8) If you had the chance to start your career over again, would you do anything differently?
I might network differently. Networking is crucial. I think the path I took for meeting people and getting them to know my work probably took a longer route than it could have if I [had been] more confident and just networked more. It’s half of who you know and half of what you can do. You can do it all you want, but if no one knows you’re doing it then you’re sort of running uphill the whole time.
You don’t want to force it and be like “that guy” who’s just sucking up to people, but don’t be afraid to tell people what you do. I think there’s a level of shame that comes with being an artist that no one has ever heard of. There’s a tendency to downplay that element. “So what do you do?” “Oh, well, I work for a financial services company.” You can say that, but that’s not really being honest about who you are. People just don’t know you and they can’t network with you in a way that’s organic. You have to be comfortable with saying, “I’m an artist. I do this.” If [they] haven’t heard of [you], there’s no shame in that. That’s hard for young people to get around. The day you can stand up and say, “I am this,” the world can change for you a little bit.
9) Would you say the networking thing has been one of your big mistakes? Or have there been other mistakes, and what have you learned from them?
I think networking was a challenge initially and is something I still struggle with from time to time in terms of getting the work out there and getting the connections made.
Other mistakes…
*I would say I’m not always the best with money. I have thrown money away on a passion project knowing it might not ever pay off, [even though I felt] confident I was putting it in the right place from an artistic standpoint. Landlords and credit card companies sometimes feel differently.
*There’s no shortcut for things. There would be times when I would have too many projects going on and someone would come to me and say, “I want to do this.” Even though I knew it was something I didn’t really believe in, selecting that piece and putting it in place got one thing done. Later on down the line we’re producing a play I don’t have any passion for, I don’t care about or that’s not any good. In a moment of trying to get something done, finished, I selected something I wasn’t 100% behind. I’ve done that twice now.
The first time I didn’t recognize what I had done, but the second time I thought, “This is exactly like the first time.” So now I know that people can schmooze you and tell you, “Oh, it’s a great play,” but if you don’t really think it’s a great play, you have to live with it for three months. You have to put it up on stage in front of people who are going to look at it. You’ve told them to come see it; therefore you’ve endorsed this thing. Your opinion and qualifications come into question when you’ve put up something that’s of lesser value. If you don’t feel passionate about it or you don’t see the value in it, you can’t sell it to anybody.
10) Tell me about a particularly satisfying or memorable event in your theater career so far.
There are two things actually.
One was when I wrote my first play, which was produced in 2010. It was called Endless Summer Nights. I hadn’t really written much since college, but I had some things happen in life that I sort of wanted to write about and I had the time and I just started writing things down. The more I showed it to people, the more people responded to it. We workshopped it for a year and got it on its feet in 2010. It had a very positive response.
It’s a very different thing for me to produce a play and say, “Here’s Waiting for Godot.” Ultimately I’m choosing it, but it’s not my words. It’s not my idea. I’m just reacting to Samuel Beckett, 65 years ago, having an idea about two guys tromping around. It’s his idea. I’m just saying, “Isn’t it cool?” When you’re the guy who writes the thing down, it’s a very different experience to have somebody respond to it because it’s not just you saying, “It’s cool.” It’s you saying, “Here’s what I think. Here’s what I feel. Here’s the way I see the world.” It can be very empowering or it can also be very humbling.
Endless Summer Nights had personal elements in it. It had things I was passionate about and was well-received. It was inspiring to get a positive affirmation on it and encouragement not just on the things I was writing about, but the way it was written technically, the language. There were a lot of positives to come out of that.
And then recently with Hamlet — it’s a big frickin’ play. It was kind of scary at first, but as we were going through it, we were able to break it down into things that made sense. As a result I haven’t been overwhelmed or overmatched by a thing of great artistic worth. I’ve been able to bring my experience and attitudes to it on a micro level. Feeling like I was completely comfortable working on something challenging was terrific. I’m ready to take on other things like that now and feel confident [about them].
11) How do you define success? Do you feel successful? To what do you most attribute your success?
I don’t define success monetarily. I define success by being able to do something that you like and that you are excited about, regardless of the struggle it takes to do that thing. I feel like a lot of people who come to the entertainment industry in general measure success by how many movies they’ve made or how much money they’ve made. For me it’s always been, I get to do this thing every day.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who would trade their job working at a fast food place or a big box store to be working in the industry and to achieve what I’ve been able to do. To me, that feels successful because I get a chance to keep doing it. Keeping that in perspective has been a way [for me] to stay grounded. That’s how I’m defining it right now.
It’s been about job satisfaction, artistic creation, and knowing that there are means to ends, so a 40-hour workweek is just the thing you do to be able to do the thing you like. It’s not a lack of success to have to still do that. It’s not going to be easy and it’s not supposed to be.
12) What’s next? Tell me about what you are working on now.
We joke around that for the first 10 years of the company it was Boomerang 1.0. Now with the advent of a ton of technology that can be applied to the entertainment industry, we’re moving into Boomerang 2.0.
We refurbished our website and branding a couple years ago. Now we’re moving into more cross-platform entertainment storytelling ideas. Our goals are to continue to do storytelling on a theater platform (outdoor Shakespeare, rotating repertory, new play development), but add to that publishing, both ePublishing and traditional publishing, of plays that we think should have a wider audience, as well as nonfiction things that talk about the process of artists.
We’re also trying to get off the ground the history of the company. The oral history of Boomerang is only captured because I can tell it. Wouldn’t it be great if someone were embedded with us for a year to actually see how things work? Not because we’re the greatest people in the whole world, but because we are an example of our industry. It may be that someone in Duluth or Des Moines gets to see how theater is run in our parish.
We’re talking about, over the next five years, developing web series, an independent film, possibly putting a network on YouTube that would feature releases of shows we’re running. We’re really trying to build a multimedia entertainment storytelling experience. We think there’s a lot of opportunity to be able to present work by terrific artists, but also to be communicating on various different levels to an audience.
It wouldn’t surprise me if 10 years from now Boomerang is leading the way for independent theater and changing the name to independent entertainment — working on multiple projects simultaneously on multiple platforms. I feel very excited about it.
I’m finishing up my next play, Firebird. That will be going up in fall 2013. I’m halfway through the second draft.
We’re also producing a play called Waving Goodbye, which will be making its NYC premiere probably in February 2013. We’re trying to line up the venue for that right now. It’s a fantastic play that premiered in Chicago in 2002, but for some reason never made it to New York.
Also, we’re planning a lot of fundraising because 2013 marks the 15-year anniversary of the Company. We’re planning now for a five-show season in that calendar year that will also include a gala in the middle of the summer. It’s a lot of planning and a lot of organization. On paper it seems like a giant mess of stuff to do, but one day at a time, we’ll get some stuff done today and see what we have to do tomorrow.
Tim Errickson is the artistic director of Boomerang Theatre Company. His new play Endless Summer Nights recently premiered with Boomerang in September 2010, and was a “Pick of the Week” by nytheatre.com. Previous Boomerang credits include directing productions of Fenway, Burning The Old Man (6 NYIT Nominations, including Outstanding Direction), Stoppard Goes Electric, Much Ado about Nothing and As You Like It. Other recent directing credits include The Desk Set for Retro Productions (6 NYIT Nominations including Outstanding Production), Brad Fraser’s Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, Racine’s Phaedre, Jamie Pachino’s Famous for Fifteen Years, Michael Weller’s Moonchildren (OOBR Award for Outstanding Production) and Brian Smallwood’s The Wedding Play. Tim has previously developed projects with John Pielmeier, Bill C. Davis and Mike Folie, including the treatment for the feature film script “Places”. Tim was previously the artistic director of Zeus’s Thigh, an artistic ensemble based on Long Island.
During his time as artistic director of Boomerang, Tim has produced 47 full productions (including 12 outdoor Shakespeare productions) and produced development workshops and readings for over 40 new plays. Boomerang was awarded the 2008 Caffe Cino Fellowship for Excellence in Off-Off Broadway, and has reinvented the rotating repertory model for the Off-Off/Indie theatre. In addition to Boomerang, Tim has been on staff at Lincoln Center Theater and New Dramatists.
Tim studied at Hofstra University’s New College, The University of London, and Circle Rep, and will be directing Boomerang’s 2012 outdoor production of Hamlet as well as finishing the script for his new play Firebird. He serves on the Honorary Awards Committee for the New York Innovative Theatre Awards and is the current president of the Off-Off Broadway Community Dish, a service organization for the Off-Off/Indie Theatre Community.
