First Person: David di Giovanni on Play it Again Phaedra...again

Playing “Play it Again” Again

by David di Giovanni


What is the point of sharing a play one has rehearsed?  

If art or theatre are thought of as services for cultural entertainment, then the point is to share the play, to have an event for people to attend, and to continue sustaining your own livelihood (pay the bills, be an active member of society).  People pay to receive the commodity they deem worthwhile.  

I’ve often heard myself say, theatre doesn’t exist without an audience.  I don’t wholly agree with this right now.  

I had the pleasure this week to go back into rehearsal on the first play of our current season- Play it Again, Phaedra.   We had decided, in an effort to sustain our independent theatre-making, to focus this season on making two shoppable plays.  By May, we intended to have two commodities (repeatable plays) to begin offering.  This decision comes off the momentum of our last season, where we produced monthly transient one-nighter episodes for eight months.  Quality, not Quantity! is our motto.  

First-Person: David di Giovanni on MAP

Part VIII

Toward the end

By David di Giovanni

You know, we’ve been involved in putting on a show a month at the Mainline since September, and never once did any joke involving ‘that time of the month’ come to my head.  

Remarkable, eh?

MAP started Season One, at least for me, from the desire to search for theatrical forms which would attract a younger demographic to the theatre.  So what exactly does that mean?  Well, here’s how it went for me.  

Blog: The MAP Project - 2011 (Part III)

Three

We got a real weird thing going on.

By David di Giovanni

When I tell people I work for a theatre troupe, The MAP Project, I am then asked, do you do comedy or drama? I always feel stuck at this question - what was passing small talk must now become a bit more than that.  An explanation is needed.

Sunday Feature - Deeper into FOUR Yourself

(Photo credit: Richard Muller)

Reconsidering FOUR Yourself

Thinking longer about a play which strikes you

by Valerie Cardinal

A few years ago when I was still interested in becoming an actress, I was asked a very interesting question in a theatre school interview; what is the purpose of theatre?

At the time, I stumbled through an awkward answer about social relevance or something. After thinking deeply about last month’s performance of the MAP Collective’s FOUR Yourself, I feel like I’m a little closer to uncovering what the meaning of theatre is, at least to me. 

The piece of verbatim-style theatre has stayed with me even a month after its run, which is definitely saying something. FOUR Yourself combined filmed interviews with its three actors with references to books, movies, television shows and more. It’s a concept that was confusing, odd, a little infuriating and ultimately enlightening. 

The Upstage Interview: David di Giovanni

Photo credit: Richard Muller

A conversation about FOUR: Yourself with David di Giovanni, General Manager of The MAP Project. 

By Estelle Rosen

UPSTAGE

To start with, could you explain what MAP stands for and its origin. 

DI GIOVANNI

Mind Action Personality  started when my colleague Rio Mitchell and her partner Bella Kline had done an installation where they filmed themselves for an hour at various times. They became very interested in banal moments.  Rio Mitchell was interested in how to put these banal moments on stage. We started with ONE a year ago. We get together. We film ourselves,  transcribe,  and try to make a narrative out of that.

Ideas: David di Giovanni

(Photo credit: Richard Muller)

Blood! Guts! Sex! Marketing!...and the  Theatre of Gen-Me
The big bad world won’t necessarily let us be artists, singers, actors right when we get out. Cue depression, self-entitlement, and financial instability.
by David di Giovanni


I belong to ‘Generation Me;’ a term dubbed by Dr. Jean Twenge. ‘Generation Me’ encompasses anyone born from 1970 to the mid 1990s. ‘Generation Me’ is partially the product of a pedagogy in school based on raising self-esteem. The thought was: if you make children feel good about themselves, they will do better. This was not the case.

So what do we do with a generation told that ‘they can be whatever they want to be?’ This is a generation who, as she points out, is at highest risk being diagnosed as depressed or bipolar. This is a generation of ‘self-entitlement.’ We’ve been told from our childhood that nothing can stop us from being what we want to be. Except, we realize that this is not necessarily true. The big bad world won’t necessarily let us be artists, singers, actors right when we get out. Cue depression, self-entitlement, and financial instability.