Filed by Bil at 10:57 pm under Fightin' Words, Politics, Shameless Plugs, The Arts

I am preparing to write my first real high-stakes proposal. By high-stakes I mean there’s a chance of rejection. I wrote grant proposals in college but that was pretty much like asking for pennies that fell through someone’s pants-pocket and into their shoe.

I’m not sure why I made that analogy, because there isn’t any money on the line. What I mean is this: I have a shot at getting an actual theatre space to have a staged reading of a play I wrote. Our bad-ass new theatre company, Per Diem, will be producing it in the spring and I want as much publicity for our ice-breaker show as we can get. And staged readings are key. I want to have several of them, in fact, at various venues around the city. I’m thinking small stages at bars and cafés may be the way to go, but if I can get a space that is known for doing staged readings, that would help take it a lot further. So in that sense, the stakes are rather high. At least, they are in my mind.

In my aimless wanderings across the internet, I happened upon a certain arts center. For the sake of holding onto the hope that I have the wrong impression of these people, I will use pseudonyms. Let’s call it, I don’t know, “Ted Nugent’s Arts Center.” On their website, they give a calendar of the year’s planned staged readings (not too many of them, good news for me) and an e-mail address through which to inquire for more information on using the space.

So inquire I did. This seemed like a perfect opportunity. Suavely, coyly, I gave a bit of info about what we want and asked for a taste of what goes down in Ted Nugent’s Arts Center. At least, I thought I was being coy and suave. Here is what I wrote (edited for content, of course):

Hi there –

I found your website and would like a little more information on staged readings at your space. We’ve got a script that we’re planning to produce next spring, but in the meantime we’re all about having readings of this script in various locations around the city.

The script itself is merely a silly send-up of “[popular radio show],” filled with one-dimensional characters and a lot of nonsensical banter. But it’s funny, and there are NPR jokes. I live in [local neighborhood with high NPR-listening population], so I can say with some small degree of certainty that NPR jokes will probably be all right.

If you’re interested in talking more about this, please just send an e-mail and we can figure out a time to talk about it. If you’re not interested in talking more about this, please send some hate mail and we will leave you alone.

I’m looking forward to meeting you!

Regards,

Bil Gaines
Per Diem

How friendly, right? Charming? Interesting?

Maybe not. In retrospect, it’s not nearly as charming and interesting as I thought I was being. But it could have been worse.

Anyway, here is what Ted Nugent wrote back:

Bill,
Here is some info on staged readings at LST. The company does not stage readings but rather accepts proposals from local directors who represent the playwright and manage the event including all marketing, casting rehearsals etc.. The focus of LST is to do plays of social, historical or religious significance, The readings we host tend to have the same focus. Hope this helps.

Ted Nugent

Hmm. Cold. Stand-offish. Obviously disinterested. I immediately criticized this e-mail. First of all, spelled my name with two “L”s: offense number one. Gave the impression I was asking them to do it for me: offense number two. Implied my play carries no social, historical, or religious significance: offense number three.

Couldn’t be more wrong. Fucker.

Of course (again, in retrospect), I can see where they would have made these mistakes. Perhaps I share the blame…a little bit…No, wait, obviously this person is a moron. Yes, that’s the ticket.

Anyway, I realize that we are all past high school and so I am keeping a professional mind about this. A single e-mail is no way to judge a person or an arts center, so I will write them back with a proposal about how socially significant my play is. All we want is their space and maybe a notice on their website. We’ll do the rest. We were planning on doing the rest anyway. ‘Cause we’re professionals, dammit, not high-schoolers.

In the meantime, I am living up to my self-proclaimed title of Ambassador of California by procrastinating like the total flake that I am. This is going to take some finesse, and bullshit can be hard to finesse if you’re not in the right state of mind. So I am just sitting around, waiting to fall into that state of mind. It hasn’t happened yet.

Obviously.