A year ago, The Bluestone Project was still just an idea, and I had no idea how it would turn out. I wanted to find a way to help our current divide, and spoke with dozens of people about how theater could do that best… but I still had no idea about the project’s impact.
We presented REUNION by Nandita Shenoy, CHECO, ALBANY by Hadasa Mercado Cortes, WENDY UNWRITTEN by Kat Ramsburg, and finally THE NATIONAL DEBT IS PAID by me, Ben Bartolone.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I’ve felt incredibly helpless, frustrated, and furious over the last few years. For the first time, I feel like I’m able to contribute to the efforts to bridge the this cultural divide that you and I see every day.
I hope you feel a sense of accomplishment, too, because my team and I flicked the lights, but your support is what made The Bluestone Project possible.
And once we nail down a few more details, I’m very excited to share the news about Season Two with you! As subscribers to kef theatrical and The Bluestone Project, you’ll be hearing it first.
Congrats to you for being part of this community that created Bluestone’s first season with kef theatrical productions, we’ll keep you posted on our friends’ projects over the next few months!
Wishing you all an incredible summer. Thanks for reading, and for sharing The Bluestone Project’s first season with us all.
-Ben
The Bluestone Project
kef theatrical productions
The Bluestone Project sets out to present new plays written and directed by people that represent our actual nation.
Imagine if we lived in a world where women were valued for their mental capacity, and not just their physical. Now imagine a world where the American theater often patted itself on the back for being #SoDiverse, and always fighting for equality.
Imagine a world where these women were aloud to laugh about their accomplishments, and not just salad!
In our first year of producing, my tiny little theater company just finished presenting three different plays by three different female playwrights. Our budget for the year is under $10k, and I can’t help but feel that we’ve done something that much, much larger theaters find impossible. By the time our season ends next month, 75% of our readings will have been written by female playwrights.
In no way am I saying this for a pat on the back. I’m writing this because the concept of a mostly female season seems to be impossible to find in the American theater, and I don’t know why.
I am a male playwright. Some might feel that this is working against my own interests. The way I heard the story as a teenager from Rev. Leslie Reimer, which I’ve been thinking about ever since, Heaven and Hell look exactly the same. All types of people are sitting around a table filled with every type of food and drink imaginable. In Hell, everyone’s arms are locked into place, and they can’t feed themselves, only see the food lying around the table, going to waste. In Heaven, everyone’s arms are locked in the same place, but people are feeding each other.
I’m here to tell you why you should hire female playwrights.
You are a proudcer.
You want to present shows that people give their hard-earned money to see, you want them to enjoy the experience so much that they tell their network, and you want your show to become a success, packing your houses.
Whether you produce for-profit or not-for-profit, this involves high revenue, and important people asking you what comes next. Rake in the cash, and gain artistic freedom to choose your projects. That’s the dream, right?
You’re looking for a fresh take.
The classic hit boils down to:
A new thing
A new take on an old thing
In a world of plays being presenting from the male gaze, a fresh take can be the easiest thing in the world to find. To me, theater is at its best when it brings a new viewpoint to an old concept, and gives the audience an experience of something they can take with them out into the world. If most plays being produced are written by men, then simply presenting a woman’s work is the simplest way to achieve that experience. Your audience skews female.
You know this already, it happens on all levels. All the statistical data that comes out every so often comes as no surprise to producers, because you see the crowds entering and leaving the house.
If you build it, they will come.
I saw Waitress with my wife over two years ago now, and there four generations of women sitting in the audience. They apparently haven’t stopped coming to town to see that show in particular. I have a guess as to why. Yes, Sara Bareilles is an established name. She’s also a female writing about female characters that are not defined by their relationships to men.
My company presented a reading in February, written by a young woman about a young woman. We had a theater super-fan in the audience, the focus of a documentary about constantly seeing plays. She found me after to explain that she loved, loved, loved the work, and especially the female point-of-view that has been missing from so much theater in the mainstream.
Don’t be like Congress.
Every single person I have ever met has an issue with Congress, usually focusing around some aspect of their detachment from everyday American life. We elect people to govern us that have not fully represented our interest, and we all know how much more diverse our country is than we see in the capitol.
Why do we accept the same in the American theater? Often times, the response lies somewhere between representing the ticket-buyers, or that perhaps “theater is just for white people.” Let’s not even start there…
…but you know your ticket-buyers are skewing female.
“I wish I thought of that.”
Every entrepreneur says this at one point or another. The answer to our collection problem is sitting right under our noses, but it takes one special someone to find it, and utilize it to great success. I’m telling you the secret of how I’m running my own company, because more female playwrights means more rich story in the American theater landscape, and we all win. Hiring women costs us exactly the same as hiring men.
Hire your female playwright, produce her show, stand in the back, and listen.
I dare ya.
I’ll accept a coffee with you, as thanks.
And now, as The Bluestone Project has completed readings by Nandita Shenoy, Hadasa Mercado Cortes, and Kat Ramsburg, I’m looking forward to working on our last piece with our very first male writer*. He can be a little scatterbrained at times, but I hope the play is well-received!
Look for our announcement of The Bluestone Project’s next season coming out soon. Spoilers: It’s going to be very female-driven.
Trust-fund playboy Lee Wellings is roused one morning with news that his father, the great Saul Wellings, has passed away. With a folder shoved in his face containing instructions to invite a short list of one-percenters over for a meeting, Lee must guide this volatile group towards an impossible task: find a way to reduce the United States National Debt to zero, or his massive inheritance is forfeit. This is the first problem in his life that Lee can’t just run away from, and worst of all, he’ll have to do it all wearing a suit and tie.
About the reading series:
This play is part of a series produced through Kef Theatrical Productions called The Bluestone Project, in which we’re presenting new plays featuring artistic teams as diverse as our actual nation– a small step in trying to bring more parity to our field.
Being born and raised, and still living in Puerto Rico, the only trips I took to NYC were through the lenses of television programs and movies. I had a lot in my head of what it would be like. My “imagination supplied what my eye could not reach.”
However, in February 2018, I was able to lay all of my dreams to rest and enjoy the real experience of New York City. It was wonderful. For the reading, the group of actors were of excellent talent and heart. I was blessed to have Luis Salgado as the director of my piece. Having a fellow Puerto Rican as part of the team meant that he understood my vision even more, and together we would be able to set the scenario, the rhythm and the heart of the piece.
The day came when the amazing actors, the director, the producer and myself, got together, not to rehearse, but to present to the public my writing. Through that hour and a half, I saw a group of strangers attentive to every word that came out of the actors. I saw their reactions, heard their laughter, and shared their shock and emotions. I knew then and there that for a brief moment, they were moved by my words. And that’s what writing is all about (at least for me it is); we present to the world our thoughts, opinions and perspective through words because we know that they can move and possibly change others.
As C. M. Woodhouse once wrote: “In the last hundred years enough has happened to justify us in believing that the pen’s response to the challenge of force is at least not ludicrous and hopeless; indeed it is perhaps the one serious hope we have.” Of course, he was talking about Orwell’s Animal Farm, but I think it can be applied here as well. As writers, the pen is our weapon and with it we can bring the message of strength, unity and bravery— which is exactly what the Bluestone Project wants us to see. A basic, simple and powerful way we can unite a divided nation is through words, through the pen. So after this experience, I say that we continue to write; continue to use the pen.
The team for CHECO, ALBANY
Hadasa Mercado Cortes’ CHECO, ALBANY was presented as part of The Bluestone Project’s season on Feb 15, 2018 in Manhattan Theater Club Studios. You can read more about the season here.
I had a completely different post drawn up, but I saw something this morning that made me realize I was telling the wrong story.
I turned the usual corner on my usual commute into work with all the other usual adults. Down in the pathway towards the train, about a hundred kids who were in first, maybe second grade were “patiently” waiting in a single-file line to board the train with their chaperone, clearly heading into Manhattan for a field trip. They were adorable, and loud, and clearly frightening the usual adults that ride the train with me. As I board and waiting for the doors to close, I saw that the other adults on my train car looked like they were about to panic, wondering if these kids were getting onto our car—and this is what struck me.
I realized it was different, and my fellow grown-ups were terrified of not knowing what could happen. But what’s the worst thing that could happen here, a bunch of kids are loud, and you move on with your day? Excuse me while I wax philosophical over this, but that’s what blog posts are all about.
I think this is exactly what’s been happening between our culture in the age of social media. We’re able to avoid each other, and take out our anger about the most extreme things people that are not like us are doing. I can only speak for myself, but in myself, resentment builds. That leads to anger, and anger leads to fear. After all, who are these people acting like this? Do they even care about the things I care about? What else are they capable of doing?
The major reason we started The Bluestone Project was to let people see that we all want the same things. Family, job security, comfort, and not to live in fear. From all the way over there, people different than us probably look terrifying, but I bet those kids I saw boarding the train were just as scared of the strange adults who were sitting and staring. I mean, that’s everything they’re told to avoid.
Last month, The Bluestone Project presented REUNION by Nandita Shenoy, and we had a blast! Here, she shares her own experience.
When Ben invited me to share my play “Reunion” with the Bluestone Project this fall, my response was “Really?” A few months earlier, we had met to talk about the company that he was starting to address the divide in this country through drama, and I thought it was a great idea. I talked to him about some other playwrights that were writing plays which I thought might be part of the solution and then offered to send him the only play I have written that takes place outside of New York City. The play was set in my hometown of Buffalo, NY and takes place at a high school reunion. I did not think it was a play about healing any divide, but rather about discovering new ones. So I sent him the play and then carried on.
The Bluestone Project’s mission of addressing division through art is a wonderful one. As an artist, I truly believe that art can fix what politics and war and sometimes, even education cannot fix. I believe that I am a part of the larger culture whether I want to be or not and whether anyone else wants me to be either. I think that artists have a responsibility to address the larger issues of our society. But since the election of 2016, I personally have had a hard time writing to fulfill any of these lofty goals. In fact, I have had a hard time writing anything at all.
So it was a wonderful surprise to be invited to share and an honor to be considered part of such an important conversation at a time when I had so much to say but very little idea of how to say it. Returning to a play that I had written in the summer before the election brought me a new perspective on that conversation. In the play, two characters debate the nominees, each believing earnestly in the decision they have made and somewhat incredulous at the choice of the other one. After another character beseeches them to stop talking about politics, the subject is dropped. But the rest of the play demonstrates what happens when you avoid talking about the areas in which you disagree, the areas in which you may feel shame or anger or even confusion, the areas which mean the most to us as people. Looking at the play a year after I wrote it, I realized how important those conversations are.
I am still struggling with how to have those conversations today. Some of my close family voted for the other candidate, and that vote hurts me even now. I don’t know how to start the conversation, but as I discussed with Ben and then explored in my own work, that conversation is the only way that we as a nation will be able to move forward. I’m grateful to the Bluestone Project for letting me be a part of its conversation. Sometimes we communicate with each other in mysterious ways.
Our first reading of REUNION by Nandita Shenoy was a great success this month, and we’re looking forward to CHECO, ALBANY by Hadasa Mercado Cortes in February. But first, a thank you.
Yes, you. Thanks for all you’ve done for the Bluestone Project community. We’re on the right track in bringing faces, names, and stories to groups that we assume we know everything about. Bringing more empathy to a divided nation starts small, and 2017 was the founding year for our work.
We’ll have more updates soon, but in the meantime, I put this short video together with our friends at Terraform Entertainment to give a voice to this work. Check it out here!
Thanks again for joining us, we’re all very excited about the future.
-Ben
The Bluestone Project is a project of Kef Productions, an artist-run company that develops, presents and produces relevant and exciting new work.
Since coming up with this idea for The Bluestone Project, I have yet to meet someone that doesn’t immediately know what I mean by “divided nation.” I make no secret of my own beliefs, because I hope that you and I can discuss our similarities and our differences. I hope we can understand the other’s actions, but something stopped me in my tracks recently, and I think it sums up our current, moral predicament.
In light of allegations that Roy Moore actively sought out and performed indecent acts with underage girls– some of them as young as 14 years old, and against their will– Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has said YES, she believes the women who came forward as victims. She believes that Roy Moore pursued, and sometimes accosted them, but she is still voting for him, because he is a Republican.
Allegations against politicians, and the endless debates of “did-they-didn’t-they” have been going on for eternity. Yet, here we are, hearing that the first female Governor of Alabama in almost 50 years believes the allegations to be true, but will still vote for Roy Moore, because “Republican” is more important than “statutory rapist and child molester”.
Yes, I left “alleged” off there, because Governor Ivey believes that these girls were molested. Governor Ivey believes these stories. To her, Moore is a child molester.
I’ve heard enough voices to know the quick response, saying, “What about Senator Al Franken, he assaulted people,” and “Bill Clinton did X and Y.” All I can ever say to this is, what does one person who may have hurt people have to do with anybody else who also may have hurt people?How is that an excuse to do nothing?
One is a Republican, the other is a Democrat. Our political divide is so entrenched that we’ve come back around to the ancient Code of Hammurabi, where an eye for an eye is justice. Our country has reached a point where anything, and apparently I mean anything, is better than identifying with that other side. Rape and molestation can be considered forgivable crimes, so long as the person committing those acts falls within our political label.
I have zero doubts that you’ve heard the expression, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” but who can take the first step towards healing this divide, when any concession towards the other side feels like a betrayal of your own? Is this who we are? Is this what it means to be an American right now, and most importantly, is this who you want to be?
I don’t.
My last post was about accepting responsibility for the issues facing our country today. Now, I invite everyone currently reading to extend an olive branch across that divide to somebody you think will never understand your viewpoints, because you cannot understand theirs. Nobody said this was easy, but otherwise, we’re all stuck on different sides of the No Man’s Land in some great cultural war. And if we’re willing to compromise our own morals enough to side with a believed-molester, then I have to wonder what else we’re giving up.
Any time a football team that’s favored to win gets blown out 67-3 by the underdogs, you’ll see a headline or two about “what’s to blame.” Comments on these articles will profess to know who should be fired, who is a bum, who is getting paid too much to perform like this. There are definitely cases where you can point to one player and say, “here, this person’s actions are why they lost”, but usually it’s more than just one player. Missed routes, bad throws, blown coverage, terrible clock management. The team played terribly because of a collection of issues that stacked up to a bad showing.
Recently, you and I have seen attention given to those that know “what’s to blame” for this issue, for that elected official, the hurricane season affecting so many people. We point fingers, we place blame for hurtful actions, and we continue to separate people into “us” and “them.” Here’s a screenshot of my Facebook status on Election Night:
I was angry when I posted that, and I still am. Seems like we’re all angry these days.
I make no secret of my political beliefs or my emotions tied to them; I’m sharing this to say that I am in this group of people that places blame on somebody or something else for the current state of American affairs. And I’d bet good money that you’re right there with me.
Prejudice has come to the surface in the United States of 2017. Actual Nazis are marching through our streets, yelling things we haven’t heard with this much force since before you and I were born. Organizations are claiming legal rights to discriminate against their neighbors. Every day, somebody, somewhere is declaring, “if you’re this then you can get out of America,” and somebody, somewhere else is saying, “if you’re this than you can unfriend me now.” I’ve thought long and hard about what went wrong, and I’ve reached a conclusion about who is to blame for the current climate here in the United States.
Every single one of us.
If you have ever laughed at a joke about someone being gay, about Jews being stingy with money, about Mexicans not speaking English and performing the most demeaning jobs, about Asians not knowing how to say English words with the letter “L”, about African-Americans being “scary” or exhibiting criminal behavior, about women belonging in the kitchen or men being pansies if they cry, then you may be at fault.
Whether it was in 1995 or 2017, we have all made this joke. Whether behind closed doors, in a text message thread between close friends, or in a public forum, we have all done this. Jokes like these have always come with the thrill of, “look how bad I’m being, but I totally don’t mean it, I’m just saying it to be funny.” Somebody might think you’re a racist or sexist person, but it’s all in good fun, until some people start to find these ideas normal, and embrace them as fact.
We have all contributed to an environment of separation and division.
These days, we share articles that say “Cable News Host DESTROYS Guest With Opposing Views”, because it feels good to be right, right? We share graphics and memes that express outrage at a voter base, or an entire political party, because they are responsible for this current climate. Most of all, we tell ourselves that we’re doing what’s right, and they are responsible for all the bad things going on right now.
Remember that line made famous by President Lincoln? “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I have one question for everybody reading this, are you benefiting from this intense division between people that live in the same country? We’ve always disagreed with each other, but who is benefiting from the way we divide ourselves us into sub-sections of American humanity? I’m not. My taxes haven’t gone down, my job hasn’t offered me a raise. Has your life become easier since we started pointing fingers and laying blame?
I think it’s time we all accept responsibility, because once we own the current situation, we are able to contribute to the solutions that will bring us back together and heal that divide. I’ll start.
I accept responsibility for all the hurtful things I have ever said, either in private with friends, or trying to be funny in a larger group. I’ve referred to people as some things other than what I believe myself to be, and that helps neither of us.
I accept responsibility for assuming I know everything about a person based on their political party.
I accept responsibility for judging somebody by the part of the country in which they live.
If you can accept that responsibility with me, I think we will all take a step towards a solution.
The Bluestone Project 