The New New News: A Living Newspaper moves to Erickson Hall, 1524 Harvard Ave, on Capitol Hill tomorrow (Feb. 24) following a weekend run in South Seattle. Back in November, playwright Paul Mullin and managing producer Jim Jewell discussed their ever evolving project.
What happens in The New New News?
Mullin: Basically we follow an on-line news team called The New New News as they try to cover themselves covering the on-line news coverage in Seattle during a twelve-hour cycle. If they can double their hits in that time, the will all keep their jobs, if not, then they're all out on the streets. It’s pretty “meta-meta-meta” but so is journalism these days.
Your first Living Newspaper dealt, in part, with the death of the print-version of the PI. What are the major media shifts shown in this edition?
Mullin: A huge proliferation of online news sources like Publicola, West Seattle Blog, Cross Cut, the P-I.com and on and on, all competing for a limited readership and all operating under murky monetization schemes. How many of them will still be operating in a year’s time?
Jim, you’ve called this an intersection of theater and newspaper: exactly what does that mean?
Jewell: I think NewsWrights United tries to look at the world of potential stories with the mindset of journalists, and then present those stories with the mindset of theater artists. I personally believe that journalists live the lie called objectivity, which every one of them know as individuals is impossible but which collectively they profess and, frankly, hide behind. The immediacy and emotional honesty of live theater openly puts the lie to objectivity and replaces it with conscious shared experience. Theater has always told stories that put the artists subjectivity right their on stage for the audience to subjectively respond to - and this is what we actually do with the news, while wrapping it in this notion of journalistic objectivity that sterilizes the discussion
On your website, you talk about the Living Newspaper as "a viable theatrical form for topical plays that are accessible and avoid didacticism." What type of didacticism do you think might creep into a project like this? What dead horse don't you want to beat?
Mullin: We just don’t want to tell you how to think. I hate when theater does that. We want to show you stories staged compellingly, and then the audience can decide for themselves what to do with that experience. We also don’t want to beat the dead horse of “the sky is falling” in journalism. We believe this is a crisis, but as the old cliché goes, crisis always equals opportunity. Maybe there are ways journalism can improve from the days of newspapers.
Jewell: We've all seen "issue" plays, often commissioned by well-meaning public service groups and written by writers who should know better but need the work. They are single note and dogmatic and didactic, if occasionally sweet or funny enough. They are, and here I age myself a little, the After School Specials of theater. We are trying to tell the truth as best we can. And just that. When I think about where I don't want us to go, it is into the land of "should." I don't really want to stake out a moral high ground. I want to do my best to tell the truth about stories that happen in my community.
Based on your 2009 show, what type of stories do you think work best in this format?
Mullin: Sex, violence, betrayal. Powerful people acting irresponsibly. You know… the good stuff
And who do you want to see in the audience at these shows?
Jewell: In February, I want the people who live in each of the three neighborhoods in which we'll be producing : West Seattle, Cap Hill and North Seattle. I expect people in West Seattle to react differently to the story about neighborhood blogs than the people on Capitol Hill, because those communities have very different relationships with their respective hyperlocal media outlets. And I'd like to see more theater artists than I honestly expect. Right now, theater looks to me like newspapers in the 90's, watching changes all around them and somehow believing themselves above the change, too venerable to fail. We spend too much time in the theater talking about what theater is instead of actively engaging the form and deciding what it will be, and we aren't too far from the crisis newspapers have found themselves in: failure to evolve.
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