A Few of the 365 Plays with Terence McFarland
By day, Terence McFarland is known throughout the LA theatre community as the Executive Director of the LA Stage Alliance, a reputable non-profit service organization dedicated to building awareness, appreciation, and support for the performing arts in Greater LA. After leaving the fashion industry in New York City to attend CalArts for a master's degree, he quickly found his role as a leader helping solve problems within the experimental art school's bureacracy of BS. It was that keen sense of "fuck this shit, let's fix it" that led him to be one of the most powerful movers and shakers in LA's theatre and cultural scene.
So what happens by night with McFarland? His art does. And tomorrow night at 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. at Shakespeare Festival/LA in Downtown, his vision of the 365 Days/365 Plays festival will come and go as fast as Andy Goldworthy's art survives on a windy day (for info on seeing it tomorrow, go here). And here's what McFarland has to say...
Why should Angelenos check out 365?
As directors and companies threw their hats in the ring during the application process to participate in the 365 festival we weren't given the plays for the weeks we picked. We went in blind and cold.
Knowing a thing or two about Suzan-Lori (um, hello, TopDog Underdog, The America Play - Lincoln as the ground zero of Race and America), I figured Lincoln's birthday week would be a kick-ass week. Not to mention that my birthday is Feb 11th. Little did I know that she fucking killed it with president's book-ending the week and a sweet gooey valentine's day play in the middle. The performers, dancers collaborators and I are having a delicious time...a deep tongue kiss to the audience for valentine's day week.
Last night, the performers and I were discussing the generosity of these plays, not only in our week, but throughout the 365 cycle and Suzan-Lori's and [producer] Bonnie [Metzgar's] generosity in allowing this work to be shared with communities of different stripes, shapes and sizes with the inherent understanding that if a reading is all one company pulls off it is celebrated just like that of a fully realized production. There are over 16 regions producing 52 weeks of programming - that's at least 832 theatre companies collaborating on one work throughout the country. Even if you're a community activist and don't give a rat's ass about theater - consider the Herculean grass roots work it took to build the coalition that made this happen.
Also, Suzan Lori lives in Venice, won the Pulitzer Prize and the festival is FREE. Free, that's right, free. 52 weeks of FREE shows produced by some of the best companies Los Angeles has to offer and a tremendous number of up and coming directors, performers, collectives etc. There are so many approaches and entry points for the work that everyone can find a way in to the worlds of these plays.
In the weeks I've attended I've seen some of my favorite performers, discovered a few new ones, reconnected with friends and had one of my top theatre experiences all year. My mister, Dennis said that the play for Jan 10, Things are tough all over, was his favorite play of the last year.
What is the philosophy, brand, credo or whatever you want to call it, behind your vision of theatre?
I like stuff you can't fake on stage. I want their to be residue on the stage after a performance. Physical, emotional, tangible residue. My work tends to be ensemble generated and a movement based spectacle so I couldn't ask for a better sandbox to play in with SLP's recurring themes of Americana, race, Love, history and disaster.
The openness of SLP's work gives us a framework to build on top of metaphor and analogy and, ultimately, have a fucking good time with these darkly comic pieces. Singing, dancing, the birth of Abraham Lincoln, a valentine's day as only Suzan Lori Parks could imagine, and two plays that address what exactly we mean by "President's Day Sale."
And did I mention FREE?
What has it been like to put together 7 or so plays with 22 performers in one week?
Let's say you were trying to coordinate the schedules of 22 creative, talented, popular friends of yours who live in all different parts of LA. Or better yet, let's say you needed 22 people to put on a show, but were working in one week, with no money. How many calls or emails might it take to find 22 peeps? I went in nervous that I was asking too much to pull this off. With the 3 constants and the 8 plays in the week I'm producing/directing, there was the chance to work on 11 plays. Oh, and did I mention the original song in the play for Feb 16? Did I say that one of my collaborators is getting married on Saturday night before the performance and the entire dance company will be at the wedding? Or that almost everyone has full time jobs? Or mention the beautiful, small infant joining us at rehearsals?
The process thus far? Exhilarating, exhausting, electric, x-fucking-tastic. Wouldn't want it any other way. Although I probably should have called in a stage manager cause I build big, epic work.
As an independent producer/director I don't have the resources of a company to pull together to "put on the show." It's coming out of my blood (check, remember to get more band-aids on the way to rehearsal tonight), sweat (check), tears (hmm, someone better cry tonight, I don't want to have lied to the ist-ers) and personal bank account (check, cash and ATM)
That said, I know some phenomenal folks and they know some more incredible people and we're putting together quite the spectacle.
I'm collaborating with Hysterica Dance Company's Kitty McNamee and Ryan Heffington, a first for me which has been thrilling, a composer, Nedra Wheeler, who I've known for many years personally, but with whom I've never had the pleasure of working artistically and the designer Dan Weingarten who I've worked with professionally but never on a personal project like this.