  And that commitment in itself will inspire the judges to seek out new work.

It’s not easy.  In response to my earlier post, I had a few people ask me privately, what should I go see?  Here’s my honest answer: Like everyone, I live in my little bubble.  I can tell you about my friend’s plays, some of which are very good.  And occasionally I am drawn to something outside of that bubble. I recently saw Then She Fell, which I thought was amazing (and never won an Obie), but that show has received a fair amount of recognition, which is why I knew about it to begin with.

I do know some of the places where you can find those shows.  Some of them have won an Obie (or two) over the last five years, but considering the number of Obies given and the number of shows at these theaters (which have much busier seasons than the large institutions), most of the shows never get seen at all.  I know, because I have worked at a lot of them (as I warned, of course, it is my friends I know about).

So go to The Ohio, HERE, 3LD, La MaMa, The Brick, Dixon Place, Abrons, The Secret Theatre, The Chocolate Factory, Metropolitan Playhouse, and all the other smaller theaters about town.  And not just when Taylor Mac or Black Eyed Susan or a downtown luminary is performing, do it when a possible future downtown luminary is performing as well.  For my part, I pledge to look beyond those theaters and really try to seek out interesting shows I would not know about, to look at the tiny reviews with only a paragraph or two devoted and think, could that be interesting?

New York is a busy place.  It is hard to see even my friends' work, plus those few shows that have received enough buzz to make them interesting to me.  To venture into the great beyond?  It takes time, and it takes effort.

So I am asking a lot, I know.  But I am asking it because I think it is important.  If you are in any way in a position to influence future awards, please consider it.