Standing the Pressure

I have gotten into a couple heated conversations in the past couple weeks over my assertion that my art doesn’t need to be what makes me a living. People have accused me of perpetuating the starving artist stereotype, of not dreaming big enough, and of being under-committed to myself as an artist. As someone who feels she is nothing if not dedicated to herself as a professional artist, sacrificing many of the “normal” comforts of American middle class life in the stubborn pursuit of a pretty crazy dream, these statements cut me to the quick. However, I haven’t been able to combat them well, and so have been mulling it over a lot. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

I need money all the time. Like, basically everyday. In the grand scheme of things, I live pretty simply, and yet, every month, it seems I require a regular influx of money. My art, while awesome, is not yet commercially successful, and doesn’t happen all the time. If my art were to become my regular paycheck I would need it to happen more often in order to make me money. Additionally, I would need it to be really financially successful and viable all the time. This would lead me to worrying about making risky choices, rather than simply following what is interesting. Currently I try to make without concern of popularity. I consider my audience, but not as judge and jury, more as fellow collaborators who will find the work and then react to it. They don’t have to like it, they just have to engage with it. The honesty of making outweighs the need for the show to be popular because even if I make a terrible show, I can still buy groceries.

Every artist I admire lives off diverse sources of income. No one I think of as great, with a career I am working to emulate, survives only on the supply and demand level of Capitalistic art-making in the US. They teach, they lecture, they raise grants, they have generous benefactors. They maintain a part-time day job, they fall back on other skills when art-making is less-inspired, and they live simply most of the time. Sacrifice is constant, but the reward is that the art can continue to be something that potentially is so ground-breaking that it’s not ready to be commercial. Maybe this is the life that people are describing when they tell me that I should dream of being able to make a living as an artist, but it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like people want me to say “I dream to make shows and earn a living solely from them.” But I don’t. In fact, one of my fears is that my company will grow so large that I am forced to be a full-time administrator to my company and that I won’t be able to make the art anymore. I want to live as an artist in America, and that equals doing lots of different things in my lifetime, including making a lot of art which sometimes I make money from, and sometimes I just make.

Does this make me a turn-coat? An amateur? Part of the problem? I am making experimental plays in a society that still thinks Ionesco and Beckett are cutting edge; that barely has room for the NEA; that, yes, loved Broadway last year, but I am as far from Broadway as my local farm share is from McDonald’s salads. We are in a great resurgence of support for experimental work, but that doesn’t equal financial security, it equals a spotlight on some awesome art. Call me delusional and insane for choosing such a gutsy career choice as a woman from a lower-middle class background covered in debt. Thank god I don’t also expect to get paid a steady salary from just making plays.

I didn’t invent this thought. My teacher Thomas Prattki told it to me. He said that making money is a huge burden that your art doesn’t deserve. This sentiment provides me relief. I can stop wondering why doctors and lawyers have a path to financial security, but artists don’t. Instead I can keep making the work, however I can, and feel delighted by my own resilience. Should I ever find myself making a salary from making art (without also teaching, lecturing, and administrating) I will be happily shocked. I will gleefully eat my hat. For now, I can love the life I have, however it works.

Acting Administrators

It seems that a popular option for the  New Model of American Theatre is to allow for artist/administrators. Being one of those artists who likes to administrate, I concur with this realization (and add a resounding “duh” to the statement), but I would also like to propose a further addition to the New Way: Administrators should also make art.

Our cerebral culture has cut off our bodies, turning them into containers for our brains. As we the initiated believe, theatre is one of the remaining forums that keep humans connected to humanity, but it’s not the administering of theatre that connects us. The heart of the theatre is the person pretending in front of other people. Everything else is an accessory to that bare moment.  How much more powerful could a theatre’s marketing be if the PR team also had to take scene study? How much more playful could a whole organization be if the AD was regularly seen on stage? (Not that this is unheard of. Tony Estrella at the Gamm is an awesome example.)  I am not advocating for more people to become professional artists. I am advocating for more people to understand what goes into the art they are selling, and I am advocating for business to be equally infused with creativity, from both sides. Do we accept that an actor can be a bookkeeper faster than the reverse because we value the brain as a resource over the body? Or because it is collectively more embarrassing to put on a wig and do a funny walk than to balance a spreadsheet?

While I have had a lifelong love affair with performing, I have always found it vaguely humiliating. The deeper I go the more I realize that acting requires me to be honest and then foolish and then a complete idiot publicly.  I keep doing it because performing changes my ability to relate to the world; it makes me a happier, more comfortable, self-aware human; it is the most direct route I can take to understanding what is happening for the consumers of my product. Even with all of these benefits, I have a deep-seated belief that I will never be taken seriously if I am still on stage making funny voices, and so always wonder when I will give it up.  However, by continuing to perform I force myself to confront this ever-evolving me while reconnecting with why theatre matters. That recognition is the well I return to every time I write a press release or a grant application, just as all the time I spend marketing and grant-writing prepares me for rehearsal.

Maybe I seem particularly actor-centric to all the writers and designers and directors out there. This is not a solipsistic oversight, but a real belief. My dear teacher and mentor Martha Boesing once said: “You want to work in theatre? Take an acting class. Theatre is a lively art and it doesn’t matter what role you hope to play in its creation, you have to understand it from the viewpoint of the actor.” I go one step further and say you have to keep understanding that. All the time. Maybe if we all agreed on that we could push our New Movement onward with the loud honesty and foolish integrity only our profession can bring to this all-too-serious world.

Twitter as a Precursor for Change and Destruction, or the Providence Town Hall

On Monday night I attended a theatre-based town hall meeting at Trinity Rep hosted by Boston’s StageSource. It was a meeting to gear Providence up to participate in the annual TCG Conference, which this year happens in our own backyard in Boston.

Per usual, not too many people came. We are a rather small community, and sometimes I wonder if we won’t  grow because there aren’t enough people who like to nerd out at town hall meetings. I was, however, happy to see a few people that I knew and that the moderators were Tony Estrella of the Gamm, Curt Columbus of Trinity Rep, and Julie Hennrikus of StageSource: all three interesting and quality people. Because my friend Leigh was already there and sitting in the front(ish) row, I sat beside her and readied myself to hear about logistics of the Conference and in general, a sales pitch of why we should attend.  I had been planning to go since last November when  I realized it was happening in Boston, and came to the town hall just to stay in the loop. Little did I know I was in for something way better.

Rather than advertising to us, they wanted to have a conversation all together about what should be discussed at this year’s Conference. At first Tony, Julie, and Curt batted around topics and the rest of listened and chimed in. This year’s Conference is about “modeling the movement,” which is hinting at how the current non-profit regional theatre model is broken and we as a community of makers have the chance to build it in a new way.  As a deviser making new work, uninterested in pursuing a career in regional theatre, I get particularly excited about the questions this topic proposes and talk about it a fair bit with my experimental theatre colleagues.  Having such a conversation at Providence’s own regional theatre with two traditional artistic directors (whom I respect very much), felt a little dangerous and exciting.

Most of the conversation remained essentially how you would imagine something like this to go: “The money’s all dried up,” “Share resources,” “New audiences.”  It was when we got to the topic of Twitter that things got really good.

Julie brought up the very controversial “tweet seats,” which have sprung up in theatres in an effort to get some sort of youth demographic. In case you haven’t heard, the proposal is that there be a theatre seating section where people can tweet while watching the play, thus creating a live newsfeed of the show to do the marketing for you while making people who can’t put down their phones happy. A lot of people have passionately hated this idea, and the town hall audience was no different. Everyone began railing about how tweet seats defeated the whole purpose of theatre, and, in quick succession, the conversation about tweet seats turned into a conversation about how terrible Twitter is.

Because I was sitting next to my friend Leigh I felt powerful. We are both theatre makers, we both like experimental work, and we both like social media. All this Twitter bashing made us antsy. I began thinking about Twitter and plays and how, yeah, I don’t want to make a show where people are just sitting in the back tweeting the whole time. That would be annoying. But, I start thinking, maybe you could use it somehow. Like, in a specific moment in a play you could have everyone start tweeting for some reason. . . I propose this to the town hall meeting. I explain that I don’t like the idea of tweet seats because when I make shows I want to curate the entire experience. If you just let your audience be on twitter whenever, then you don’t have enough control over what they are receiving while at your show.  By creating a moment where you need them to tweet,  in order to keep the play going, you still give them a specific experience.

Well, maybe in another town in another town hall another set of AD’s would have smiled and nodded and we would have moved on, but not in Providence. Curt did not like that idea. He passionately did not like it. Not wanting to misquote him, I will say that I remember him saying something about how when we are making theatre we are trying to connect with something older that will withstand time that touches a deeper part of us. . . or something. . . And that the smallness of Twitter is antithetical that experience. Other members of the audience too began agreeing with him. One woman even went so far as to say that someone who went to the theatre based on a tweet wouldn’t have a good experience because just that way of receiving the marketing was misleading.

Here’s where perhaps the conversation could have gotten bigger, but didn’t. What Curt was hitting on is very deep: What is theatre as we move forward? Is it an old deep resonance for the ages? Of course. But isn’t it also a party? Isn’t it also an experience; a reflection of the world we live in; a journey into what fascinates us right now? Maybe that’s what makes me part of some shallow generation of artists, but I don’t know.  My performance art goofs of treating every audience member to their birthday or giving them a haunted house runs deep with people, even in its ephemeral and silly nature. If someday I need people to tweet in a show to bring them somewhere, and I come to that decision with excitement and curiosity, then it is a brave artistic choice worthy of being taken seriously. Letting people tweet during shows for the  sake of marketing is as sad as stopping a play mid-way through to sell cookies, which of course happens all the time. So this thing of Twitter is really a question about what sustainable 21st century theatre is. We aren’t just talking about subscriptions and marketing, we are in a moment where the very act of what goes on stage must be pulled apart.

I didn’t say any of that at the meeting. Instead, Leigh spoke up in defense of Twitter and I reiterated my point about curating experiences,  and eventually everyone calmed down and, yes, we moved on to other topics. In the meantime, though something has shifted inside me. There was an acknowledgement in that moment of disagreement that if we are to move forward and create a new movement, then we will need everyone to be ready to be honest and brave with their beliefs. On Monday night I fell deeply in love with Providence again. A town that’s the right size for me to get into a debate with its top artistic director in his very own theatre, and so tenacious that he will fight back.

See you at TCG, where we can really mix it up.

For My PVD

I am loving the city series on HowlRound.  A different city is chosen periodically and various people making theatre within that city write about how the scene is and then other people read that stuff and, in true blog fashion, discuss. So far  San Francisco and Minneapolis-St. Paul have gone under the microscope, with very different results.

Because Providence’s theatre community is small when compared to bigger markets like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Seattle, etc, etc we are probably a long way from getting HowlRound’s ”city spotlight.” However,  as I read the Twin Cities theatre-makers big debates  I reflect on the state of my own backyard.

I arrived here two years ago, after the Black Rep folded, post-New Gate Theatre and right in time for Rhode Island’s only center for new work and  rentable, sizable black box, Perishable,  to gasp its last gasp.  As a pushy newcomer with an agenda, I have spent the last two years wondering if this was the best time to arrive or the worst.  However, we made it through the summer and saved the black box. Perishable is now in the process of being reborn as 95 Empire and a program of AS220. With this new development, the entire Rhode Island theatre community has been forced to ask itself a lot of big questions. Turns out, being a part of big conversations is something I love.

Last night many of us who will be using the new 95 Empire in the near future gathered to discuss the proposed contract and the new models for presenting. I was surprised by how few people showed up, but also know that not everyone values public discourse the way I do. Plus, for people who have lived here longer than I, this is a difficult conversation to have. Some of the people in attendance had been programming in that very space for decades, and are now being given new rules, guidelines, and numbers.  We live in a state with the word “hope” on its flag, and it’s times like this that I see the value in that persistent little word. The artists who keep showing up are generous and clear. AS220 and 95 Empire’s new manager are flexible and reasonable.

As we discussed the new policies and procedures I heard two repeating themes: 1. “This new model won’t work for me and my shows. I should open my own space.” and/or 2. “How can we turn this into an opportunity for greater collaboration and partnerships among all the small companies?” Both of these reactions are music to my ears. They affirm the reason that I am not leaving for a bigger market anytime soon. Much the way I like to make performance in an open no-rules/reinvent-the-rules kind of way, I relish that I have managed to move to the Wild West (and it’s in New England!) in terms of infrastructure.

So, yes, Providence is far away from a debate like the one the Twin Cities is having on HowlRound.  The Twin Cities is steeped in the necessary conversation that comes when a community has a diverse and thriving scene. Were I to compose something for Providence, my concerns would be more over-arching. I would encourage theatre artists to apply for the funds that are available  every time they are available; to give comps to artists who you really want to come; to see each other’s work; to show up to the meetings and gatherings and info-sessions; to involve other people from outside the theatre community; to show up at each other’s strikes and load-ins; to look beyond Rhode Island for models of work and structure; to think of us as big, even though we are small. I would also rhapsodize about how lucky I feel to arrive somewhere right at the moment that everything is changing; how after living in places where I wasn’t sure where I fit, I have found a place where everyone fits because we need everyone. I would end by saying that I hope the decisions we make today push us forward,  so that someday theatre-makers in Providence can debate each other on HowlRound too.

Beating a Horse Long-Dead

An amazing thing is happening. This show that I’ve been pounding away at and rehearsing and sweating over opened last weekend and people really  like  it. This translation of a French absurdist play from 1960 is selling out and getting rave reviews. This play that runs a non-stop one hour and forty minutes without intermission, is all about death and mortality and features cyclically strange language is popular.

Anytime I work on something I am happy when people received it well, but in this case, it also irritates me. As someone typically creating original work, my greatest interest in theatre as an art form is in pushing the genre forward. I like to create new. I grew tired of scripted theatre around 2003, was never very good with older texts, and have only dipped my toes in occasionally since. Working on this particular production of a previously-scripted play interested me because I was asked to direct, was curious about how I would function in that role, and saw it as a chance to delve into someone else’s historically strange logic.

Once again, I am left scratching my head at the public and critics in Rhode Island. Why do they come all out and support a 1960′s experimental play and not contemporary experimental plays? People are so excited to see something that is essentially a historical presentation — because they’ve heard of it? because it’s passed some sort of quality test of time? I am glad they are coming and enjoying. It gives me hope for our shows, because Ionesco is strange and unnatural, as are we. I only wish people were also curious about the new versions of strange; to the burgeoning movements right under their noses. I doubt we are the next Ionesco, but I do know that by dint of our training, our friends, and our contacts we are a part of a new lineage of experimental theatre makers and that other cities are embracing this wave of new live performance.

Maybe this is always the plight of people who choose to push forward instead of look back, especially for those of us choosing to push forward and not live in New York. Maybe Ionesco also had trouble getting butts in seats because everyone just wanted to see Ibsen or Chekhov.  I should probably just be happy that people want to see a history lesson in experimentation and that the fans Strange Attractor has are as loyal and supportive as they are. But you know me. I’m always pushing the boundaries.

Climbing

This thing of getting press to come to your show is a tricky one.  A double (maybe triple)-edged sword kind of thing that both haunts and tempts me.  I know we are supposed to have press and I have had some good people give me clues as how to get press, but when I look around at the vast array of press my colleagues have received, I feel suddenly unsure if I really want it (or exactly why I do).

Our friends at The Wilbury Group recommend signing up for as many listings as possible.  And so I did, and I did, and I did (etc).  The theory being that by signing up for listings you increase your web presence and therefore make your event seem more prevalent and therefore make it seem like something a paper should be sending a reviewer to.  Just inviting the press won’t get the press to come.  I like this approach, not because I love submitting listings (which I actually find to be the most boring of all the producing jobs), but because it seems sneaky and subversive.  I doubt that anyone goes to anything purely because they read about it in a listing, but once I found out that you don’t submit because of the audience but because of the press, a dreary job got better.

Even with all my listings, I have a feeling that we are not going to get any press for our current show, If You Shoot a Boot You Might Get Wet.  We haven’t laid the right groundwork yet — haven’t done enough shows or been in enough listings, especially for a place like New England, where even if I am here for the rest of my days, I will always be “new in town.”  Truthfully, I feel relieved.  Bad press at this point would feel really bad, and while I don’t want to think we would get a bad review, I have seen enough shows I liked get panned that I know that I don’t get to make that decision.  Good press would be welcome, as it would be nice advertising, help in future grant applications and just boost our general presence: all at once pointless and priceless achievements.

This press thing feels like the last hurdle to legitimacy.  Like, until we get consistent press (we have actually gotten some in the past), we are not actually a well-respected professional company.  These goals sit like rungs on a ladder.  There was a time when funding seemed way out of reach, or producing partners felt scarce, or I wondered if anyone was actually ever going to come see something we made, or if I would ever find a group of like-minded collaborators.  Here I am, writing this blog from a place of abundance, farther up the ladder than I was a year ago, just waiting for the newsroom to show up.

The Hospitality of Gratitude

Today I read an arts marketing blog that I discovered through #2amt twitter hashtag.  The author works for Arena Stage which is a hulking beast of a regional theatre.  In some ways, we could not be more opposite as organizations, and yet I relate.  My favorite point of his being that as theatre marketers we also must act as educators, fundraisers, and community builders.

This past weekend Strange Attractor Theatre Co.  presented our very first showing of our latest endeavor in an informal work-in-progress setting.  Today I should have my deviser hat on.  I should be mulling over all the ways that the work is as of yet incomplete (because oh man is it even incomplete!), but instead I am glowing because it would seem that our other goals are being achieved.  I have stated in this very blog that  I feel pretty confident in the art my colleagues and I make.  Now I am learning to market and produce it.  When I read the checklist from the arts marketing blog, I couldn’t help but smile.  And here’s why:

Education: More people than we had anticipated came to our showing.  They came because they like us, they like our past work, they were curious about how our process works, and wanted to peer in, even if it wasn’t finished yet.  Several people who attended had come to a workshop that we’d lead in devising last month, and so they were able to even deepen their own relationship to devising through seeing us in this incomplete phase of things.

Community Building: Half of the people who came stayed well after the showing to continue talking about the work.  More than half filled out the comment cards we’d given for suggestions.  These numbers are encouraging because they represent people that want to participate in a community of art.  We are not looking for people who simply attend shows.  We want to encourage dialog about theatre, while being a part of creating a city and country where more art happens and more people are a part of making art. Also, being an audience to an early-stage is a favor and a gift, and so we offered our showing for free and provided wine and cheese after.  If theatre is hospitality, then we just had people over to tea at our house that we’re building.  Far from having bought furniture, we still have insulation piled on the floor.  Giving people wine and cheese and not charging them amplified our gratitude and is our way of saying thanks for coming.

Fundraising: We are entering the fundraising universe at a courageous time.  Crowd- and micro-funding abound, which is great for small fries like us who are also looking to build an audience.  We have been awarded  RISCA grants in the past, which are invaluable, but do not create an audience.  However, once someone has given $10 to your kickstarter campaign, they are going to make it to your showing.  This time around another piece of our funding came from Providence Provision, which is a Sunday Soup micro-funding dinner.  The attendees that night voted for our project, which meant that our showing was free-of-charge, allowing more people to attend.    Our multitude of micro-investors hold us up to a standard, as they seek a return on their investment in the form of a more vibrant city with quality and divergent art.

All of this works in a never-ending feedback loop of support and creation, and for today I rest easy feeling like we pretty much are on the right track.  Now back to figuring out what the heck the show is all about. . .

Do You Wanna Be in the Business

Can I be honest with you?  My collaborators and I –those of us who make up  Strange Attractor  – are not very happy at the moment.

We are at the end of our first two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal and we’re going to show what we have made so far to an audience in two days.  Amazingly, we have been awarded and granted and given money and also hype and enthusiasm.  Every theatre management teacher I have ever had told me that that’s what is supposed to happen.   Every theatre I have ever worked for has done the same (if they were smart and able).  But I am feeling terrified.

Can I keep being honest?  We don’t have anything to show.  To which you should simultaneously say “of course you do!” and “of course you don’t!”  because that would be true.  We of course have something.  We showed a friend what we had days ago and she was able to watch us perform and speak to us afterward on what she saw and what we presented.  That counts.  And then, of course we don’t have anything yet — it’s only been two weeks and we are starting from these little seedlings of seedlings of  ideas amidst an epic story written by one of the greatest playwrights in the Western cannon.

All of your reasoning doesn’t stop my panic, worry, and fear that our hype is too good for our product; that people will come and be disappointed; that they won’t understand no matter how many times we’ve told them that this is not a play yet that it’s not a play yet; that we are inviting them in right now to help us make the play — not to fully amaze and entertain.  Not yet.  I just keep playing these Tribe Called Quest lyrics in my head: “You gotta get a label that’s willin’ and able/To market and promote, and you better hope/ (for what?) that the product is dope.”

(I always thought our product was dope.  What if this time it’s not?  What if we’re not dope!?)

Maybe you understand that already.  That still won’t stop the group of us from feeling scared and protective together.  Even in a group like ours where the playfulness and the aesthetic sensibility comes so easily, there comes a moment when everyone stops breathing because the people are coming and this isn’t what I want to make yet!

Tonight I will go back to rehearsal.  I won’t tell them we had this little talk.  But I will know.  I will know that you understand.  I will know that you are ready to see whatever it is we show you and that we will show you something.  I will try my best to keep some perspective.  To remember that we are allowed to fail, that it’s just a play, and that I am so lucky to be here right now doing exactly what I am doing.  I will exhale love for my colleagues while I do my best not to throttle their necks for not understanding why my ideas are clearly the best ones.  I will inhale the reality that after next week, when the showings are over and my comrades are gone (what I secretly cannot wait for right now) I will feel a crushing emptiness in my belly, because secretly, all of  this uncertainty and crazy-making is part of why I still do this, why I keep trying to do it bigger than before.

All or Nothing

Last weekend I attended a Creative Capital Internet for Artists Workshop. It’s amazing how a little knowledge and encouragement can induce a panic attack.

A team of artists from NYC descend upon 20 of us unsuspecting Rhode Islanders.  We’d been selected to participate in a free weekend of learning how to harness the Power of the Internet.  Everyday I found myself feeling stronger.  All of this affirming encouragement washed over my spirit — you are heading in the right direction. . . just do this! And you will be great! And the this! looked so easy.  I returned home ready to make the changes and accomplish my goals.  I would have a whole new website that weekend, despite the workshop leader’s mantra: you don’t have to do all this tomorrow.  But I knew they weren’t talking to me.  I was going to have it all sorted by Monday.

Normally perhaps that wouldn’t be such a struggle, but this weekend also marked the arrival of our two other company members — Aram and Roblin traveling from afar for a whirlwind first rehearsal of The Brand Project. Historically I am able to balance producer and artist.  In retrospect I see that maybe that balance is achieved with longer rehearsal periods and  getting all that producer stuff out of the way before creation starts.  The workshop, so perfectly timed with the boys’ arrival, through a curve ball.  Suddenly there was not enough time for anything and I unloaded on my husband and collaborator in a cafeteria.

In my memory it is like a white noise flash of Not Getting What I Want.  But what is it that I want?  A new website done yesterday? Him to know everything that I learned over the course of the workshop? Permission to mess everything up? Agreement?  After he left I realized how irrational I had become.  I opened my notebook and saw the single phrase I had written the day before: “all or nothing”: Brand’s singular catch phrase that eventually drives him to madness.  In an effort to stop the cycle of life imitating art, I wrote a to-do list and started making the small steps for today.  And I apologized to Jed.

A Difference of Marketing

Since my last post, the world of Rebecca Makes Plays has expanded to include a company name, a kickstarter campaign, and a host of new questions.

Yesterday we launched our current kickstarter campaign.  Because our local audience gave so generously to Special Happy in December, Jed and I know we cannot ask for a huge amount this time.  However, what the Special Happy push taught us is that kickstarter is not just about people giving money, it’s also about getting people excited.  With that in mind, we launched a small campaign with a cute narrative video, and are not expecting too much financially in return.  In other words, this time it’s more about the hype.

Within ten minutes of launch we received our first pledge and I was getting all kinds of congratulatory responses on the work we put out.  I exhaled and let the fun begin.  Then I got The Email.

Someone I know from another lifetime sent me a positive message with a big caveat.  She doesn’t like the video and therefore will not give to the campaign.  Let me be more precise:  She does not agree with the video as a fundraising tool and so will not give.  No, even more precise:   The video shows a lack of motivation, an inability to work without her money, and does not say why our work is vital, and so she will not give.

This doesn’t bother me because I really want her $25.  It bothers me because I have the work-ethic of a beaver after a windstorm, and I thought our video really showed that.  We made a narrative story for a platform that only demands pointing a camera at yourself and saying “please help me. ”  But that’s not what this fellow theatre-artist/producer felt.   She disliked the message she saw in the movie.

Ultimately she and I disagree on marketing.  We want our work to be uplifting and inspirational and change your life, but we refuse to tell people that that’s what we want.  Instead we seek to entertain and then believe that people will follow our positive trail, thereby changing their life, and thereby the world.    Maybe it’s a  generational difference– she came of age in the optimistic 70′s, I in the jaded 90′s, but probably not.  I know plenty of people my age who try to change the world by telling the world they are changing it.  Personally, that’s just not how we roll.