Why I'm Posting about Looping

After all these years, KNOWing about the Out of the Loop Festival, being IN it a couple times (which means, if you're self-producing (well, if you're me and MY cohorts), you're running around in a panic trying to corral props, furniture, rehearsing on nonperformance nights, and not really having/taking/making the time to see the other shows.

So this year I bought a pass. This year I get to wear the green lanyard (is that it? Is it a lanyard?) This year I get to belong to a secret society that I've heretofore only wondered about. The people with the green thingies around their necks, who spent the money to see 24 or so risky shows, who have no idea what to expect except that it's WaterTower and it's the OTL so it's bound to be interesting.

SO this, my first year actually contributing as a paying OTL subsriber, I thought that might also afford me the right to have and express some opinions about same. Not remotely meant to be 'criticism', I'm just putting my reactions out there and inviting anyone who wants, to share back.

I haven't committed this many nights in row to theater (outside of rehearsing and performing) since I sat on AEA's national council and was, perhaps unbelievably, a Tony voter. About once every three months, for several years between '94 and '03, I'd fly to NYC on my own dime, stay with my then-boyfriend, who had a Volvo and seemingly bottomless pockets of cash; we'd park in midtown (which cost more than most tickets to DFW shows), and go see show after show after show, courtesy of the League of American Theaters and Producers. Over time I grew jaded and tired of Broadway, something I think is only possible if you see everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. It was weird because that was ALL we saw....we didn't do Off or Off Off, just Broadway and then usually fabulous sushi.

But that was then and this is now. I'm Looping the Loop at Last. I'm throwing out thoughts, reactions. Shall we start a conversation? Anyone? If THeater is failing America, isn't it time we reacted? My thoughts are only mine, from my gut, because I don't get paid for them and (thank God) I don't have a responsibility to the reading public. But I'd love to see what other people's - actors, theatregoers, green thingie wearers, reactions are......