Love's Labors Lost: Mansplaining and theatrosphere

May 13, 2010

Mansplaining and theatrosphere

Mansplaining. I knew there was a word for it.

To be honest, I'm not interested in debating whether or not mansplaining is prominent in the theatre blogosphere. I think that's self-evident (with a few rare exceptions, such as James Comtois) because that's the society we live in. I don't think it's an accident that mansplainers tend to be cis male, White, straight, and able-bodied.

Considering the context in which this behavior emerges, and what that says about what's happening beneath the surface, it's pretty easy to imagine how that influences the current theatrical environment and its lack of space (literally and figuratively) for marginalized viewpoints and voices (with a limited exception for gay men because "theatre = gaygaygay!").

What's more important to me than pointing out mansplaining every time it occurs (of which plenty of examples can be found in the main text and comments of this article in the vein of "You Might Be A Redneck If . . . "), or even the overtly and subtly problematic nature of mansplaining is figuring out what to do about it.

Telling mansplainers to shut the fuck up on their own blogs is not exactly the best way to go about creating more meaningful dialogue not centered around mansplaining-centric norms. Off the top of my head, here are some things that can start right now:

Contribute to blogs by and for women in theatre - particularly if you have not worked with them before. Drama Daily has an excellent list to start with.
Ask women theatre bloggers to contribute to your own blog. (You mean women might have something worth saying that you didn't get to say first? Perish the thought!)
Link to shows with one or more women at the helm. Artistic director, producer, playwright, director, whatever. The person making decisions should be a woman. Don't wait for a (male) critic or reviewer to tell you when a woman's work is worth paying attention to.
Seriously, though: I'M RIGHT HERE!!!
Risk something. Not a lot. Just something. Risk boredom. Risk offense. Risk a small amount of disposable income. Risk not feeling like it. Risk looking stupid. Risk not getting it. Risk the same things I risk when I go to a movie, see a show, or meet someone new.

2 comments:

joshcon805/13/2010 4:48 PM
This is super tacky...

Not to be too gauche, but my show has a female director who is also the co- artistic director of the company PLUS exactly one half on the 12 person ensemble is Black or Latino. (There are no Asians in the future, strangely.) Not much, but it's a start.

FOUR MORE SHOWS!
ReplyDelete
Replies
RVCBard5/13/2010 4:59 PM
There are no Asians in the future, strangely.

Never watched the show, but apparently Firefly thought so too.

my show has a female director who is also the co- artistic director of the company PLUS exactly one half on the 12 person ensemble is Black or Latino.

Perhaps we should cycle this through blogosphere as a meme?
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932