The Quick-Change Artist, or: I've Never Undressed So Quickly

Guest blogging by actor Tammy Batey.  -Ed.

Quick costume changes are new to me. “The New New News” is my third play. In my first, I wore scrubs the entire time. For my second, I changed my costume once but had two long scenes in which to do so, enough time to not only change but also sit in the Green Room for more than an hour chatting with other actors awaiting their cues.

But in “The New New News,” I play five characters requiring five costumes and three of those characters are in back-to-back scenes. This means sequestering various articles of clothing just off stage where I can quickly change in the 30 seconds to a minute I have between those scenes. 

One of the most exciting things about acting is you get to peek behind the curtain. Hell, you get to live behind the curtain for the duration of a performance. And the quarters can be tight. At South Seattle Community College, the play’s home this weekend, there’s not much room offstage and no entrance from stage right. 

That means that between the very short stretch of time between exiting the stage as Elaine the photographer and re-emerging as Reporter 2, I am squeezed in a wee alcove of space on stage right that contains props and various actors’ costumes. I am shucking clothes like a mad woman and putting on my next costume beside a few actors either doing the same or awaiting their next cue. 

Last night, I finished zipping up one of my boots a mere second before I walked to my place for the next scene. All the while I was changing, I was trying very hard – unfortunately, without much success – to not inadvertently elbow a fellow actor who was this close and also changing.

Because of the sometimes close quarters and brief time between scenes, actors must shuck their modesty as quickly as they doff their costumes. At some point and perhaps on many occasions, you will stand backstage in your underwear putting on your next costume. When there is no time to head to a dressing room, you have no option but to embrace your inner exhibitionist. 

It helps that your fellow actors are so busy changing, re-reading their lines and awaiting their entrances that they’re not exactly gawking at you in your underwear. In fact, they can be a valuable help with those quick costume changes – the camaraderie among actors being one huge perk of acting.  One of my costumes is bulky and challenging to move in. Last night, two actors were happy to help me with my shoes and hat when I couldn’t bend over far enough to lift them off the floor. 

This weekend is opening weekend for “The New New News.” Let the quick-changing commence!

Your Audience Awaits (Yes, You There, You Personally, the Person Reading This)

I joined the NewsWrights United team because I believed that a play about new media should use it. Way back in May of 2010 we envisioned a creative process that the audience could actually be a part of, combining the oldest art form (using humans to tell stories in person) with the newest (the series of tubes). It would be a seamless merger of content and form.

So we set up a Facebook page. Arts journalist Jeremy M. Barker used that page to give us a lead on an interview -- and that interview made it into the show.

We unearthed a collection of tweets about #WAShooting -- the Maurice Clemmons murder and manhunt. Then we started contacting everyone who made those tweets in the first place. KUOW thought that was interesting and did a segment about it.

And now our show opens on Friday -- The New New News. The audience awaits.

But here's the hook -- the audience isn't you. It's us.

Our hashtag is #NNNews. You know how to find us. So start talking. We're listening. Were we completely off base? Did we do wrong by some local notable? Was it the smartest thing you ever saw?

And what about the future of the media? Are we doomed? Is this a brave new world of hyperlocal content and niche opinion-making?

There are countless "social media engagement strategies" that are transparent advertising campaigns. That's not us. We're hosting a post-show discussion after almost every performance so you can tell us where you think journalism is going. We might just have a smart little phone in our hot little hands, too, which means that if you ask a question via #NNNews on Twitter, we can answer it live. Plus, we actually give a crap what you think! (Fair warning: anything you say may become a line in our next play)

I'm truly excited to watch our Facebook and Twitter light up with your thoughts. We've done some talking. Now we're listening.

If Clothes Make the Man (and Woman)

Guest blogging by The New New News cast member Tammy Batey. - ed.

When you’re acting in a play, there’s that incredible moment when you try on your costume or costumes for the first time. Sometimes I’ve had vague notions of what the costumer was putting together while other times I’ve been completely surprised. Either way, it’s always been a pivotal moment in helping me become my character on stage.

If clothes make the man (and woman), they certainly make the character. We make quick judgments all the time based on what someone is wearing. What people wear provides important clues to their age, income, destination, attitude, fitness level, profession and personal style. 

The same holds true for characters. Would Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” be so quickly characterized as a seductive young woman with unfulfilled sexual desires if we didn’t see her strip down to a sexy slip and stockings in the first scene? Would Eliza Doolittle’s huge transformation in Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” from an unrefined Cockney flower girl to a supremely elegant toast of society be as obvious without those incredible costumes, including that sublime gown at the ball?

For “The New New News” – as well as for “The Crucible, my last play with Stage One Theater – the costumer is Kim Newton, who possesses a gift for finding inexpensive treasures at Goodwill, pulling together the perfect outfit for each character and sewing the most wild costumes (See the play to find out what I mean by that!). 

For “The Crucible,” set during the Salem witch trials in Puritan times, the heavy, restrictive clothing helped me get into the mindset of the dark, restrictive time period and also helped audiences see the world that I and the fellow actors were creating. 

While “The New New News” is set in modern times, the costumes serve the same dual purpose of helping my fellow actors and I get into our characters and helping the audience accept us as those characters. 

I play five different characters. One of them is Police Dispatcher. Embracing the authoritative intensity of Police Dispatcher was greatly helped at Saturday’s rehearsal by the fact I was wearing my costume for the first time – navy slacks with a black belt; a navy, long-sleeved shirt with a badge; and black combat boots. I noticed it was easier to adopt the rim-rod straight posture of my character and her authoritative manner while wearing that costume. In that costume, I really felt like a police employee for the first time. And at least for that scene, I will be.

Re-Posted for KUOW Listeners: Twitter Archeology

Greetings KUOW listeners! If you're visiting because you caught Paul Mullin on the radio, here's some more information on how we got ahold of our trove of Tweets. It's re-posted from the original publication in September. Of course, if you want to see these Tweets in full-blown theatrical action, you'll have to attend The New New News, opening February 18th!

-Wes Andrews, New Media Analyst



The amazing thing about Twitter, and its user-created hashtags, is that it lets everyone see what the hot topic is right now, this very instant, and maybe the instant right after this one. But how good is it at archiving those conversations so we can examine the hot topic at some later date?

As part of the writing process for The New New News, Paul Mullin asked me to find “all the tweets about Maurice Clemmons.” So, just like Indy, I donned my Stetson hat, clipped my whip to my waistband and went out adventurin'.

First thing I did was log in to Twitter and type “Maurice Clemmons” and the associated hashtag #WAShooting into the search bar. No results. Next, acting on a tip from Paul, I scoped out the Library of Congress, who has a deal with Twitter to archive all of the tweets, ever. You can't search this archive online. I emailed the LOC help desk and they said that they can't search the archive, either. Because the archive isn't actually in their building yet.

Then I did other things for about three weeks.

Paul wondered what had happened, so he emailed me, and I dusted myself off and journeyed into Google. You can now get tweets in your search results, and they backlog them as far as they can.

Unfortunately for this project, the Google search results don't go back in time far enough to capture the moment, and they aren't comprehensive. So then I searched for #WAShooting.


"Was hooting." I didn't get it at first.

I scrolled a little further down the results page...


And I was led to a site called Twapper Keeper, which, as it turns out, does exactly what I need: it archives tweets, sorts by hashtags, and creates archive files that export as .csv. Perfect! But the only reason I found it is because @kenrufo was on the same archeological expedition, just a few days before me. If I had taken this trip in June, I would have come up empty-handed.

I now have 5,700 tweets containing #WAShooting. I'm guessing there's more out there, and certainly many thousands with the phrase “Maurice Clemmons.” This will have to do for now. Sort of interesting that this obscure little site did for me what the Library of Congress couldn't.

Recently Said To My Face by Dawson Nichols

"I think of you as being smaller, somehow."

Maurice Clemmons is in the Air

Over the last 48 hours on-line news sources have exploded with fresh stories about Maurice Clemmons, the prematurely released Arkansas felon who, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 2009, walked into a coffee shop outside Tacoma, Washington and murdered four Lakewood Police officers as they drank their morning coffee. Clemmons then led law enforcement on a two-day wild goose chase throughout Western Washington before being shot dead in Seattle by a lone cop. In those two days it became clear that local journalism would never be the same, not in Seattle, not anywhere.

It is this very urgent transition which we cover in our latest production The New New News: A Living Newspaper, investigating the on-line reportage of the Clemmons Manhunt in a section we call “#WAshooting” after the Twitter hashtag used to track tweets concerning the ongoing chase. We are fairly certain that our upcoming opening, (Friday, February 18) has exactly nothing to do with the recent rash of articles about Clemmons, but we welcome the renewed interest in the case nonetheless, and not just because it might cause the curious to check out our show. The story of Maurice Clemmons will not go away, nor should it, because its implications affect the future of Western Washington, US national politics and the nature of journalism across the globe.

Certainly the once-and-possibly-future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is hoping we forget about Clemmons. While Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee granted clemency to the 8-time felon, who otherwise would have been incarcerated until 2015, in part because Clemmons claimed in his application that he came from “a very good Christian family.” (One need not wonder what Huckabee’s decision would have been if instead “Muslim” had been the adjective modifying the subject of that clause.)

Likewise, it is not hard to trace a deterioration of relations between Western Washington police and the communities they serve since Clemmons’ murderous rampage. Had Maurice never left his Arkansas prison would Seattle Police Officer Ian Burk have given Native American wood-carver, John T. Williams, more than four seconds to put down his carving knife before shooting him dead?

We will never know the answer to that, but we do know with certainty that active crime investigations will never be covered the same anywhere in the future. From now on, journalists, law enforcement, regular citizens, and yes, even criminals, will all be privy to instant information, some of it deeply flawed or downright false, as it emerges on Twitter or whatever tool we will be using to share data. We examine this fundamental shift in The New New News. I could tell you how, but really, I’d rather show you. The first copy drops on West Seattle’s doorstep a week from Friday. Why not order your “subscription” now?

Cross-posted at Just Wrought