A blog by a playwright who wrote a play about a famous actress coming out of a TV, with a few thoughts on diversity, social justice, and indie theatre.
May 7, 2008
May 6, 2008
Theater Conversations
Over at another blog, Nick Keenan asks:
There are a lot of dynamics behind the answers to these questions. A lot of my responses to online and face-to-face conversations are feelings and perceptions based on layers of internal and external dynamics. I can't express them coherently and objectively. I can only relate general impressions. So, please take what I say in that vein as I answer these questions.
Do you feel like you need to be asked to join the conversation?
The short answer: Yes.
Part of this is my being an introvert (in the Meyers-Briggs sense), and strongly so. Go here for more information about introversion to get a better idea of what it is.
The other part may bear explaining.
A lot of the guys (and they're overwhelmingly male) on the theater blogosphere are frankly brilliant. They have Very Big Thoughts about Very Important Things, and I often don't. Often, the theater blogosphere seems like a private conversation taking place in public. I generally don't get the impression that they think I have something to add to the conversation.
Also, the popular theater bloggers have rigorous intellects, and they express themselves clearly and forcefully. They often hone their ideas through debate. For me, debate is an emotional boxing match because I rarely talk at length about things that don't mean anything to me. (That's why I don't play Devil's Advocate, especially when dealing with substantial issues as opposed to passing fancies. To me, it's disrespectful to treat people's beliefs and experiences like toys.) Often I get the sense that these guys only respond to a challenge of some kind. I'm not knocking it. It's just how they usually make connections with ideas and each other. It's not that I don't have thoughts. I just don't think anyone would care, so why waste space to say something that no one will respond to?
Furthermore, I communicate in a very water-like way. My natural way of perceiving the world, understanding my experiences and expressing myself incorporates precision, depth, and subtlety. The English language is a cumbersome tool to do that. We don't have words like yugen that express an ethereal, complex idea in a concise way. So, it's often a struggle for me to express a question or idea in the way I conceived it.
Do you feel like you need (or want) to appear meek to be accepted in it?
Yes. But it's society in general, not theater blogosphere in particular, that does this. I don't compartmentalize my life, so a lot of that baggage goes from one public space into another.
I often feel like I have to accentuate being non-threatening. I'm not an aggressive person. I don't go out of my way to make people feel self-conscious. But let's be real. I'm a big, bald, Black woman. I'm threatening even if I'm sitting in a corner reading a book. People often assume I'm stupid and violent until I "prove" otherwise. The only way I can "prove" that to their satisfaction is to be as acquiescent as possible. So, if I give the tiniest criticism, if I feel less than eternally perky, if I set the smallest boundary, I'm no longer treated like person with her own preferences and experiences, but the Angry Black Bitch. Either these people have not met any genuinely nasty people, or they're only noticing "attitude problem" because I'm Black, and we all know that Black women have attitude problems. Nothing that anybody says or does has any effect on how we respond. No, Siree.
Excuse my while I roll my eyes and suck my teeth.
One of the things that is most exasperating for me to deal with is when people talk down to me when they clearly don't understand or haven't listened to what I'm saying. I have yet to master the art of hiding my irritation at this, so that means I'm "unfriendly."
What parts of the conversation read as vital to you and are there subjects and threads that strike you as irrelevant BS?
It's not the subject but the approach that can turn me on or off. I think my response to the first question applies here too.
Do you feel like you need to be asked to join the conversation? Do you feel like you need (or want) to appear meek to be accepted in it? What parts of the conversation read as vital to to you and are there subjects and threads that strike you as irrelevant BS?What great questions!
There are a lot of dynamics behind the answers to these questions. A lot of my responses to online and face-to-face conversations are feelings and perceptions based on layers of internal and external dynamics. I can't express them coherently and objectively. I can only relate general impressions. So, please take what I say in that vein as I answer these questions.
Do you feel like you need to be asked to join the conversation?
The short answer: Yes.
Part of this is my being an introvert (in the Meyers-Briggs sense), and strongly so. Go here for more information about introversion to get a better idea of what it is.
The other part may bear explaining.
A lot of the guys (and they're overwhelmingly male) on the theater blogosphere are frankly brilliant. They have Very Big Thoughts about Very Important Things, and I often don't. Often, the theater blogosphere seems like a private conversation taking place in public. I generally don't get the impression that they think I have something to add to the conversation.
Also, the popular theater bloggers have rigorous intellects, and they express themselves clearly and forcefully. They often hone their ideas through debate. For me, debate is an emotional boxing match because I rarely talk at length about things that don't mean anything to me. (That's why I don't play Devil's Advocate, especially when dealing with substantial issues as opposed to passing fancies. To me, it's disrespectful to treat people's beliefs and experiences like toys.) Often I get the sense that these guys only respond to a challenge of some kind. I'm not knocking it. It's just how they usually make connections with ideas and each other. It's not that I don't have thoughts. I just don't think anyone would care, so why waste space to say something that no one will respond to?
Furthermore, I communicate in a very water-like way. My natural way of perceiving the world, understanding my experiences and expressing myself incorporates precision, depth, and subtlety. The English language is a cumbersome tool to do that. We don't have words like yugen that express an ethereal, complex idea in a concise way. So, it's often a struggle for me to express a question or idea in the way I conceived it.
Do you feel like you need (or want) to appear meek to be accepted in it?
Yes. But it's society in general, not theater blogosphere in particular, that does this. I don't compartmentalize my life, so a lot of that baggage goes from one public space into another.
I often feel like I have to accentuate being non-threatening. I'm not an aggressive person. I don't go out of my way to make people feel self-conscious. But let's be real. I'm a big, bald, Black woman. I'm threatening even if I'm sitting in a corner reading a book. People often assume I'm stupid and violent until I "prove" otherwise. The only way I can "prove" that to their satisfaction is to be as acquiescent as possible. So, if I give the tiniest criticism, if I feel less than eternally perky, if I set the smallest boundary, I'm no longer treated like person with her own preferences and experiences, but the Angry Black Bitch. Either these people have not met any genuinely nasty people, or they're only noticing "attitude problem" because I'm Black, and we all know that Black women have attitude problems. Nothing that anybody says or does has any effect on how we respond. No, Siree.
Excuse my while I roll my eyes and suck my teeth.
One of the things that is most exasperating for me to deal with is when people talk down to me when they clearly don't understand or haven't listened to what I'm saying. I have yet to master the art of hiding my irritation at this, so that means I'm "unfriendly."
What parts of the conversation read as vital to you and are there subjects and threads that strike you as irrelevant BS?
It's not the subject but the approach that can turn me on or off. I think my response to the first question applies here too.
April 30, 2008
Beyond Aristotle
Devilvet brought up something interesting in the comments on this blog. He said:
Speaking of myself as a playwright, I've been more often dismayed at my peers' lack of sensitivity and imagination than any shortages in budget or time. When I say sensitivity, I'm not talking about playing nice. It's more like an openness, a receptivity, a heightened awareness of what goes on beneath the surface of things. I mean an appreciation for mystery, a comfort with ambiguity and paradox, the ability to enjoy the stillness between movements and the silence between sounds.
Let me give you an example. At my local playwrights' group, I presented a draft of a scene I'm working on. These are the kinds of comments I got: my scene should be a screenplay; there's not enough dialogue; it would be very expensive to produce; etc. With the exception of the two people who picked up on the Noh and dance-like elements, nobody got it. I can deal with that. What unsettled me most was that nobody asked me any questions before going into critique mode.
I. Hate. That.
If there's something that makes me want to grind my teeth to the gums, it's when people don't understand something and refuse to admit it. When it comes to art, especially writing and performance, I know a lot of my impressions and reactions are subjective. Being a misfit and outcast has taught me that a lot of things are matters of taste. I usually don't think something is good or bad. I only like it or don't like it. Then I think about why something attracts or repels (or worse, bores) me. From there I might even expand my horizons and seek out different things to read or watch that does more of what I like or "corrects" something I didn't like. It's how I found my way into a lot of interests. I have a tendency to collect things I like, not intentionally, but it just happens that way. So when I come across a text or a performance, I often have a frame of reference, but when I don't . . . I admit it.
When it comes to theater, I must be some sort of mutant because I assume two things:
1. Theater is not a passive medium. As a member of the audience, it is incumbent upon me to engage with and understand the material on its own terms. I need to let go of my biases and assumptions to truly appreciate what I am witnessing on the page or up on stage.
2. The artists know what they're doing. If I'm confused or alienated it's because I'm not paying attention. It is my responsibility to understand the work, not on the artists to shove it down my feeding tube. In a feedback environment, I must endeavor to ask more questions and make fewer statements.
But getting back to my point: What can we do to improve our receptiveness to avant-garde work? How do we critique avant-garde pieces? Aside from the ubiquitous money and space issues, how to we choose which ones to perform?
"Skill" and "trust" are codifications meaning the artist will adhere to Aristotlean Dramaturgy and that if any real "challenge" is issued to the audience rest assured it will not be a challenge to notions of content or narrative. I may challenge their notion of who is a worthy protagonist or an audience's preconceived notions of situations so long as the narrative form is adhered to.The quote was taken from a conversation about another matter altogether, but it does make me wonder. As a budding avant-garde playwright, this means quite a lot to me since many of the so-called rules of playwriting (and even script format) hails from that Aristotelian perspective. I think enough ink and bandwidth has been used to discuss why Aristotle's ideas work and why relying on Poetics to judge a script or a performance can harm rather than help. What I don't see discussed so much is how, in the absence of Aristotelian "rules," we can evaluate avant-garde texts and performances. How do we determine was is and isn't "stage-worthy" when a piece has a style and content that is anything but An American Family in Crisis (Let's not get into works that have some far-out ideas about character and plot)?
Implied with this is also the idea that to experiment with or disregard Aristotlean Dramaturgy is ulitmately a betrayal commited between artist and audience.
That to do anything other than ArisDram approach is disrepectful.
That one can not attempt to innovate or have an auteurish POV without implying that their audience is beneath them.
The idea is that anyone who doesn't acknowledge "skill" level must have an inherit disreagrd and contempt for their audience...
In short it becomes the demonization of the avant-garde.
Speaking of myself as a playwright, I've been more often dismayed at my peers' lack of sensitivity and imagination than any shortages in budget or time. When I say sensitivity, I'm not talking about playing nice. It's more like an openness, a receptivity, a heightened awareness of what goes on beneath the surface of things. I mean an appreciation for mystery, a comfort with ambiguity and paradox, the ability to enjoy the stillness between movements and the silence between sounds.
Let me give you an example. At my local playwrights' group, I presented a draft of a scene I'm working on. These are the kinds of comments I got: my scene should be a screenplay; there's not enough dialogue; it would be very expensive to produce; etc. With the exception of the two people who picked up on the Noh and dance-like elements, nobody got it. I can deal with that. What unsettled me most was that nobody asked me any questions before going into critique mode.
I. Hate. That.
If there's something that makes me want to grind my teeth to the gums, it's when people don't understand something and refuse to admit it. When it comes to art, especially writing and performance, I know a lot of my impressions and reactions are subjective. Being a misfit and outcast has taught me that a lot of things are matters of taste. I usually don't think something is good or bad. I only like it or don't like it. Then I think about why something attracts or repels (or worse, bores) me. From there I might even expand my horizons and seek out different things to read or watch that does more of what I like or "corrects" something I didn't like. It's how I found my way into a lot of interests. I have a tendency to collect things I like, not intentionally, but it just happens that way. So when I come across a text or a performance, I often have a frame of reference, but when I don't . . . I admit it.
When it comes to theater, I must be some sort of mutant because I assume two things:
1. Theater is not a passive medium. As a member of the audience, it is incumbent upon me to engage with and understand the material on its own terms. I need to let go of my biases and assumptions to truly appreciate what I am witnessing on the page or up on stage.
2. The artists know what they're doing. If I'm confused or alienated it's because I'm not paying attention. It is my responsibility to understand the work, not on the artists to shove it down my feeding tube. In a feedback environment, I must endeavor to ask more questions and make fewer statements.
But getting back to my point: What can we do to improve our receptiveness to avant-garde work? How do we critique avant-garde pieces? Aside from the ubiquitous money and space issues, how to we choose which ones to perform?
April 14, 2008
Putting It Out There
This is my attempt to reach out to the people who read this to see if they can help.
I'm moving to NYC by the first week of July. I've made my decision and done my research, so there's nothing anyone can do to dissuade me aside from New York being invaded by zombies or vaporized by a nuclear bomb. I realize that finding a place to stay will be a lot easier if I find work first. Ideally I'd like a position where I can use my talent for writing and editing, but I'd be a freelance security guard for a theater if it came down to that (in other words, sleep on a prop couch and make sure nobody breaks in). I don't care if it's entry-level as long as I can take care of necessities like rent and food while building contacts with the local theater community. Otherwise, I'm seriously considering the merits of living on the subway or a park bench..
Can somebody help me here?
I'm moving to NYC by the first week of July. I've made my decision and done my research, so there's nothing anyone can do to dissuade me aside from New York being invaded by zombies or vaporized by a nuclear bomb. I realize that finding a place to stay will be a lot easier if I find work first. Ideally I'd like a position where I can use my talent for writing and editing, but I'd be a freelance security guard for a theater if it came down to that (in other words, sleep on a prop couch and make sure nobody breaks in). I don't care if it's entry-level as long as I can take care of necessities like rent and food while building contacts with the local theater community. Otherwise, I'm seriously considering the merits of living on the subway or a park bench..
Can somebody help me here?
April 7, 2008
(Playwriting) Why dialogue alone doesn't do it for me
Simply put, because nobody can write shit like this.
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