Play it on the G-String

Herewith, Victoria Linchong outs herself as a teenage runaway, former stripper, high school drop out and generally the girl you don't bring home to Mother in an artistic statement on THE GRIND, a multimedia live episodic series, which we hope to develop over the summer for a production in 2011-2012.

Come check out the "pilot episode" of THE GRIND, following JP Chan's DRY CLEAN ONLY at Take Two on Tuesday, February 15th and stay for a discussion in which Victoria swaps stories with sex activist Siobhan Brooks-King, who's got a few tales of her own from her days at Lusty Lady in San Francisco. See the website  for more information!

THE GRIND is set at Bump 'n Grind, a strip club based on Baby Doll Lounge. 
Image courtesy of In the Cut and Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. 

STRIPPING FOR TIPPING
By Victoria Linchong

In 1992, as a teenage runaway one step from the street, my best friend, a dancer new to New York City from Atlanta, took me to the Pussycat Lounge and introduced me to an amazing new way of paying my rent. I earned $80 that night dancing in my underwear - twice as much as what I made all week working as an usher in an East Village theater. For the next eight years, stripping was a means of self-reliance, the bankroll I could count on while I pursued my art.

In my circle of artsy friends, my story is not that unusual. It's almost a rite of passage for any ambitious girl of limited means. Yet, it's a story that's rarely told, mostly since it's hard enough to be respected as a woman and once you've outed yourself as a stripper, your credibility is basically shot. When one thinks of a stripper, one rarely imagines a low-income woman struggling to get by. As a stripper, you are either a victim or a slut, deprived or depraved. The focus on "sex work" centers on "sex" instead of "work," and while the double edge of sexuality is a rich issue to mine, in the context of "sex work" it fails to confront the real questions, which have nothing to do with morality, which are completely socioeconomic: Why are the options are so limited for women? What are the economic realities that make stripping a viable (and even, dare I say it, intelligent) choice for many girls?

In THE GRIND, six vastly different women attempt to find a means to a better end by dancing at a seedy downtown strip club. Although the play will be partially devised, the conversations and scenarios will be based on ones I remember and the characters are based on the girls I danced with - most of them artists, single moms and college students. It's a world that has largely vanished, purged by Giuliani's quality of life campaign, which for better or for worse, eradicated all the neighborhood topless bars, allowing only corporate homogenized stripper emporiums to survive. Set in 1997, THE GRIND serves up the difference between the New York you miss or the New York you missed, through the story of six girls navigating a transformative year, both in their lives and in the life of the city.

Preview Q & A with J.P. Chan!

J.P. Chan, writer and director of DRY CLEAN ONLY, was kind of enough to be the first participant in what we hope will be a regular feature wherein we get to better know the playwrights and filmmakers involved in this season's Take Two! 

Kavi Ladnier, Debargo Sanyal, and Aaron Yoo in DRY CLEAN ONLY

 DA :Theater or Film or both, and why? 
JP:Both. I like feeling inadequate at a variety of pursuits. I'm going to try app development next.
 
DA: What got you into film? 
JP: Loved sci-fi as a kid and always wanted to create worlds for the screen. After a few decades of procrastinating, I finally got around to it.
 
DA: How has your social/ethnic background informed your work? 
JP: I fell into the Asian American film and theatre circles here in New York and met a ton of amazingly talented people. I found I could cast and crew up my films without going very far, so I took advantage of the resources available to me. Very few of my stories are specifically Asian in any way, but they feature lots of Asians behind and in front of the camera. It wasn't at all planned, but I'm very proud that all my films were made with very diverse teams.

DA: What was your inspiration for this film? 
JP: The original cut of this film was actually made as part of a 64 hour film contest. The theme was "AKA," so I tried to explore the idea of secrets. Only after I finished did I realize it was also about fear, which was also the subject of my first short TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT? I followed up DRY CLEAN ONLY with a short called I DON'T SLEEP I DREAM which "completes" this trilogy that explores fear.

DA: What are you working on right now? 
JP: I just finished a sci-fi short that will stream online starting in March at www.futurestates.tv. I'm hoping to shoot a feature later this year and have a reading of a new play.
 
DA: And just to round out J.P. the man, how many baby carrots do you think you could eat in a minute?
JP: Thirty, easy.


Thanks again to J.P. Chan for being such a sport, and be sure to catch DRY CLEAN ONLY at Take Two! February 8th, 2011 at 7PM.  For more info please visit our website at: www.directarts.org/taketwo 

New schedule, new season, new year!

A very happy new year to all!  We at Direct Arts are extremely excited to be kicking off our 2011 Take Two season with a very special, all-Japanese program.

It begins with drinks (as does most everything special does) at 7:00PM for a happy (half) hour meet and greet with filmmakers, artists, social activists and you.  Once we are properly tipped, we'll be screening Jeff Sousa's THE HIROSAKI PLAYERS, winner of Best Narrative Short at the Woodstock Film Festival. Next will be a reading of the play JAPANOIR, by noted Villlage Voice theater critic Michael Feingold, and directed by Nancy Robillard.  Following the performance there will be a discussion with preeminent scholar Kyoko Hirano, as she and the evening's artists explore the connection between theater and film in Japan.

This promises to be an evening to remember, so join us at:

The Ballroom of the Ukrainian National Home
140 Second Ave (between 8th & 9th St)
East Village, NYC
7:00-10:00 PM
$10 donation, no one turned away


This, and every second Tuesday of the month, now through June.  For more information, including  the rest of the season's schedule, please visit our website at: www.directarts.org/taketwo

Thanks and glad tidings!

Take Two holiday brunch

Direct Arts kicked off Take Two 2011 with a fabulous holiday brunch at the Mexican restaurant La Palapa. The Take Two 2011 schedule will be revealed next week. Until then, enjoy this preview of some the people who are involved!

Actor Max Carpenter speaks to Jeremy Hook, producer of BRAND UPON THE BRAIN.

Writer Anna Ziegler (foreground) and her husband Will speak to Direct Arts board member Victor Rodruguez. 

Alice Cox with a quizzical J.P. Chan.

Brunch at La Palapa.

Michael Niederman rocks the pink shirt as Nurit Monacelli speaks to Jo Mei. 

There's a lot going on in this room.

Jeremy Hook holds court. L-R: Minnea Lin, Alice Cox, J.P. Chan (obscured), Jean Chen.

Jeremy Hook and Direct Arts board member Matt Metzgar.

Editor Minnea Lin with filmmaker J.P. Chan.

Anna Ziegler imbibes hibiscus agua fresca as the hubby voices an opinion.

Minnea Lin with Kira Onadera.

An oddly festive shot of Michael Niederman, Nurit Monacelli, Jeremy Hook and Nancy Robillard. Maybe it's the red and green shirt and those lights in the back.

J.P. Chan, Jo Mei, Victoria Linchong and Jean Chen.

The Wasserstein Prize Debacle

"We regret to inform you that of the 19 nominated plays, none was deemed sufficiently realized by the selection panel to receive the Prize. As a result, the Wasserstein Prize will not be presented in 2010. While the panel thought that many of the scripts showed promise, they felt that none of the plays were truly outstanding in their current incarnation.”

The storm over the Wasserstein Prize has put the spotlight on women in the arts, a perennially sore subject for most women in the arts like me. It's astounding that Theatre Development Fund, which manages the award, thought that they could write rejection letters baldly telling 19 female writers nominated by theaters around the country that they're just not good enough without some kind of repercussion. But this is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the struggle for women to be taken seriously as writers and artists.

That the Wasserstein Prize is given to a female writer under 32 is already contentious. Committing to life as an artist is fraught with difficulty - during an introductory exercise at the Chicago Directors Lab I attended last June, we discovered to our mutual surprise that just about all of us had parents who disapproved of us being in the arts. For men, this might be tough, but throw in a couple of gender-specific obstacles like the wage-gap and baby-making, and the result is that many women find themselves "emerging" as artists later than men. And it's really discouraging to not only have an expiration date stamped on your forehead, but to wake up and realize that it's already come and gone.

Then of course, there's that gender issue. I think I must have had a dozen conversations with female friends of mine who are in theater, film or otherwise in the arts on why there are so few recognized female artists. I've often said to friends that I had a realization once about how women are intrinsically creative in being able to give birth, whereas men can only create through the arts, but there's really more to the gender disparity than this.  A comprehensive NEA demographic report of 919,000 artists in 2005 shows that women make up just under half of all artists nationwide (46 percent), but that looking at specific artist professions, some are male-dominated and some are female-dominated. Quite obviously, dance is female-dominated, while directing and producing is male-dominated. But while the NEA report shows that writing is actually slightly female dominated, with 56% of writers being female, studies consistently show that only about 17% of the total number of new plays produced in America are by women.

Economist Emily Sands employed a very rigorous empirical approach to studying the paucity of produced women playwrights in her 2009 report, Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender: An Integrated Economic Analysis of Discrimination in American Theater. Sands obtained two 10-page script samples, one with two female protagonists and one with two male protagonists. She made an equal number of copies and assigned a female pen-name to half the scripts and a male pen-name to the other half. She then sent the scripts to 252 theaters, asking for responses to what she presented as a survey on script evaluation. Replies from the Artistic Directors and Literary Managers of 82 of these theaters revealed that, "Scripts bearing female pen-names are deemed by artistic directors to be of lower overall quality and to face poorer economic prospects than otherwise identical scripts bearing male pen-names. In addition, artistic directors believe cast and crew will be less eager to work on a female-written script."

Even more surprisingly, Sands' report reveals that artists and literary managers who are female are more likely to "deem scripts bearing female pen-names to be poorer fits with their theaters, and to face not only worker discrimination, but also customer discrimination." And weirdly, "The severity of the discrimination against female playwrights appears to be more pronounced for women writing about women than for women writing about men."

Learning about this, I'm reminded of the summer I worked at the Coney Island Sideshow, where part of the rotation of the performers was to hawk the show on the bally. We all had about the same spiel, "Step right up, step right up! Ten shows in one! One dollar, one dollar, one dollar, one dollar!" But it never failed that people would only listen if it was a white guy talking. The Latinos and African-Americans who are predominantly on the boardwalk on a hot summer day are immune to other Latinos and African-Americans who want a dollar out of them. And a little Asian girl with a snake only makes the guys stop and reach for that other bulge. But get a white guy up on the bally and the skeptical crowd immediately becomes more receptive. We surmised that the general public must be conditioned by Bob Barker and other white-guy-announcers on TV.

NYSCA's 2002 roundtable on women in theater also made much of unconscious discrimination, with Dr. Virginia Valian, author of Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, demonstrating that even slightly preferential treatment has long-term repercussions, "In a situation where men and women in equal numbers begin their careers with precisely the same qualifications,and a mere 1% bias is introduced, in time, a top executive level of 35% women and 65% men will be affected." This would explain why there may be an almost equal number of male and female playwrights, but so few female writers are produced. Valian's research concludes that "while most men and women would assume otherwise, when judging quality, they are acting on deep assumptions that are neither equitable nor accurate. Unless men and women become conscious of these assumptions, and make a conscious decision to achieve parity, they will automatically prefer men, even in fields where women predominate."

But besides discrimination, conscious or unconscious, female artists also have the odds stacked against them because of economics. The NEA report reveals that "women artists who work full-year, full-time, earn $0.75 for every dollar made by men artists." And the 2002 NYSCA roundtable eloquently observed, "For good and ill, women tend to operate outside the mainstream. In the absence of opportunities, women are resourceful and create their own, self-producing or starting enterprises outside of the mainstream. However, as many participants testified, burdened with child care, 'day jobs' and lower salaries (75.8%) than those earned by their male counterparts, women's theatre work is often their third shift. Under funded and understaffed, female theatrical entrepreneurs 'burn out' even more rapidly than men in this high-burnout field."

The Wasserstein Prize is $25,000. To be given, even for a year, that kind of financial freedom - to be provided with what Virginia Woolf so eloquently described as a room of one's own - what a dream! I'm not sure what the answer to achieving gender equality in the arts force is, much less in the work force. But it does seem that part of the solution has to do with opportunities. Support for women in the arts will lead to more women in the arts. The production of more plays by women will lead to more artistic directors feeling secure in producing female playwrights. Which is why the Wasserstein Prize is so important. It's unconscionable that the award committee would decide not to give the prize when opportunities for women playwrights are so limited. Especially when it's a prize named after Wendy Wasserstein, who saw her writing as a political act to encourage other female playwrights.

--Victoria

Direct Arts in San Francisco - Thursday, 9/16

The next morning, Matt and I rolled out of bed and headed to the bank where I took out the per diem money for everyone. I got back half an hour late to the meeting, but none of the actors were there yet; they began crawling in around 11:00 sucking on coffee with rings around their eyes and speaking in monosyllables. Except for Jojo who apparently had gotten up at dawn again. Even though that's when I think he went to sleep. I gave some notes, but most of my worries had to do with the music problems the previous night and after taking care of correspondence and doing some math, I sat down with Richard for another confab.

Richard working on video, random hostel guy behind him.

Heading to Portsmouth Square with Matt afterwards, I went down to  Portsmouth Square Garage to turn their lunchroom into a dressing room. The techies were all late in arriving except for Cristian, but set-up seemed to be a lot more efficient than the day before. After making sure everything was all right, I got on the phone to rent chairs and went shopping for the last of the props. I bought an Asian baby doll from a toy store on the Embarcadero. Helen, who played its mom, was a little creeped out by it since it was the size of a preemie but had a full head of hair. I found a little yellow sweater at Goodwill (well, actually it was white with orange stripes which I hoped would look yellow in the light). I still couldn’t find a stool so we were stuck again with the ladder I had borrowed from the garage.  

At 5PM, the actors arrived for dinner at Chinatown Restaurant, where we had another amazing dinner. Cristian and Tim went off to get chairs from Nextarts but the rest of the crew members managed to sit down with us at the end of the meal. 

After dinner, I took the actors down the elevator to the garage and introduced them to the lunchroom. I think they were a little bemused at the set up, but it actually wasn’t so bad – it was indoors and there was space to sit, warm up and hang your things. Plus they had just renovated the bathroom, which was way better than the mucky bathroom in the Square. Kate came to the dressing room with a new Ng Ga Pei bottle. A mysterious gentleman had given it to her, saying that he had seen the play the previous night and the bottle we had for the scene wasn’t the proper bottle. He also bought four little porcelain cups to go with it since he said no one drinks Ng Ga Pei from the bottle.  Apparently, he then he vanished with the crashing of a gong on a blue dragon that chased a giant floating pearl. 

Carl & Kitty at the entrance to the lunchroom,
I mean dressing room. (Thanks Helen Kim for these photos.) 

Avery & Helen Tong in the inner sanctum of the
dressing room. Note the five bags, not a good idea.

 The actors picked through the five bags to find their costumes, while Kate and I went back up to the Square. We got out of the elevator just as Cristian was arrived with the chairs. The minute that we put a row down, people instantly came swarming from all corners of Portsmouth Square for a seat. In an instant, the house was completely full.  Buck Gee was there (the previous blog entry was wrong; Eddie Wong was there the first night for introductions) and an actor who had been in Genny’s play BITTER CANE, as well as several people who had seen PAPER ANGELS when it premiered at the Asian American Theater Company.

The prologue from Stage Right.

Buck Gee introduced the second night and urged everyone to visit Angel Island. It was a smoother performance than opening night, but second night blahs were in effect and the lack of music during scene changes was excruciating to me. Although everyone was slightly off in their rhythm, the audience didn’t seem to mind.  In my first scene, where I sat on the edge of the stage, I heard some talking in the audience and looking out, saw that our friend the drunk was back. I delivered my next lines straight to him, which seemed to shut him up. When I next looked at him, he was smiling and rocking back and forth. During the Ng Ga Pei scene, I saw an old lady with no teeth in the front row whoop with laughter; I thought that the choice of alcohol must ring very true to her. (Thank you, god of Ng Ga Pei.)

Later, Kate said that during Henderson’s anti-Chinese monologue, a gang of Chinese toughs happened to be walking through the Square when they heard, “The Chinese don’t belong here! Do you think they’d fight for Uncle Sam? Hell, no!” They stopped cold and for a minute, all the techies worried that Max was going to get lynched. The kids took a step towards the stage in unison and then another step and then they stopped and just watched the show. Max got off the stage and half of them left, but the other half stayed. At the end, the ones who stayed asked Kate what time the play began so they could come back and see it from the beginning.

Max stops the show.

After the play, we went to the opening of a new branch of Fluevog Shoes on Grant Street. Fluevog was a sponsor of the play and they threw an amazing party that extended throughout their four-story building, complete with a DJ and an auction of some fabulous artwork that was created in response to an advertising contest.  We drank, danced and salivated over gorgeous shoes. Max gave in and bought himself a pair of blue buckle shoes.

Max & William in front of artwork being auctioned.

Matt & the Fluevogs.

Helen's choice.

Hansel talked about these shoes for the rest of the trip.

Kate with Stephen Fluevog looking on (left, obscured).

Fluevog was about five blocks from Portsmouth Square and we walked through the Chinatown gate on Grant Street in order to get there. It was interesting to note the disparity in just one block – okay, sure Grant Street must be the capital of kitschy Chinese tchotchke for tourists, but it’s obvious that the Chinatown residents are for the most part low-income. Passing through the gate, all of a sudden, you are faced with boutique designer shops that cater to a whole other income bracket. The old lady with no teeth who enjoyed the Ng Ga Pei scene, the people who passed the day playing cards and xiang qi in the Square obviously weren't going to shop on the other side of that gate. 

Hansel & the Foo Dog at the gate.

I mentioned to some of the actors that if I had a million dollars, I’d  stop traffic for three hours, plunk a stage right in that intersection, and do the play right in front of the gate.

Direct Arts in San Francisco - Wednesday 9/15

Opening night I woke up anxiously at 9AM and after dispatching Matt and crew members to transport the stage and tech from the warehouse, I went on a hunt for a nearby bank, where I discovered to my chagrin that the check still hadn't cleared. I took out what I could, figuring I would give everyone part of their per diem, since the check absolutely HAD to clear by the next day.

The actors who were staying in the hostel started to trickle in blearily at around 10AM. Carl and Max both took advantage of all-you-can-eat pancakes for $1. William conversed in Spanish with the Mexican ladies who made the eggs and the pancakes, expertly flipping them with one practiced twist of the wrist. The coffee was surprisingly good. Or maybe I was just tired. Jojo unexpectedly showed up from the Equity lodgings in Chinatown. He had woken up at 7:30 and gone exploring, discovering a dim sum hole-in-the-wall that he liked. We sat around in the lounge area, despite one hostile hostel dweller who had staked out a portion of the sofa and refused to budge.

Morning meeting with tired actors.

After making some announcements (most notably about the dressing room, which I was worried about) and reiterating that we were to meet at 5PM at Chinatown Restaurant, I left the cast and went to convene with Richard about video and sound. I was a little envious of cast members discussing where they would go - the Mission or to Golden Gate Park or Fisherman's Wharf. Richard and I went through all the video cues and the sound cues again. Then Matt came back to the hostel with Erich the sound technician, having packed up sets and lights in a truck rented by Ernie from Somarts.

Erich, I discovered, came from three generations of carnies. His family operated a carnival that toured Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I shared with him my experience working at the Coney Island Sideshows by the Seashore and Big Apple Circus and we swapped stories about cracked-out carnival ride operators on our way to buy more cable at the Guitar Store.

At Portsmouth Square, I immediately made a beeline to the Portsmouth Square Garage to get adaptors from Peter Lee that would turn 220 outlets into 110. I also tentatively asked him if we could use a corner of his space for a dressing room area since I had no idea where the cast might get changed. He told me that the garage was happy to help the production and showed me the garage lunchroom, which he said could be used as a dressing room if I liked. It was incredibly generous of him, but the place seemed a little cramped and I was worried about unhappy actors so I started to think where else I could set up a dressing room.

Emerging from the underground garage, I discovered that the truck had arrived and the stage was being set up. The old Chinese people who were playing xiang qi (possibly for decades) weren't about to be uprooted. Except for a half dozen openly curious guys, they stayed precisely where they were, ignoring the 2x4s and scaffolding that whizzed by their heads.

The Chinese community in Portsmouth Square.

Ernie & Cristian setting up the stage.

I gave the adaptors to Matt and then ran off to settle things at Hotel North Beach, where the Equity actors were staying, after which I paid a visit to the Chinese Cultural Center (CCC). Mabel Teng, the director of the CCC, was there and when I asked her if there might be chairs we could borrow, she said no but she told me I might ask Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA). So I went across the Square to the CAA and not only did Susan Mooney have no problem with me borrowing the 30 chairs they had, but she also said it would be okay for us to use their community center for a dressing room. Their community center was right behind the stage and absolutely perfect. (Their building is that low red one in the picture above.) I couldn't thank her more.

Hansel helped move the chairs to the Square - they were metal and pretty darn heavy (but heck, they were free!) - and I split to go hunting for props and costumes. After buying a pair of shoes for him and searching Chinatown for a baby, a yellow sweater and a stool to no avail (gotta love the random shopping lists you get in a production), I went to the Chinatown Restaurant to meet the cast. Anna Quan, the doyenne of the restaurant, pulled out all the stops. I especially enjoyed the dried tofu with string beans and fermented black beans, but the other more American dishes were also very good.

Cast chowing down at Chinatown Restaurant.

Everyone was eating happily when halfway through the meal, Matt got a text that the electricity in the Square had suddenly shut off. Richard and Robin, who were still working, were frantically trying to ascertain what had happened. Matt and I left the feast and told the crew to come eat, since there was nothing they could do until electricity was restored. I called the Parks Department and got the lighting rental company by mistake. I called again and this time got a confused park official. In the meantime, Matt had found Peter Lee from the garage, who thankfully hadn't left yet for his vacation. (Yes, he was actually heading off to the East Coast.) He showed us the breaker in the slop closet and reset it. Electricity resumed but it was a sweaty twenty minutes. At least the crew got to eat.

I settled the cast into the CAA community center where there was a lengthy search for costumes and props among the five bags that we had. It turned out that unbeknownst to me, there was a SIXTH bag and it was still in the baggage storage at the hostel. Matt had to go fetch it. (Note to self: next time get ONE big-assed bag for all props and costumes.) The crew was still scrambling to set lights and video but it was already 7:40 and the cast was antsy to begin. I climbed over the fence to Portsmouth Square and was surprised to see that it was entirely full. There must have been nearly 100 people there. The seats were all taken and people were sitting on the sides and standing in a loose semi-circle all around. Genny Lim and Buck Gee were there, as were Matt's family and about a dozen students from Berkeley.

Buck Gee speaks about Angel Island.

At around 7:50, the crew seemed to finally be ready and Buck Gee went up to talk about Angel Island. I breathed a sigh of relief; the show was about to begin. Okay we were about 20 minutes late, but it wasn't so bad, everyone was excited, all was well. Then Kate comes running and asks me where my iphone is. "Why do you need my iphone?" I ask. It turned out that for some reason, there was no music. I ran back to the community center to get the phone and handed it to the sound technician while the rest of the cast was in places. By then, I was like an overstretched rubber band.

The ensemble in the prologue. I am offstage dealing with sound.

I was a little upset over the lack of music in the prologue but when the play began, there was a new onus to focus on. A red-faced Chinese drunk in the first row was loudly responding to everything on stage. It was really hard not to be distracted. "Why are your hands trembling?" the Inspector asked. "Because it's cold!" the drunk retorted. At one point, an audience member picked up the drunk's half-empty pint of rum and holding it like a carrot on a stick, he coerced the drunk to go sit on the bench stage right. But after a scene on the sidelines, the drunk went back into the audience and resumed talking. Three-quarters of the way through the play, he literally careened over, knocking over two or three chairs. Matt said that he raised his arm and the weight of it made him pitch to the left. 

Jojo Gonzalez, Carl Li, Hansel Lum, Ming Lee.

Mei Lai and her baby, which is actually a cushion since I couldn't find a doll.

But we made it through the performance and everyone said they enjoyed it. It certainly was several shows in one what with the drunk and with Toisanese ladies talking throughout. We struck lights and sound into Cristian's van and had some well-deserved drinks at the Buddha Bar nearby.

Jojo Gonzalez & Kitty Chen framed by the San Francisco skyline.