Max "Bunny" Sparber documents the process of writing a one-man show about performer Tiny Tim, including posting his rough scratch demo recordings of original songs, his early drafts of the script, and his research for the project.
A free full-length album of original music by America's favorite drunken sailor puppet, available for download here. Songs include "Pour Me Another Box of Wine," "One Million Frogtown Whores," and "Why Are Women So Afraid of Seamen?"
A SONG from my punk and glam rock musical about Web culture, NSFW:
"JILL TURNED ON THE RADIO" LYRICS: Jill turned on the radio She didn't like a thing she heard The droning of the melodies She couldn't stand a fucking word Another boring love song Another teenage star Jill turned off the radio And Jill picked up her guitar She sang ooh, ooh ooh
Jill knew only two chords And Jill couldn't keep the beat But she had a computer and a microphone And she could record and could delete Jill wasn't sure what to sing But she figured what the hell With the shit that's on the radio Jill figured she might as well She sang ooh, ooh ooh
So there were clicks on her recording There were places where the microphone popped So what if her music was made up Of fitful starts and stops Jill wasn't making pop music Jill wasn't looking to sell But Jill she had a guitar And so Jill figured what the hell She sang ooh, ooh ooh
ANOTHER SONG from my punk and glam inspired musical about Web culture, NSFW.
"THE KIDS ARE ONLINE" LYRICS: How are the kids? They're just fine In the middle of this decline Where are the kids? They're online now They're looking for a way to get kicks With downloads of a Slick Rick remix And lists of cult films from netflix yeah
Hey ho 24 hours to blow And you ain't dressed up and ain't noplace to go And there ain't no jobs and ain't no dough nohow
What can you do that don't suck And don't cost more than a few bucks To get away from all the daft fucks yeah What do you with all your time In the middle of this decline There's always something to do online now
Hey ho 24 hours to blow And you ain't dressed up and ain't noplace to go And there ain't no jobs and ain't no dough nohow
This ain't a world for our teens Just the same drags and bad scenes But there's another world on PC screens yeah How are the kids? They're just fine In the middle of this decline Where are the kids? They're online now
MELANIE MISFIT: Answered an ad in Craigslist. The ad said you shouldn't already be able to play an instrument, and I didn't, so it seemed perfect.
DANNY NO: If you couldn't play an instrument, why did you think you wanted to be in a band?
MELANIE MISFIT: Boredom. I just didn't feel like I was doing anything interesting. I don't know. It was impulsive. The ad seemed funny, I guess, so I answered it. Let me back up a moment. You know, we don't make any real money off this, so I have a day job, and it's the same job I have had since I was 21, and I hate it. I file dental records. I work in an office with 25 other women, and all of them are middle aged, and all they do is gossip and talk about their kids and bring pies and cookies in to share, and they're all just getting fatter and fatter. And I know fat is supposed to be a feminist issue, or whatever, but I don't want to look down the road and see myself at 45 years old, and the only thing I have in my life is a husband I can barely stand, and some obnoxious kids, and a job I hate, and adult onset diabetes. And that was the road I was on. So I saw an ad on Craigslist saying a punk band was starting, I thought, fuck it.
DANNY NO: Were you a fan of punk?
MELANIE MISFIT: A fan of music, yeah, so, yeah, punk is music, and I listen to it. I don't know that I'd say I'm exclusively a fan of punk. I don't know that I'd say NSFW is a punk band. We're inspired by punk, sure.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: We're punk.
MELANIE MISFIT: Maybe. It feels weird for me to say it. I mean, punk started, when? 1978? Somewhere around there? If we're going to pick a really old style of music, why don't we just start a dixieland revival band? But, you know, Suzie really, really wants to call us a punk band, so we let her.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: Come on. We're totally punk. Tell the man where you got your name.
MELANIE MISFIT: All right, well, that was pretty punk. Suzie has a book called Fucked Up and Photocopied, which is all posters for punk shows. We just grabbed band names we liked and made them our last names. So, you know, The Misfits.
IDA SCREAMER: I was going to call myself Ida Idol for a while, after the Idols. But then we remembered Billy Idol, and we didn't want people to think I was trying to pass myself off as his sister or something.
MELANIE MISFIT: It took us, like, a month to remember that there was a guy named Billy Idol, too. So what kind of punk band are we?
SUZIE SKIRMISH: We're a fucking punk band. I don't know why you always act so embarrassed about it. Three chords and a lot of shouting.
MELANIE MISFIT: I guess I just never understood why you want to do all this music about the Internet and also have a punk band. I mean, it's not like CBGB's was a Web page, or Blondie started on MySpace.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: They would have, though. They totally would have. What could be more DIY than the Internet?
MELANIE MISFIT: Well, I don't see it, but whatever. I always felt if we called ourselves punk, we risked limiting ourselves to a niche audience, and that wasn't what we were about. We're all sort of products of the Internet. I mean, all three of us are bloggers, and we spend almost all of our time online, and we experience our relationships through social media, and a lot of our language comes from the Web, and all that. But wee weren't hearing any of that stuff coming through in the songs we were writing, and so we decided to write our own songs. Pop music about the Web. That's what really interests me, more than saying we're part of this genre, or that genre, or whatever. I mean, I don't even really think about punk songs when we sit down to write.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: Oh, Jesus, don't talked about Juke Box Hero.
MELANIE MISFIT: You know, Suzie, you mind if I just talk for a little while without you interrupting? Is that possible?
SUZIE SKIRMISH: Juke Box Hero is the stupidest song ever written, Melanie.
MELANIE MISFIT: I don't agree. I think it's perfect.
DANNY NO: Juke Box Hero by Foreigner.
MELANIE MISFIT: Fuck yes.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: Oh God, here we go.
MELANIE MISFIT: I don't know what your complaint is, Suzie. It's about a guy who goes to a rock show, hears a guitar play, buys a guitar, teaches himself how to play, and goes on to be a rock and roll star. You should like it. It's DIY.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: It's so fucking hair metal!
MELANIE MISFIT: So what? It's rock and roll. It's what rock always promised. It's what punk always promised. I mean, what's that line about the Velvet Underground, that only, like, a thousand people ever saw them play?
DANNY NO: But all thousand went out and started their own bands. Brian Eno said that.
MELANIE MISFIT: That's what we're singing about. Except it's not a boy buying a guitar, it's someone getting online and starting a blog, and they write something, and all of a sudden ten thousand people, or a hundred thousand people, or a million people read it. Suzie is right, it's super-DIY. You can make yourself a superstar online and you don't need any money. You just have to tell your story. For me, that's totally rock and roll, and that's what Juke Box Hero is about. So you should like the song, Suzie.
SUZIE SKIRMISH: Well, too bad, because I really, really hate that fucking song.
MELANIE MISFIT: Well, I don't know what to tell you, except get used to it, because every time we sit down to write a song, I'm trying to write a Juke Box Hero for the Web generation, and so, no matter how punk you want our band to be, there's always going to be a little bit of Foreigner in everything we do. So what do you think about that?
SUZIE SKIRMISH: I think that the next time I start a band, I'm not going to post an ad on Craigslist.
I SUPPOSE MY THOUGHTS ON THIS aren't terrifically complicated. If you're in it for the money, forget it. If you write a play, there is very little likelihood of it getting produced. If it does get produced, it will probably be produced by a small company with almost no money to speak of. If they pay you, it will be a smallish amount at best. I have had three plays produced this year, two of which I was hired to write. I made about the same amount as I would working my regular job for a week. And that, I would wager, puts my in the top 10 percent of earners among Twin Cities playwrights.
It's understandable that people want to get paid for their work. Theater is a lot of work, and many of us have studied it in college, and spent years honing it as a craft, and we charge people to come see shows, and this seems like the same sort of model that other professions use. They make money. We should be able to as well, shouldn't we?
Maybe we should, but I wouldn't hold your breath. There are theaters in America that actually turn a profit. I would guess most don't. Theaters tend to use a non-profit model, and rely heavily on grants and individual donations, and, even then, typically barely make ends meet. Most theater in the United States is done by very small companies on shoestring budgets. They don't pay their cast. They often don't pay their directors, or tech crew, or anybody else. And, whether you're a playwright, and if you get a play produced, these are the people who are, most likely, going to be producing your plays. They don't have a lot of money to pay you, if any.
I can't say whether this is desirable or undesirable. It's just the way things are. Let's look at the Twin Cities. I pick Minneapolis and St. Paul as an example for a few reasons. Firstly, a fair amount of new work gets produced here. Secondly, it has a thriving regional theater community. And, thirdly, it's my community, so I can write about it with a little bit of authority. I have had plays produced here, and have written about theater here, on and off, for almost a decade. There are a number of professional and semi-professional theaters in the Twin Cities, but an overwhelming majority of performances produced in this town are by small, mostly broke companies that rent space in venues that seat 100 or less -- at any moment, I would say this sort of company is producing about 70 percent of the theater in Minnesota.
The Twin Cities are a bit atypical, though, in that a lot of people get paid for their work. They tend to get paid peanuts, but, nonetheless, Minnesota has a strong base of donors who regularly give to arts organizations, and so a couple of hundred dollars often trickles down, here and there, to the artistic staff.
So let's look at Omaha, where I have also done theater and been a critic. While the dominant regional theater company in Minneapolis is the Guthrie, which pays its actors, the dominant regional theater in Omaha is the Omaha Community Playhouse, which doesn't. And while they pay playwrights, neither theater company produces that much new work by area playwrights, if any. Both Minneapolis and Omaha also have professional children's theaters, but while the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis hires and pays local playwrights and produces original material, The Omaha children's theater has an on-staff playwright who produces a few adapatation per year, and otherwise does not produce new work by regional playwrights. And, in Omaha, that's it for professional theater. There are two semi-professional theater companies, and I know both to be struggling financially (and both share a 100-seat theater), and there are a handful of additional amateur companies that get by with almost no budget at all. There is a company in Omaha that produces new plays by regional playwrights, but the quality of the material they select, and the quality of their production, is historically pretty low, and they can't really pay a playwright more than pocket change, if that.
I'd say this condition is pretty typical for regional American theater, and that's your market as a playwright. We could bemoan the state of theater in America, but, the truth is, I don't know how it might be different, unless America suddenly goes theater crazy one day and starts flooding these companies with money, which doesn't seem likely. If complaining about it isn't going to get us anywhere, then all we can really do is address the world as it is.
This is one of the reasons I have decided to start writing plays that can be produced cheaply, and why I have decided not to charge small theater companies to perform them. There are a few other reasons as well, one practical, one theoretical, which I will discuss in greater detail in future essays. The practical reason, in a few words, in that I think culture trickles upward -- that you tend to smart small and cheap and build your way up to big and expensive, and you work your way up from small audiences to large ones. The best thing I can do, in these circumstances, is to encourage small theaters to produce my work, and hope that by doing so I can start working my way upward. The philosophical reasoning is a bit more complicated, so I'll just sketch it in here: I think the Internet has started to break the business model in which we pay for art, and, because I end up getting so much art and culture for free, my part of this bargain is to also provide new content for free -- to pay back into a public artistic commons, if you will.
For now, however, my main point is that, if I'm going to try to get produced by the small amateur theater companies that produce a vast majority of the theater in America, they're already going to have so little money to offer me that I might as well just give it away to them. I'll map out the specifics of how this will work when I start having plays that I wish to offer in this way, but this is the train of thought that I have been working with. And, to be clear, I won't be using this model with everything I write, and I will still charge large and for-profit companies to produce my work, and I will still charge when I get hired to write. But there are three plays I am now working on that will be made available, for free, to small theater companies, under the terms that I will map out, and I wanted to explain some of my reasoning behind this.
Max "Bunny" Sparber documents the process of writing a one-man show about performer Tiny Tim, including posting his rough scratch demo recordings of original songs, his early drafts of the script, and his research for the project.
A free full-length album of original music by America's favorite drunken sailor puppet, available for download here. Songs include "Pour Me Another Box of Wine," "One Million Frogtown Whores," and "Why Are Women So Afraid of Seamen?"
Max "Bunny" Sparber attempts to teach himself to be charming by putting himself through a self-created finishing school.
Max "Bunny" Sparber's quest to become a tough guy, beginning with his efforts to devlop a crushing handshake.
