Take a moment to watch our informational video:
White Pines 2012 5min from Benjamin Lloyd on Vimeo.
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This is the website for White Pines Productions, a live-performance production company located in Elkins Park Pennsylvania. Use the links on the left to poke around and learn more about us.
With Jim Brown of the Actor's Fund
James Brown is National Director of Health Service at The Actor's Fund, a nationwide human services organization that helps all professionals in performing arts and entertainment. At this free White Pines event, Jim will speak to us about the current health insurance options for artists and performers, and will detail the changes coming with the launch of President Obama's Affordable Care Act. There will be ample time to ask questions.
Most of us will all be required by law to carry health insurance next year. Don't miss this opportuninty to hear from an expert in the field about the changes on the way. Jim has spent years working in the insurance industry, and is now one of the nation's leaders in artists' advocacy for health care.
White Pines is grateful to The Wilma Theatre for their willingness to host this important event.
This is a creative position as much as an administrative one, as it will involve the invention and execution of innovative ways to earn income, developing donors and supporters, and working with communities and other like-minded organizations as partners in White Pines' future. We are looking for a dynamic and focused partner for Ben, someone who will work closely with him to chart the future of White Pines, concentrating on the fiscal challenges this young organization faces. Working with the White Pines accountant and reporting to the board of directors regularly will be a part of this position. This person will be a champion for White Pines, ready and willing to publicly and privately advocate for the mission of White Pines Productions.
The Managing Director can expect to work a minimum of 20 hours per week, allowing for other employment negotiated with the Founding Producer. However, given the nature of our work, the Managing Director can expect to have weeks in which s/he works longer hours. The Managing Director may occasionally be asked to work in positions not strictly defined in this job description, as an occasional box office manager for a production, for instance.
Our search begins with this announcement and ends when the right candidate is hired. Initially, it is an 18 month contract commencing when the right candidate is hired, but ideally on July 1 2013. This position comes with a salary of $25,000 per year. There are no benefits. White Pines is an equal-opportunity employer, and registered with Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the federal government as 501 (c)3 not for profit corporation.
Please submit a cover letter describing your interest in this position, a resume, and a list of three references to Founding Producer Benjamin Lloyd at bxlloyd@gmail.com
White Pines Productions is developing and directing a remarkable new play by Martha Kemper called Luckiest Kid. You can learn more about it here. We will be presenting it in rep with another original play next October at Second Stage @ the Adrienne. The play uses a chorus of three men and three women to support Martha as she tells the story of her discovery of theater. We have cast three chorus members and we are looking for three more: 2 men, and 1 woman between 20 and 30 years old, any shape or ethnicity.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Pamela Dollak
P.R. Consultant
(215) 983-3669
WHITE PINES PRODUCTIONS’ “HAPPENING” has a personal connection
- White Pines’ Artistic Director’s Mother Was Instrumental in Original 1960’s Happenings -
Elkins Park, Pa. (May 20, 2013) – The “Happening” hosted by White Pines Productions taking place on June 8 (6 p.m. – Midnight) at the Broad Street Minsitry (315 S. Broad St.), holds a very special meaning for Benjamin Lloyd, White Pines’ artistic director. His mother, former dancer Barbara Dilley, had an instrumental role in the original Happenings of the 1960’s.
In December 1961, pop artist Claes Oldenburg opened his exhibit, The Store, in a rented storefront at 107 E. 2nd Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It served as his studio, which he called the Ray Gun Manufacturing Company. The Store was a month-long installation that was stocked with exaggerated, disproportioned and often messy sculptures that were roughly formed into consumer goods. However, Oldenburg also used this space to stage a series of “Happening” performances, collectively titled Ray Gun Theater.
Ms. Dilley, who studied and performed dance in New York City from 1960-1975 (Merce Cunningham Co. [’63-‘68] and Grand Union [’69-‘76]), performed at the Ray Gun Theater’s Happening in the spring of 1962.
Pregnant at the time with son Benjamin, Ms. Dilley (who was included in The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s recent exhibit “Dancing Around The Bride,” which featured the works of Ms. Dilley’s collaborators John Cage and Merce Cunningham) was costumed in a pink dyed union suit that illuminated her pregnant belly. As with any Happening, multiple simultaneous events were going on at once, forcing the audience to squeeze close together. Ms. Dilley performed on a large rough-hewn wooden plank suspended up high between two ladders, as well as between two worlds: mother-life and dancing-life.
“The Happening being performed by White Pines Productions is an homage not only to Happenings of the 1960’s in general, but to my mother specifically,” said Benjamin Lloyd, White Pines’ artistic director. “It’s my way of showing my appreciation for being a trailblazer in the performing arts.”
The White Pines’ Happening will have events that are by chance, as well as design. Performances will derive from a variety of genres such as experimental theatre, jazz music, interactive light installations and a communal meal.
“Think of it as a very unusual party where guests will meander through the Broad Street Ministry having a completely unique experience as well as being co-creators, as their presence will affect the events in many surprising ways,” says Lloyd.
Benjamin Lloyd was interviewed by Seth Reichgott as part of his "Backstage/Onstage" series for Brandywine Radio. Listen to Ben's comments on acting, Philadelphia arts and culture and White Pines' mission here:
This is from an unsolicited email from an audience member who attended our reading of William di Canzio's play Rustin and The March, about American civil rights hero Bayard Rustin and his work organizing the historic March on Washington in 1963. It concerns White Pines' policy of asking for donations as our audiences leave our events. Here's Barbara Quinn:
What I've really wanted to say to you since I saw Rustin and the March at Christ Church is how surprised I was at my own reaction to the "pay as you leave" policy. I had thought of it as a not very wise way of funding a production. After all, how could one possibly be sure of covering unavoidable costs like royalties and rent , much less pay cast and crew, if you didn't charge up front? On the other hand, performance art is one of few things that cannot be checked out in advance of purchase nor returned for credit, so it did seem fairer to the audience. Much to my surprise, I found myself so moved by the performance that I went deeper into my wallet and left twice what I had planned - still less than the evening was worth, but I needed train fare home. Then I started thinking that you have a really good idea here. Freedom is an absolute necessity in art, and how much freeer the artist is, if he/she is not bound to provide what the audience thinks they are buying. In the case of Rustin and the March, I was impressed by the talent and content and moved to contribute more than I had planned. But, even if I had been disappointed and left less, I would have given the aritsts another chance on a future occasion, rather than thinking I had risked all I cared on them and would be sending "good money after bad." So, I think it's an idea with a great deal of merit.
Thanks, Barbara!
Submitted to the Artistic Rebuttal Project:
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This is a challenging assignment for White Pines, not because we have a hard time proclaiming the importance of artistic creativity in the world - indeed, that belief is our raison d'être - but rather because to do so would take many pages. So let us state it plainly and forcefully:
Artistic creativity is a personally transformative experience which heals people, builds citizens and strengthens communities.
White Pines believes that one of the obstacles to fully realizing the potential of the above statement are the constraints of commerce (a.k.a. money). The benefits of witnessing, teaching and participating in artistic creativity are reduced when society attempts to place a dollar-value price tag on those benefits. Alas, this is the only means we have to ascribe value to creative events, programs and objects.
Or is it?
What if, instead of trying to figure out how much a music program which saves the lives of inner city young people (notice that phrase, used intentionally - "saves the lives") is worth, we admitted that such a program is priceless, that it exists outside the noble and respected capital economy, and instead, we learned what the artists needed who are providing this service? What if, instead of hanging a price tag on a painting, we learned what that artist needs in her life (new winter boots, visits to a dentist, a weekend away with her lover), and provided for one of these needs in exchange for what she has made? What if we explored a myriad of ways we could assist communities in supporting artists who are making commitments to those communities, by lifting up innovative new "economies" based not on subjective assessment of commercial "value", but instead on the critical mission of saving the lives of our youth, building peaceful and joy-filled neighborhoods, seeding tolerance, and making the world more beautiful.
White Pines believes that if we do not succeed in this mission, it not for lack of effort or creativity, but rather that we continue to work within old paradigms whose time has passed. White Pines challenges artists, communities leaders, and philanthropists to think bigger and braver. The question is not how can make this happen, but rather what obstacles must we remove to let it happen. Because in Philadelphia it has been happening - is trying to happen. There is no other region in the country with the same combination of foundation and corporate support, serious and creative artistic administrators, teachers and practitioners, and institutional infrastructure. We are poised to change this paradigm, blaze new trails, save lives, build communities, paint, write, dance and act our way into a beautiful future.
We're all in. We're leaving it all on the field. Pedal to the metal.
You?
Benjamin Lloyd
Founding Producer
White Pines Productions
Thanks to White Pines board member Cary Mazer for sending along this article. Read it here.
Some White Piney excerpts:
"Kickstarter as a phenomenon is made much more comprehensible once you realize that it’s not following the logic of the free market; it’s following the logic of the gift."
" . . . humans do not naturally tend toward impersonal, reciprocal exchange. Instead, exchange usually develops in cultures first as a part of a larger social and cultural ritual."
" [Kickstarter] provides something increasingly rare in today’s society: a platform for an essentially noneconomic transaction, the kind that builds friendships and communities."
And, referenceing the a primary inspiration for White Pines Prduction, Lewis Hyde's book The Gift:
"And if Graeber’s work helps us understand the psychology of crowdfunding, then Hyde’s work is vindicated by Kickstarter’s success. The desire to make art has always been inherently social, not economic, and now, even in a society defined by the free market, the means to produce art can come from an inherently social mechanism as well."
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In 2013, White Pines will launch the White Pines Exchange, an on-line artists support marketplace. Think of a wedding registry for sponsored artists, linking local artists' needs with local vendors who can provide them, and supported by benefactors or groups of benefactors. Cool, right?
White Pines Productions