dagblog - Comments for "For You All To Read"

I love your aesthetic. And

Michael Maiello — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:17:17 +0000

In reply to Well, anyone who will discuss

I love your aesthetic. And this discussion.

Thanks, all of you!

Well, anyone who will discuss

Elusive Trope — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:00:20 +0000

In reply to Furballs! One time, back in

Well, anyone who will discuss chaos theory, fractures and theater in the same breath has my vote.

I did see a production of Murder of Crows, and there was a bit thrown in by the troupe where the crows do a little dance to the tune Fly Me to Moon. An image now forever associated in my brain with Frank's music. Even in Portland where I saw it, it had maybe a dozen or so people show up. For the most part, quality theater will live on in the small, small productions, where people are not looking at making a living, but rather do it for its own sake. Kind of like the blogosphere.

Furballs! One time, back in

Michael Maiello — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:46:47 +0000

In reply to Back in 2004, Mac

Furballs! One time, back in the day my friends and I put on four plays at once. We called it The 4Play Festival. Among the plays was Seven Blowjobs (directed by me) and Sincerity Forever (directed by my close friend). Those were goods times. Wellman is a great guy. Very inspiring and he's certainly made his career as he would have it. No compromises. Sometimes not even to logic. But I love his Dracula and the entire Crowtet.

Back in 2004, Mac

Elusive Trope — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:39:00 +0000

In reply to Quality is definitely an

Back in 2004, Mac Wellman began his Village Voice article regarding a general sense of optimism regarding American theater:

Yes theater is a game, and yes that game is rigged, and yes everyone knows it. While we're speaking in threes, the three (unacknowledged) rules of the American theater: Aim low, shit floats, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. All this, as I've said, everyone knows, yet none knows to shun the heaven that leads us to this hell....given the prevalence of corporate riggery and staleness in the boardrooms of American theater, the questions remains: Why the optimism?

I had an article by Wellman I carted around for sometime in which he refers to those who shuffle around in the boardrooms as Furballs. An apt name I believe.

But I am greatly influenced by Herbert Blau when it comes to theater, and in his 1964 The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto, one of his primary targets is the vacuous Broadway, more concerned with money than art. And he lays quite a bit of the blame on the actors and other artists in the theater and not just the ones backing it with the money. I would posit, however, that Blau back then probably had no thought it would eventually arrive at Spiderman.

Quality is definitely an

Michael Maiello — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:43:04 +0000

In reply to I would say it was his Angels

Quality is definitely an issue, Trope. But the bigger commercial theaters aren't nurturing talent anymore. Spider-Man with music by Bono? Seriously?

That is indeed the money

anna am — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:48:48 +0000

In reply to I would say it was his Angels

That is indeed the money quote, trope.

I would say it was his Angels

Elusive Trope — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:51:47 +0000

In reply to For You All To Read

I would say it was his Angels in America performed at the Seattle Repertory Theater that really opened my eyes to what a play can actually achieve, that "something" which is impossible to achieve on the silver screen or on the page. Of course, it helped that there was a high quality group of actors along with the director. It does make a difference as another performance I saw of AiA at a university made so clear.

Which does bring up part of the problem with the theater in this country. If one doesn't happen to live in New York, or maybe Chicago, one's access to quality performances, both in terms of the text and the performace is rather limited. Comparing it to film, many people in this country growing up get to see Citizen Kane not directed by Wells but by some undergrad student. How many of the potential genuises that might have been pulled to the theater as a means of expression drifted away from it because what theater they did see was not very inspiring.

But I would add that Tony is pretty clear about how he sees Obama and the left and the whole process [emphasis mine]:

But I feel that after Obama’s inauguration the left immediately settled into our very familiar role of being the backseat drivers or principled opposition, and have expressed volubly every disappointment. Not even after the inauguration. The minute they heard that Rick Warren was speaking at the inauguration, LGBT people were saying, ‘It’s over, he’s just like all the others.’ Let alone those who say there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats, which I think is glib and profoundly dangerous. What frightens me is that I feel that we’re in the process of dismantling the coalition of constituencies that brought Obama to the White House.
My feeling is that there are too many of us on the left who believe that politics is an expression of personal purity. Because of our divorcement from electoral politics and abandonment of a belief in the possibility of radical change through participatory democracy, we have become profoundly uncomfortable with, and ignorant of, the complexities and discomfort of making change in a democracy. I’m guilty of this in some of the earlier things I wrote, too. I have no illusion of being able to change Rush Limbaugh’s mind, or of being able to make John Boehner anything other than a profoundly indecent person, but what makes something happen in an electoral democracy is compromise, negotiation, and strategizing, and to a certain extent even what in the Clinton era became fashionable to call lying. There are lies, and those should not be tolerated. But there is a degree of rhetorical finesse that’s required to maneuver through very treacherous waters. I’m willing to believe that this man who got himself elected president is actually a very skilled politician and is negotiating imponderably difficult conditions.
....And the LGBT community, what are they, we, looking for? Yes, we’ve been asked to wait a very long time, asked to eat oceans of shit by the Democratic Party; we’ve been 75 percent loyal for decades without a wobble and without a whole lot of help from these people. And it’s important that somebody keeps screaming; the trick is how do you scream, and who do you scream to? If we’re dissatisfied with these Democrats, let’s get better ones instead of fantasies about mass uprisings that are going to resemble the October Revolution. Yes, it might sometimes feel good to throw the newspaper across the room. There’s much criticism of Obama that’s legitimate. He backs down on things, he waffles, like on the mosque, and you wince. And I consider his decision to appeal the Federal court ruling abolishing DADT to be unethical, tremendously destructive, and potentially politically catastrophic. But is Obama really supposed to say, as the first African-American president, that same-sex marriage is his first priority? Clearly he believes in it; he’s a constitutional scholar. It’s not conceivable to me that he believes that state-sponsored marriage should be unavailable to same-sex couples, even if he has religious scruples. But do I think he should have lost the election for the chance to say he supported same-sex marriage? No. Given that we would have had John McCain and Sarah Palin, I would have said, ‘Say anything you need to.’ So if he’s moving very cautiously, with two wars he’s inherited and a collapsing global economy and the planet coming unglued—Okay!

Seems to be that Kushner is political realist. So even when Obama does something that is "unethical, tremendously destructive, and potentially politically catastrophic" he is still supportive because of the larger context of the political environment. And it seems that Kushner is placing a lot of the responsibility for change on the people of the left to actually get in there in participate in the participatory democracy. And while I too would like to see what Brecht would think of Obama, I would also be very interested in how he sees the left itself.

And yes. That kind of no

anna am — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:27:59 +0000

In reply to There's no development money

And yes. That kind of no tribute tribute to Albee put me aback too.

There's no development money

anna am — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:25:55 +0000

In reply to Good points, anna. I was a

There's no development money anymore, destor. And theatre = real estate now. You rent the house, you've got to fill it and filling it means no risks. And then you get a Tony for keeping the League members flush and flourishing. thisg aren't entirely dismal though. It's not exactly Kushner league, but I think Marans' the Temperamentalists was really interesting. And right now Ruhl's adaptation of Orlando is interesting too. Not exactly my meat. But interesting, and some evidence that there's still stuff going on that's not just all slick and greased up for a quick trip to the big boards.

Good points, anna. I was a

Michael Maiello — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:47:15 +0000

In reply to It's a good solid article and

Good points, anna. I was a little sad about the death of theatre in this, but I've been sad about that since the 90s. All the people you mention are great. But what's really scary to me is that I don't see new voices and new playwrights emerging. I don't see a next Kushner who was a next Brecht. Even Kushner is writing for HBO and Spielberg. At least some one in the article new that you can't call Kushner the unqualified best while Albee is still writing and breathing!