"Miss Saigon" Lies about the real questions about artistic responsibility

I came across a lot of posts with pictures of people writing, "Miss Saigon lies," then I found out about this Don't Buy Miss Saigon campaign.

Now, I haven't seen Miss Saigon, but from the description of it, it's probably best that I don't. To be frank, I'm not interested in discussing whether or not Miss Saigon should exist. It already exists, so arguing for or against that would be purely rhetorical at this point. Naturally, there are many Vietnamese people giving a, shall we say, less than enthusiastic response to the portrayal of Vietnamese people, especially Vietnamese women.

And, like clockwork, somebody white is going to read all that and say, "Ugh! You people just don't want anyone else to do anything! You get offended by everything! It's just fiction! They're just trying to tell a story! Why does it have to be about race or gender? It's not hurting anybody! It's not the writer's/director's/producer's fault that they're white! You should be glad they're talking about these issues! Write your own play! You're just haters! Blah blah blah!"

I will always be perplexed and frustrated by the ability of people who have one or more kind of privilege to completely ignore and dismiss all the nuance and context from any discussion about the ways that race, gender, sexuality, and class impact a specific cultural phenomenon. The cognitive dissonance it takes to say, "I believe that race, gender, sexuality, and class are systemic factors that affect every level and every aspect of society" and then say, "You complaining about racism and sexism in Miss Saigon is just you being a hater (and if you're a woman of Vietnamese descent, you're an ungrateful hater)" is along the same lines as, "God loves you, but you're going to hell," but without the whole stripping people of their human and civil rights part.

Whether a person is justified in liking or disliking some form of art, pop culture, or entertainment is, aside from incredibly reductive and simplistic, just plain ol' boring. I've never been fond of rhetorical or semantic debates, where the whole point of conversation is merely to display or sharpen one's wits or powers of persuasion. As times goes on, I have less and less interest in participating in debates about important issues where it's clear that the stakes are higher for one group of people than another. There's a reason why I'm no longer debating or arguing about the existence of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., especially with people who are not on the receiving end of them.

Rather than strip away all the nuance and context from a very complex and very important discussion that needs to happen about media representation and who has access to and control over the mechanisms that allow certain stories to be told by certain people, I want to explore those nuances and complexities.

This most recent controversy about Miss Saigon creates an opportunity for addressing questions that have always been there and starting (continuing?) conversations that have always been happening. Questions and conversations about the responsibilities of artists to the communities impacted by their work.

I'm not in the business of providing a one-size-fits-all approach to how those conversations need to happen. However, I do caution that the content of those conversations cannot be, "How can I do what I want without anybody telling me I'm fucking up?"

I won't sit here and pretend that these things are easy to figure out because they aren't. Nothing that involves facing the historical and cultural and political roots of a society will be simple or easy. But, I think that acknowledging the difficulty and committing to working through it would be an important step, right after having a shared vision and common stakes in the outcome.

Things to do when I get back to Brooklyn (or, "Why I Went Back To Brooklyn")

There are so many different directions and approaches I can go in, which I need to decide on before I get to the, "How much will this cost again?" phase. Part of me wants to revamp rehearsals to match my tabletop RPG roots, so that would require less cramming over a longer period of time. Part of me wants to use a non-traditional performance space a la Peter Brook's "The Carpet Show" something more or less portable that also creates the magic of the piece.

All of me wants to crack open standard methods of producing theatre, stripping away the non-essential and building up from there as the piece needs it. All of me wants to discard what is dead or inert about the way theatre gets produced, those things we just accept as true about making theatre without even knowing that we do them. And I do mean everything--from auditions, to rehearsals, to performance. Note to self: I should probably write about these at some point.

I suppose using my 3rd full-length play as the fuel for this theatrical research and development (h/t Gwydion Suilebhan) is a bit foolhardy, but then again, I do think that if I'm going to experiment, I'd rather butcher my own stuff than someone else's.

Epic theatre in mainstream US television: reflections on ABC's "Once Upon A Time"

I recently had a fascinating discussion with a friend of mine about the kind of I aim to bring to my understanding of ABC's Once Upon A Time, how my awareness of a world beyond the show impacts how I approach and understand it.

It took me a while to remember where I had seen something like this before: in the epic theatre as theorized by Bertolt Brecht.

There’s tons of material on Brecht that you can find for yourself, so I’m not going to rehash all that here. However, one of the things that struck me about epic theatre and how it’s exemplified in just about every bit of OUAT meta that I write is the relationship between the spectator and the events. In so many words, it’s about difference between, “This is happening right before my eyes, and it feels like I’m there” and, “I am watching these events from my position outside them.”

I’ve spoken before about how the characters in OUAT are not real people. They are creations given life by the decisions of a dozens of people—actors, writers, directors, designers, producers, etc. Thus, when I talk about race, gender, sexuality, and so on with this show, it’s with a full awareness that the show is not a self-contained universe with no connection to our reality as we live it now. The show is not a world created ex nihilo by the words of TV gods, but a mirror reflecting the hopes, anxieties, and worldviews of the society that created it. As I write and think about Regina, Snow, Charming, Rumplestiltskin, or (fuck you) King Leopold, I am using those names as a shorthand for the many things that they represent in our world, particularly as they relate to race, gender, sexuality, and such.

Unlike Brecht, I do not conceptualize this distinction as prioritizing reason over emotion. In all honesty, the difference is in what I get emotional about. Anyone who’s talked to me about the show knows that I’m very passionate about what its says through these stories and these characters. As a matter of fact, it is my awareness of these things beyond the show, which nevertheless make their way into the show, that make me so invested in what happens within the show.

Despite the sensibility I bring to my viewing of the show and how I analyze it, I know for a fact that the show itself encourages me to pretend that all that stuff doesn’t exist, to get swept up in the story, to allow myself to believe the illusion of the show, to position myself as something like a tourist to the Enchanted Forest and/or Storybrooke as though I am looking through a window in time and space and not at something that was created by real people in the real world. In other words, I am aware that I am being asked to turn my brain off and just let the show work its magic on me (no pun intended—haha, yeah it is). And yet, time and time again, I find myself resisting that sort of hypnosis, and I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable about approaching the characters as though they are independent beings capable of real agency.

Being fully aware of these things means that I’m already experiencing Verfremdungseffekt (badly translated as “alienation effect”) before I even begin to watch the show. As soon as the episode starts, what is supposed to be familiar to me is rendered strange simply because the context I bring to the show is so radically different from the context that created the show. Although this show is far from the first instance where I've experienced this, it has made me increasingly conscious of the fact that I experience Verfremdungseffekt as a matter of course. I suppose it comes from my keen awareness that most media is not made with me in mind. Not because people deliberately exclude women, LGBTQ people, or people of color, but because in mainstream media, "person" typically defaults to white, cisgender, straight, male, and middle-class.

Take (fuck you) King Leopold. King Leopold is not real, but I loathe him. Why? It’s not about King Leopold the flesh-and-blood human being because King Leopold only exists as words on a page, or pixels on a screen. I hate King Leopold because his mannerisms, his attitudes, and the way he treats people reflects the experiences of myself, my friends, my family, and my community with men like him. It’s about the big and small ways that King Leopold shows up in the men in our lives. My irritation is also compounded by that fact that, just like in real life, I am meant to think well of him despite the harm he does.

Contrast this with how in a lot of ways I am encouraged not to identify with Regina, not to see my own struggles as a queer woman of color reflected in her story. Pity her, sure. But not see myself in her, or her in myself. I’m supposed to see her story as being about redemption and not liberation. Success for this character is supposed to be about earning someone’s seal of approval and not establishing true agency. I’m definitely not supposed to ask, “What does it mean to have Regina do this or have this happen to her? Whose interests does it serve to frame her story that way?”

As a result of the ways that, simply by virtue of existing outside the assumed norms the show operates in, the things I look at in the show and the questions I ask are different. I am not unique in this because when I talk about media with people of color and LGBTQ people, we often carry that same implicit awareness of media as a creation by real people in the real world and not an independent reality. I believe that, in a lot of ways, it’s a strategy for resisting narratives that reinforce harmful ideas about people of color and LGBTQ people—namely, that we do not or should not exist except in very limited capacities.

(It is my intuition that people of color and LGBTQ people would probably grasp Brecht’s epic theatre better than Brecht himself did.)

I believe this is why the commentary of the actors, writers, or creators don’t really bother me much when it seems way off base from what we see on the screen. To me, that’s not them speaking with authority about a character or the show but reflecting their own position in the society that created the show. Therefore, their commentary, no matter how sincere, is not taken as objective fact but a reflection of their own subjectivity. That subjectivity comes with its own insights and blind spots. Why should I defer to their interpretations if I and others who watch the show are able to provide a deeper and more expansive perspective? Why should I assume that because they were thinking one thing when they were making the show that it could not have another meaning or interpretation that’s just as valid but coming from a different direction?

Now, I know that to some, denying or arguing against a creator’s interpretation is a lot like arguing with God. Which is interesting because, well, I’m Jewish, and struggling with or arguing with God is, in some cases, a moral imperative. Saying things we don’t like about the characters or the show is not on par with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet it remains that we do not have to accept a position just because it comes from the “gods” of the show.

Paradoxically, it’s the distance between spectator and narrative that has given me the freedom to incorporate the full richness of my entire humanity to the show.

Taking my work beyond the black box

Gwydion is making me think with his blog post ("Theater of Belonging"), especially this part:

What if we started combining what we usually think of as theater with, say, biology experiments? Or yoga classes? Or podcasts? Or role-playing games? Would we find new collaborators to work with us? And thus other audiences to engage with?

And on Facebook, Gwydion mentioned wanting to see more exploration and investigation in theatre, a parallel to research and development in science and technology.

(This is the part where a more patient writer would smoothly transition from one idea to the next. Forgive me for not doing so right now and getting to the good part right away.)

Whenever I feel the need to get back to the essence of what makes theater work, I go back to Peter Brook's The Open Door. One of the things that has most vividly stuck with me is his description of The Carpet Show. With nothing but a rug, the actors, and the audience, The Carpet Show transformed mundane spaces into vibrant, compelling performances.

After my most recent foray into The Open Door, I believe I had something of a breakthrough about the direction I want the development of my work to take.

I realized that more than I want to see my plays put on a Real Stage (TM) with all the bells and whistles, I want my plays to have vitality, to connect with the audience, to give the audience the freedom to imagine different realities. If that is what really excites me about theater, why would I put so much effort and energy into doing things that signify that I am a Real Theater Person (TM) and not an amateur with delusions of grandeur?

Part of me did--and does--want to convince other Theater People (TM) that I know and admire that I'm a Real Theater Person (TM) and serious about my work, which means I have to do "better" than a bunch of people sitting in a circle watching actors play pretend.

But the thing is: that's the part I like because I've never outgrown my need to play with my imaginary friends, to make up stories about them, and to go with them to worlds that can only be entered through the imagination.

Having finally admitted that showing my work on a Real Stage (TM) and proving that I'm a Real Theater Person (TM) are no longer my priorities, where does that leave me? Where does my work go?

Honestly, now that I've freed myself from that, it could go anywhere. In particular, I'd like to do my own rendition of Peter Brook's Carpet Show, using that format as a means of testing where the theatrical vitality of my work is found and how to bring that out in performance. Yet, I also want to play with adding a little bit of the spirit of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, allowing audiences to participate by shouting and throwing various items. Oh, and I want people to be able to film my shows on their iPhones. And tweet during the show. And maybe nix the talkback at the end in favor of asking the audience questions during act breaks, where they are free to come and go and eat and drink and other "inappropriate" things.

In the meantime, I want to keep an eye on what works, what doesn't, why it works or doesn't work, and ideas on how to make it better. A strong sense of freedom and play, plus an equally strong insistence on figuring out what makes something work.

And get the hell out of the damn black box.

"Encanta" and indie theatre in the 21st century

Free copies of a full-length play for virtual strangers is not how things are usually done. For the most part, people usually have to pay to see a performance or buy a published script. But with Encanta, I've been much more free-handed about things that I ordinarily would be.

However, it does make you wonder: why would a playwright without a job at a pie factory hand out a script for free that is probably worth charging money for?

The first reason is pragmatic: plays are ultimately meant to be performed, not just read. Production, not publication, is where it's at for a play. The text of a play is, in my view, closer to sheet music than to a novel. Reading Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, while very likely meaningful and enjoyable, is nothing compared to hearing even a recording of it.

Secondly, a lot of theatre hasn't quite caught up to how to reach out via social media beyond promoting the next show. I'm not going to change that by myself, but I do want to do my part to engage 21st century audiences beyond asking people to follow me on Twitter or "like" my Facebook page.

For me, the internet has been crucial for building an audience. It makes no sense for me to treat their participation as auxiliary to bringing my work to life. It also makes no sense for me to make my work less available to them just because they cannot be physically present at a performance.

Then there's the fact that I have never given my script to someone and had them less interested in a live performance. The vast majority of the time, when I gave out my script, the person reading it said, "I have to see this live."

So, to me, this means that I need a different process for engaging audiences with my work.

I came up with 3 layers of engagement that I believe would be a good way to guide how I get my work to its audience from now on.

The first layer is the "Hey, I'm writing this play. Interested?" layer. I call it "Creation" in the picture because that's what was legible in the circle.

This part of the process is not just about writing the piece. It's about sharing my vision for what the play will mean to the audience. For me, one of the first things I ask is, "Who will see themselves here?" and "What are they going to see about themselves?" It's the appetizer and a taste of what's to come.

A story about a sorceress and a pirate falling in love is nothing spectacular in and of itself. But when I say that every single character is LGBTQ and Latin@/Afro-Latin@, that means something to people. People, especially people excluded and marginalized in arts and entertainment, care about that because they want to see themselves in ways they normally don't get to see themselves. So, they're immediately hooked and want to know more about where I'm going with it. This usually means a complete draft. Or several, in the case of Encanta.

From here on out, things are a bit more experimental.

The second layer is the, "Let's see what we can do online" phase. I call it "Virtual Event" in the picture because, again, it's legible and fits in the circle. This is the main course.

The first thing that came to mind for this was a livestreamed performance where the audience hangs out in a chatroom or on a Twitter hashtag. No camera tricks. No movie magic. Just what actors can do just from the strength of their performance. This includes readings, staged readings, and workshop productions. Not to mention interviews with the writer, cast, and crew, and so on. I believe this could be the main form most performances would take because they would by far be the most accessible.

I have no idea how the logistics of this where tickets and what not are concerned, but it's one of the ideas I had.

Finally, there's what I call "Live Event" (once again, because it fits and its legible), which in my mind I think of as the "Icing on the Cake" layer.

Here is where the fully realized productions would happen. It's what we have for dessert. Just as every meal doesn't have dessert, every piece won't become a fully realized production. And that's fine. The point is to get the piece performed and in front of an audience.

The great thing about these layers is that they are very porous. None of them has to work in isolation from the others. For instance, it's entirely possible to combine a live event with a virtual event.