A Rehearsal Room of One's Own

To be generous.

2012-01-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

It's a new year, which means introspection and all that sappy shit.

I've been thinking about generosity a lot lately. The radiant Kibibi Dillon passed away a few days ago. I didn't know her well, but my first memory of her is: it's 2007. I'm interning at New Dramatists. She's acting in one of the readings. She's hanging out in the front office with us interns. (Side note: hanging out with interns can be an act of generosity in and of itself. Interns in general are often a bored, creatively frustrated, taken-for-granted bunch, and when you seek out their company, they tend to appreciate it.) She asks me what I do. I tell her, "I work in the Pearl Theatre box office." She responds, "Honey, I got all kindsa shit I do to pay my bills. That shit ain't what I DO. What do you DO?"

I doubt she knew it, but that question was an act of incredible generosity. Her question told me, "You as a creative person are of interest to me. I know you're not here out of some great passion for making copies and coffee, so tell me what gets your heart and blood going, because I give a shit."

"Generous" is a weird word. I hear it and I associate it with philanthropy, with the act of giving something physical or tangible. And yes, monetary generosity can be an unbelievably inspiring thing--I was speechless at the response to the Kickstarter campaign for my play Ampersand over the summer. Not just the fact that we exceeded our goal, but that so many people gave a shit and wanted us to succeed.

But being philanthropic requires having the means to do so, and not all of us do, and there are so many other ways to be generous that don't require giving a cent. So since it's New Year's and we're all about improving ourselves for the coming year, here are Mariah Mac's guidelines to a more generous 2012.

Being generous means:
If you love someone, tell them.
If you like someone, tell them.
If you love or like what someone has created, tell the world. Spread the good word.
If you hear of an opportunity, tell the people who could use it.
If you know two people who'd really like each other and/or could use each other's services, tell them.
Make time for people.
Make time for yourself so that you don't burn out and have more to give other people.
Listen to people. Really listen. Ask them about themselves and then pay attention to what they say.
Share good work, good music, good articles, good jokes. Share your comp tickets. Share your discount codes.
Share yourself. Share your heart. Whether it takes the form of a play, a song, a blog post, or a conversation. You never know whether what's inside you is exactly what someone else needs to hear.
If you're grateful for what someone else has said, done, or made, tell them. One of the most amazing things that has ever happened on this blog was, after my Laughing at Rape post, lots of people contacted me privately to thank me, or share their own stories, or just to tell me they loved me. I can't express what that meant, what a gift that was.
If things are going well for other people, congratulate them.
If things aren't going well for other people, see if you can help. You might not be able to, but it'll mean a lot that you asked. That in itself is a gift.
If you know saying "yes" to something or someone will be harmful to you or them, say "no." Even if it hurts at the time, your "no" is actually a gift.
If you don't have the time or resources to see someone's work, donate to their project, go to someone's party, or what have you, tell them and express your regrets. The fact that you took the time is often a gift.
If you have resources, share them. That doesn't necessarily mean money. That means if you have an empty house in Pennsylvania, fill it with artists. That means if you have access to the back room of a bar, fill it with artists. That means interviewing your fellow playwrights on your blog. Etc.
If you know someone fancy, and you know someone crazy-talented who could use a little championing, introduce them to the fancy person.
If you see/find out about a project that speaks to you, and you'd give your eye teeth to be involved, say so. You are not imposing. Your passion is a gift.
If you desperately want to work with someone that you think is brilliant and badass, tell them. Even--in fact, especially--if you think they're "out of your league." You'd be surprised how much a thing like that can mean, and yield.
Tell the world about your heroes. Maybe your heroes will become someone else's, too. Maybe your hero didn't know they were anyone's hero.
Share advice. You are not presumptuous for sharing what you've learned. What's worked for you may not work for someone else. Acknowledge this. And then share anyway.
If you are a gatekeeper, and you can't let a particular artist through your gate for whatever reason, but you think they're awesome, TELL THEM. The loving, heartfelt rejection letters have stuck with me more than the acceptance letters.
Give hugs.

Say "thank you."

Your additions are welcome and encouraged.

Laughing at Rape. (trigger warning, obvi.)

2011-12-07T23:06:00.001-05:00

So a little less than a month ago I came across this article, which was ostensibly about how lady comedians get to push the envelope of taste in a way that dudes can't, but really was mostly about rape jokes. Mostly the jokes made me roll my eyes or squirm (definitely not laugh), except this paragraph:

“I need more rape jokes,” [Silverman] shouted nasally before letting her fans in on what she called a comedy secret, that such jokes are actually not so “edgy” after all. “Who’s going to complain about rape jokes? Rape victims?” she asked. “They barely even report rape.”

I actually found that one pretty good. Because it's true: rape jokes aren't edgy. They're often quite lazy--being offensive rather than being clever. And as a survivor who didn't report her own rape, and who has spent a lot of time crying over the whole women-not-reporting-rape thing, it felt good to chuckle at that for a second instead. And yet I felt conflicted by my laughter. Where is the line between totally fucking necessary gallows humor, and belittling a very serious problem?

I don't know where the line is. Like Eve Ensler, I am furious about rape, and quite easily enraged when other people joke about it. But I also know that sometimes I really, really, really need to laugh about rape, just as I need to laugh about death and heartbreak.

Flashback: May 27, 2011. The NYPD rapist douchefucks have just been acquitted, and I am pissed. I drag my then-boyfriend to a protest. We participate in the angry chants: "NYPD, shame on you!" But after a time, our voices get sore and the anger gets exhausting, so we start jokingly creating ironic chants for each other: "We would greatly appreciate it/ If you would stop raping us!"

Flashback: December 2008, about a month after being date raped by a skeezy guy we'll call "Duke" with dreadlocks and a septum piercing. My friend Amanda makes and gives me a t-shirt. It says "NOT RAPE > RAPE." I wear it as pajamas.

Flashback: February 2007. I am creating the very first incarnation of The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret as my senior project at Skidmore College. There's a written component to my auditions, and one girl writes about being sexually assaulted in high school. I ask her if I can meet with her, as I plan to address date rape/sexual assault in the show. I want to honor the experiences of those who've gone through it, being too in denial at this point to acknowledge that I already have experience with the matter. I am clearly nervous as I interview her and she tells me not to worry. I ask her what she'd say to the guy if she could talk to him now and she responds very casually, "I'd probably just run away. I mean, with our track record?" We both laugh.

Flashback: November 23, 2011, three years and eight days after the Duke incident. I don't normally keep track of the anniversary (Google Calendar ensures that I can always find these things out when I want to), and in fact am not thinking of it on this night, but I've just finished a 20-minute play entitled "Lysistrata Rape Play." The premise: women pledge to stop having sex with men until rape is eradicated. It disturbs me more than anything I've ever written--and cracks me up more, too. I post on twitter and facebook: "Just finished writing maybe the most disturbing thing I've ever written. I am upset and elated." Support and "hell yeah"s flow in from all corners of the internet.

"Lysistrata Rape Play" probably owes a lot to Sheila Callaghan's That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play and Josh Conkel's The Sluts of Sutton Drive. In Sluts, one character says to another (I paraphrase): "Do you know what you call a guy who's maybe a rapist? A mapist!" I laughed at "mapist." A lot.

In That Pretty Pretty, in the film-within-the-play created by the thinks-he's-sensitive straight white dude (whose penis has previously been compared to a cashew), the soldier tells his female POW, "I'm going to rape you now. With my long, hard penis. My penis that bears no resemblance to a salted nut at all." (Again, I paraphrase.) And again, I laughed.

In "Lysistrata Rape Play," I write the following sequence of events:

Samantha is fake-raping a pillow. Emily is cheering her on. They both fake manly voices.

SAMANTHA

Yeah! Yeah, take it, you little bitch! Fuckin’ take it!

EMILY

Whoo! Rape that stupid bitch!

SAMANTHA

Oh, what’s that?! Was that a “no”?! Sorry, I didn’t hear that! This is a rape, bitch!

EMILY

Rape! Rape! Rape! Rape! Rape!

SAMANTHA

Yeah Ima rape you so hard bitch! Wooooooooooo! (Stopping abruptly) I’m not really enjoying this.

I also write the sentence "Rapers gonna rape," which makes me laugh for a good five minutes when I write it. When I bring the play into my playwriting class, people giggle at my use of the phrase "kinda rapey," as well as "an unwanted dick in your vag." I giggle too.

Flashback: April 2009, five months after the Duke incident. I have started therapy and decided to return to the Genderf*ck script, in large part because letting the pain from the incident just sit inside me is not really doing it for me and I need to put it somewhere and Genderf*ck seems a good place to put it. I rewrite the script front to back, taking great care to write with an open mind and compassion, to push the grayness in the date rape subplot, to pay attention to the guy's confusion and lack of malice. It's not funny, but it's cathartic and honest.

Flashback: April 2010 and April 2011. New York productions of Genderf*ck. The date rape subplot is by far the most-talked about aspect of the show. By my calculations, I got about 800 people to think about consent. Not fucking bad.

Flashback: November 20, 2011, when I begin "Lysistrata Rape Play." I am fed the fuck up with gray areas and trying to see things from the other perspective. I'm angry. I'm angry that men aren't as angry about rape as I am. I need to write a play about how angry I am, and I do. It's not kind, but it's cathartic and honest.

Flashback: November 15, 2008. I'll spare you the upsetting part of this story and just tell you the funny parts, because if you leave out the ending it's got some pretty funny moments, to me at least. I'm at a friend's birthday party, and his downstairs neighbor Duke is putting the moves on me, and I'm going with it because the guy I really want isn't putting out and isn't here, so fuck it! A group of us order fried chicken and Duke thinks he's being sexy and seductive by feeding me fried chicken with his fingers, but it's actually kind of gross.

Then he starts in with the deep psychological questions. "So, Mariah, if you could be any of the following, which would you be: werewolf, vampire, or zombie?"

This isn't my first time at the rodeo. I know how this question works: the obvious response, which is "vampire" (seriously, who the fuck wants to be a zombie?) will lead to a discussion of vampires, which will lead to a discussion of sex, because duh. So I say, "Vampire."

"I so agree!" he responds super-enthusiastically, as though we're kindred spirits because we'd both rather be hot and undead than hairy or brain-consuming. "There's just something so sexual about the act of taking someone's blood, you know?"

This maybe should be a warning sign, but I just smile and nod while mentally rolling my eyes. Eventually we start making out, which inspires him to go brush his teeth. When he returns, I ask how he's doing. "I just brushed my teeth and I feel fucking FANTASTIC," he replies, totally earnestly.

"I wish I felt that way every time I brushed my teeth," I respond.

The rest of the story isn't so amusing, so I'll end it there. The point is, I've told those parts of the story on their own, without context. I've forced those parts to be just another funny story for me, to take power away from what came after.

In other words, I need to use humor to cut the balls off rape sometimes.

However...what is the difference between black humor that is healing and empowering, and jokes about rape that are unacceptable? Do I only get to make jokes about rape because I've been raped? I can't possibly know the survivor status of every person who jokes about rape, but I am absolutely less forgiving of rape jokes that come from straight men as opposed to women and queer people. I don't even necessarily feel bad about that. I figure, when we (women and queer people) are the ones astronomically more likely to have it happen to us, the least straight dudes can do is watch their fucking mouths on the subject.

But if I hadn't told you I was a survivor, would you have been offended by my amusement at "rapers gonna rape"? Are you still offended? Would I be offended in the reverse position? I don't know any of these answers, but one thing is for sure: I need, need, need my black humor. That is a fact. That is unchangeable.

Weirdly, after throwing out all these questions, I've disabled comments, because the last thing I need is some anonymous internet douchefuck finding this and trying to play Devil's Advocate and getting disrespectful after I've basically opened a vein on my blog. I do want to continue a respectful conversation about all this, though. So if you want, find me on facebook or twitter, and let's talk about it there.

I will pay you to let me do a play in your home.

2011-11-09T21:21:00.001-05:00

WANTED:
A one-bedroom apartment in NYC. Not to live in, but in which to perform a play.
Basically, I will pay you to let me do a play in your home.

YOU: a chill individual who maybe works nights and has no problem with a few very lovely, responsible people performing in your living room for a few weeks.

YOUR PLACE: One- or two-bedroom (more rooms is not a deal-breaker), not studio, with a kitchen that is separate from the living room. Preferably, you can fit at least twelve people in addition to the 4-person cast in your living room. Twenty would be awesome. More would make me swoon with glee. Manhattan location would be AWESOME but I am not picky.

HOW MUCH I WILL PAY YOU: A security deposit (amount negotiable) and half the box office. (The play will be performed as an AEA showcase, so this amount varies depending how many people your place holds.)

WHEN THIS WOULD IDEALLY HAPPEN: 3-4 nights a week for 3-4 weeks sometime in the spring (anytime between March and June--April would be totally perfect). It's baller if we can rehearse there too, but if not, no big.

The play runs about an hour and a half, if not less. I can send it to you if you want. If curtain is at 8, people should be cleared out of your apartment by 10.

Do you have this apartment? Do you know someone who does? If so, email me at mariahmwrites@gmail.com.

Mariah leaves Purple Rep.

2011-11-07T10:46:00.000-05:00

Many of you know that I co-founded a theater company this year with fellow playwright Larry Kunofsky, Purple Rep. After three exquisite productions (of which I'm more proud than maybe anything else I've ever done) in the space of six months, I am departing Purple Rep.

Weird, right?

Well, we always knew this was an experiment. In my post about Purple Rep on 2amtheatre.com, in February, I said:

"Maybe we won’t last. That’s OK with us. In the meantime, our work will go up, it will be seen, it will stop sitting on our hard drives. And then if the time comes to disband Purple Rep, we’ll have a formidable production history to our names, rather than a series of excellently written cover letters that came to naught."

Fortunately, Purple Rep isn't disbanding at all. It lives on, under the direction of artistic director and my co-founder Larry Kunofsky, who will doubtless continue doing excellent plays, and who I of course wish all the best. This two-headed beast is simply changing form: Purple Rep becomes its own beast, and I will create/be a beast of my own.

I could write something about the dangers of combining love and art, but I won't. Because if I hadn't started a theater company with my then-boyfriend, these incredible productions would not have happened. I wouldn't have learned that not only can I produce, but I actually enjoy it. There are a number of amazing people I would not have met. I would never have seen Brandon Whited's joyful androgyny-dance in the middle of The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret, or cried when Ephraim and Tzipora reunited at the end of The Un-Marrying Project. I would be a less rich, less fulfilled artist and person. So I'm not gonna sit here and say, "Hey, don't start a theater company with your significant other 'cause what if you break up?"

Any relationship--friendly, romantic, professional, or all of the above--always has the potential to break up. And if you "what if" every move you make, you will never do anything. At all. Ever.

So go ahead and start a theater company with your boyfriend. Create some gorgeous art on a shoestring budget. Keep an eye on the future, but also know that you can't predict it, and be open to what happens. In our case, what happened was a lot of damn good work, which both Larry and I will continue to make--just in a different context.

Bon voyage, Purple Rep. We had a great run. Keep doing what you do.

Oh, and if you want to be on the email list to keep posted on what I've got cooking, sign up for my mailing list here.

Theatre for social change, revisited: the plays of Co-Op Theatre East.

2011-10-26T22:36:00.000-04:00

So remember that time when I blogged about theatre as a tool for social change? It's time to do that again.

I've also blogged about Co-Op Theatre East's work before (and interviewed one of their commanders-in-chief Ashley Marinaccio). I've been following them for a couple years, and have gotten fairly familiar with them as a company. They've got a show up right now, Muzungu, (co-produced with Mixed Phoenix Theatre Group), which you should see--more on that in a moment. Between that, the recent Howlround #newplay discussion on whether/how theatre can respond to current events in an immediate fashion, a blog post was inevitable.

Let's start with Muzungu, since it's only up through this weekend and your time to see it is limited (PS there are $10 matinees on the weekend--tell them I sent you). It's certainly COTE's most elegant production to date, from Joshua David Bishop's sleek set design to David Myers' sparse, uber-subtext-y dialogue. From the opening moments, tension is in the air: American aid worker Matthew (Ryan Victor Pierce), here in Nyagatare, Rwanda, is getting a massage from local masseuse Mattie (Nneoma Nkuku). She tells him, very casually, to take his clothes off; he stares at her, waiting for her to look away while he disrobes, and she doesn't. Then as she's massaging him, he gets hard, and without a second thought she reaches under his towel and starts giving him the most apathetic, matter-of-fact hand job you can imagine. And that's just the first scene.

Matthew means so damn well. He just wants to help Rwanda. He's installing computers, even though he doesn't completely know how. He speaks with hope about how Rwanda can start afresh. But despite Mattie's impenetrable glance, you can tell she knows what we know--he Doesn't Get It. He thinks he and Mattie are close. He thinks he's entitled to know her name, her family history. He insists on seeing her when she's told him he can't anymore. He tells her he feels more at ease with her than with anyone, and we can tell the feeling is so not mutual. Mattie never judges him openly, but we can tell there's a lot going on behind her calmly controlled face.

There is so much unsaid in this restrained play; there are only two characters; there are no sweeping damnations of anyone, even offstage characters--and this makes this an unusual COTE play. Their Decadent Acts was big, sometimes clumsy, and earnest and heartfelt as hell (and I'm happy to report that many of the problems I had with the first go-round of the play went away in subsequent productions). Their Trojan Women combined video, Greek tragedy, masks, choreography, and real-life testimonies from survivors of sex trafficking. Again, big, earnest, going all the way toward tragedy. The anger in both these productions was palpable.

Muzungu is different. Muzungu does not weep, or yell; it smirks. It also confuses--the play eventually devolves into dream-scenes and poetry, to such an extent that in the end (SPOILER ALERT), I am honestly not sure whether Mattie has struck Matthew dumb, turned him into a suitcase, or merely stolen his computers. (Seriously. You gotta see this play.)

But of any of COTE's shows so far, this one is the closest adherent to what I called Theatre of Compassion. Matthew's not a bad guy, just a clueless one who likes a hand job as much as the next guy. Mattie's not a bad woman--but she's responding to Matthew, who is on her turf and kind of entitled and annoying (there are moments when he channels Privilege Denying Dude, though admittedly I've channeled him too in my time).

However...this production moved me to action the least of any COTE show, in large part because I don't know what action needs taking. Sounds from the dramaturg's program note (and from the admittedly very very very little I know about it) like Rwanda's doing pretty OK these days--correct me if I'm wrong, please. Whereas the rights of same-sex couples (Decadent Acts) and sex trafficking (Trojan Women) are still very present issues. What do I do after Muzungu? Do I just think more critically about the role and behavior of American aid workers abroad? Is that enough? What does "enough" mean in Off-Off Broadway theatre, or any theatre? Isn't more awareness always good? Is Theatre of Compassion even something to aspire to, or just a cool idea I had one time?

On the #newplay discussion on twitter, HowlRound recently had their "Weekly Howl," where they pose questions about new plays and people chime in to the conversation. This week it was all about socially relevant theatre: how do we create theatre that keeps up with the times and responds to current events when the development process is so hellaciously long? How do we create relevant theatre that doesn't become dated in a few years? And then, does Muzungu run the risk of seeming dated, or is it all the more vital to do right now because no one is talking about Rwanda anymore? I don't think the combination of aid workers + white privilege is going to go away anytime soon, but if you set that story in a country no one's talking about anymore, will people listen?

The very fact that my brain is so tied up in knots is a good sign, a sign that this well-done play got under my skin. I'd love to hear any feedback from anyone else who's seen it. (If you haven't, you've got till the 30th.) Details here.

77 good things.

2011-10-20T11:37:00.000-04:00

So, I've been in New York for almost exactly four years now. Having been inspired by my twitter husband and good friend Gwydion, I decided to make a list of 77 good theater things from those four years. In no particular order:

1. Blinking back tears at Bekah Brunstetter's "Heaven Is for Real" Sunday night at the New York One Minute Play Festival
2. Becky Byers in Flux's production of Dog Act
3. Seeing the transformation that Stephanie Fleischmann's Red Fly, Blue Bottle took between workshop and production at HERE; being scared and transfixed by the production. Jesse Hawley's eyes. Christina Campanella's voice and music. That tiny white room.
4. Eating pierogies at Veselka after Purple Rep's shows
5. Clubbed Thumb plays at the (old) Ohio, especially the musical number "This House Is a Shithole" in the middle of Dot
6. Sam Soule's fucked up dance in the middle of Lucy Thurber's Killers and Other Families
7. The "On Broadway" number at the end of NTUSA's Chautaqua! with a dance crew of thousands
8. Chocolate stout at Jimmy's No. 43 before and/or after every Cino Night. And, for that matter, every Cino Night.
9. Lenelle Moise singing "Rebel" at the end of Expatriate
10. The final scene of Keep Your Baggage With You At All Times
11. Nina Simone's "Four Women" at the beginning of The Amoralists' Bring Us the Head of Your Daughter
12. Stopping in an empty corridor after seeing Ruined and bawling my eyes out
13. Zachary Quinto in Angels in America, sticking around Signature all day the Saturday after Thanksgiving to see parts one and two
14. Running video for Andhow!'s Linus and Alora. Arthur Aulisi making me cry nearly every night, trying not to laugh at the hilarious things my stage manager was saying on headset because the audience could hear me, having dance parties behind the audience without them knowing, drinking with the cast at South's after nearly every show
15. Marin Ireland in the Playtime reading of Victor Lodato's one-woman show Dear Sara Jane at New Dramatists
16. The opening moments of Act 2 of Josh Conkel's The Sluts of Sutton Drive, seeing Megan Hill and Amy Staats in their torn-up, graffiti'd finery
17. The lady with the donut-hoop-skirt before Rods and Cables at 3LD
18. The last minute of Circle Mirror Transformation
19. The last five minutes of Slava's SnowShow (OK, this was technically before I moved to New York, but too good not to include)
20. The cast of Fight Girl Battle World rocking out to "California Love"
21. The voice-over conversation in the middle of That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play. Hearing Lisa Joyce hit Greg Keller. And then laugh at him.
22. Emily's birthday in Our Town at Barrow Street, smelling the bacon, losing my shit
23. The first reading of The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret at INTAR. The standing ovation. The talkback. (Yes, sometimes talkbacks can be the greatest thing ever. Sometimes.)
24. The silence in Troy Deutsch's Lake Water
25. Erin Markey's marvelous deadpan in Puppy Love: A Stripper's Tail
26. Seeing Mike Daisey perform for the first (and thus far, only) time in The Last Cargo Cult
27. Nearly getting arrested while participating in One Million Forgotten Moments my first week in New York
28. Any and everything Lauren Hennessy does. Finding out she'd won Best Performance for the Fringe production of Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story.
29. Potluck Plays
30. ESPA. Especially Eddie Sanchez. Falling in love with too many classmates' plays to count.
31. Joey Arias singing "Kashmir" while surrounded by alien puppets in Arias With a Twist
32. Moving chairs between acts for The Lily's Revenge in exchange for seeing the show for free. Twice.
33. Hilarious musicals at Ars Nova: Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, Bloodsong of Love. Also, "rock star karaoke" on the Ars Nova stage. Also, the Ars Nova front of house staff is always so damn nice, have you noticed that?
34. The scene change in Soho Rep's Blasted. It may sound weird to single that out from such an exemplary production, but seriously, that scene change was baller.
35. Also, the scene change in Marie and Bruce by The New Group. Blondie FTW. (Again, magnificent production, but I'm a sucker for an excellently executed scene change.)
36. The stand-up routine at the beginning of Young Jean Lee's The Shipment
37. Crying during rehearsals for the Fringe production of Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story. Staying up until 3am with my cast after shows. The endless hugs.
38. The last five minutes of Vagabond Theatre Ensemble's The Wendy Complex
39. The first read-through I ever heard of Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap
40. Bradford Louryk's impeccable lip-syncing in Christine Jorgensen Reveals
41. Megan McQuillan in the Production Company's Meg's New Friend
42. Meeting Sarah Matteucci for the first time after she'd just performed in my short play "You'll Thank Me Later" (coming back this Saturday for just three bucks, by the way), having been a) unable to attend any rehearsals and b) totally blown away by her pitch-perfect performance. We mauled each other with hugs immediately upon meeting each other. And then again when we found out we'd be doing it this weekend.
43. Youngblood brunches
44. The Lisps' rock opera about math, Futurity
45. The elaborate entrance of Chad Deity in The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. Also the moment when they spit on the poster. Also that whole play.
46. Blue Man Group. I loved Blue Man Group and I don't care who knows it.
47. Discovering that the pianist onstage in Dear Harvey was a college student and activist who was there simply because he was so passionate about Harvey Milk. Watching him take a bow. The hug he gave me when I congratulated him after the show.
48. Andrew Garman in Bright New Boise. Actually that whole cast was pretty bangin.
49. Jan Maxwell in Wings at Second Stage
50. Drinking wine in the stairwell in front of the Looking Glass with the workshop cast of Ampersand, Act Two
51. The 59E59 bar
52. The bar at HERE
53. The sheer epic-ness of Balm in Gilead at T. Schreiber
54. Floating Kabarette at Galapagos Art Space
55. Seeing Glinda the Good Witch strip to "Magic Dance" at Friends of Dorothy: An Oz Cabaret, also at Galapagos
56. Hearing the gasps and giggles and tense silence of my audience at the first incarnation of "The Foreplay Play"...also at Galapagos.
57. NTUSA's so-wrong-it's-right Don Juan at The Chocolate Factory
58. The "Let's Ride Bareback" song from Camp Wanatachi at LaMaMa. Also the moment when the cheerleader proclaims, "I'M REALLY ANGRY!"
59. Purple Rep's first-ever fundraiser, "Sexed Up Stories." I don't know if any other evening has demonstrated the magic of storytelling for me in quite the same way.
60. The music at the almost-end of The Un-Marrying Project right before the play goes into the future
61. The gonna-blow-the-roof-off energy at the opening and closing nights The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret (both productions)
62. Kelly Miller's death scene in Rapscallion Theatre Collective's A Quiet End
63. The Normal Heart on Broadway. 'Nuff said.
64. Seeing Suzanne Vega live in Carson McCullers Talks About Love at Rattlestick. Her voice. My God.
65. August: Osage County. "I'M RUNNING THINGS NOW!"
66. Brian Miskell in Eightythree Down at Under St. Mark's
67. The sheer bigness of 13P's Monstrosity. The dinner scene. Two boys prowling a field of wounded bodies, shooting them in the head.
68. The cast's perfect magical chemistry in the second production of "The Foreplay Play," inspiring me to turn it from a 20-minute one-act into a full-length
69. New Dramatists holiday parties
70. The music of Pan Pan Theatre's Oedipus Loves You and The Crumb Trail at PS122
71. Every fucking performer in Justin Bond's Lustre at PS122
72. Linda the Chicken's burlesque-death in MilkMilkLemonade
73. Human Animals' production of Middlemen. The unrelenting attention to every line and total commitment by the two actors.
74. That moment in Ghosts in the Cottonwoods when Nick Lawson raps to save his brother's life
75. Production meetings for Ampersand at Yaffa Cafe
76. Carmen Herlihy's face at the end of Crooked at The Women's Project
77. The New Dramatists library

I encourage everyone to make a list like this. It taught me that I've actually witnessed a lot of transcendent, mind-rearranging, heart-stopping moments of theater in my time. I think my inner cynic may become a little quieter as a result of this list.

The ten-minute elephant in the room.

2011-10-11T01:12:00.001-04:00

I'm probably gonna piss some people off with this one, but I can't be the only one thinking this:

Does anyone look forward to SEEING ten-minute play festivals?

Is there anyone out there who, when you ask them what their favorite theatrical form is, responds, "Oh, ten-minute plays, no doubt"? Are there ten-minute play festival junkies out there who scout online listings and show up at every short play festival because they just love the form that much and have seen so many terrific ten-minute plays?

My guess is no. Here's the vibe I get: I think ten-minute festivals are generally done for the artists. We do them because they're easy-ish to do, the volume of artists involved makes them easy-ish to sell, and they bring a lot of people together in a fantastic networking opportunity. Company, playwrights, directors, and actors can all scope each other out, make friends, and make a mental note of who they'd like to work with in the future. And this is incredibly useful. I've met some amazing collaborators that way.

But theatre is, ostensibly, for the audience. And I have very rarely seen an audience at a ten-minute play festival that seemed happy to be there. From what I've seen, the audience is mostly composed of friends, who are there out of obligation and/or because they missed the last project their friend did. And if there's a voting component to the festival--"Vote for your favorite play/performer!"--there's even more of a sense of obligation. (Full disclosure: I have totally pulled the "please come to this festival because I need you to vote for my play" card. It was gross.)

This sense of obligation and dread is probably because most of the time, the plays are, frankly, not good. They're just not. I have judged for a shorts festival before, and the vast majority of the plays I read were not just mediocre, but awful. The plays that made it onstage really were among the best we received, and most of them were just decent, not excellent. "I didn't hate it" plays (direct quote).

Have I seen/participated in successful shorts festivals, where the work was top-notch and the audience was excited to be there? Yes.

Here's what united every single one of those more successful festivals: There was NOT an open submissions policy. They were curated.

In literally every instance where I've seen a shorts festival actually work (and this has not just been ten-minute festivals--I'm also shouting out the One-Minute Play Festival and FullStop Collective's Foreplays with this), writers were approached and asked to submit. There was no "send us your play" ad on playbill. Or, the writers all come from one specific community--ESPA students for the Detention series, Youngblood for their brunches. But the plays are NOT culled from hundreds of submissions in response to an online ad. They come from a known entity--a writer or community that the organizer(s) already knows.

As a playwright, this is supremely frustrating to me, because when festivals are curated, it means you have to know somebody in order to be involved. More nepotism! Nepotism bad!

However, I will say this: while I've seen my short plays go up as a result of responding to open submissions, where I didn't know the producing entity, in every one of those cases I still had to find my own director and actors, arrange my own rehearsal space/time, get my own props (or get the director to get them), etc, etc. I received zero exposure and zero support from the producing entities, and for the most part, the other plays in the evening were so bad that I didn't really want to invite anyone to the festival. Did I get something out of the experience? Yes: 1) I learned not to work with that producing entity again, and 2) I learned what it was like to work with those directors and actors, mostly in a this-was-fun-let's-do-this-again kind of way. Oh, and I got to add a credit to my resume. But after a certain point--after your first year or two out of school, after you're past the "need-to-replace-all-my-college-credits-with-professional-credits" stage--how useful is that, really?

So the respond-to-an-open-call-and-get-produced thing isn't so awesome, in my opinion. Even if the producing entity does hook you up with their own director and actors, that's not always a good thing, depending on their directors and actors. Frankly, nepotism seems preferable.

I don't want people to stop doing one-act festivals, especially because it is something you can do quick-and-dirty, and you can meet such wonderful people. But how do we make sure our festivals are actually an excellent evening of theater, and not just a networking/ticket-selling tool?

Do you disagree with me? Does your open-submission one-acts festival rock the house? (I've also never been to Humana, so maybe that's the exception that proves the rule.) Are you a ten-minute-play junkie? Hit me up in the comments.

Oh, and speaking of shorts festivals, shameless plug time: I have a play in the New York One-Minute Play Festival on October 16. So do Donald Margulies, Neil LaBute, David Henry Hwang, Tina Howe, Lisa Loomer, Kristoffer Diaz, Nilaja Sun, Lydia R. Diamond, Greg Kotis, Rachel Axler, Neena Beber, Jason Grote, Brooke Berman, David Cale, Sam Hunter, David Grimm, Michael Hollinger, Claire LaZebnik, Luanne Rice, Janine Nabers, Tommy Smith, Adam Szymkowicz, Maria Alexandra Beech, Joshua Conkel, Lloyd Suh, Bathsehba Doran, David Caudle, KJ Sanchez, Raul Castillo, Nick Jones, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, Mara Jebsen, Michael Mitnick, Chisa Hutchinson, J.C. Lee, Christine Evans, Liz Duffy Adams, Bekah Brunstetter, Cusi Cram, Kara Lee Corthron, Adam Gwon, Rajiv Joseph, Lila Rose Kaplan, Kait Kerrigan, Winter Miller, Julian Sheppard, Ken Urban, Daniel Talbott, Joshua Allen, Kate Tarker, Vanessa Shealy Younger, Micheline Auger, Marin Gazzaniga, Stacy O’Neill and Melissa Ross.

I've read a handful of the other plays in the evening, and I'm excited to see all (yes, all) the plays I read live. It's one day only, and all funds go to a cause very near and dear to my heart, ESPA, about which I've waxed poetic at length. Hope I see you there!

OK, < / shameless plug >. On with the discussion!

A Rap of "A Number"

2011-09-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

So, it's been six months since I've posted. I plan to write something a little more substantial soon, but for now, I decided to just post the rap version of Caryl Churchill's A Number that I wrote five years ago. If you've seen the play, this makes sense. If you haven't, you'll know the plot of the play after reading my rap. Enjoy!

So once there was this guy, his name was Salter
He married this chick, said "I do" at the altar
And Salter and the missus had a bundle of joy
His name was Bernard, a beautiful baby boy
But then Mrs. Salter wasn't feeling too hot
Always unhappy, bitched and moaned a lot
Till one day she just couldn't take the pain
Said "Sayonara," threw herself under a train
Well Salter and Bernard didn't take that too well
From then on their life was a living hell
'Cause Salter would get schnockered on whiskey and gin
While his baby boy was trying to reach out to him
Yo, Bernard would cry out in the middle of the night
But his Daddy never came, shout as he might
Till finally the two of them grew so far apart
(Both of them nursing a broken heart)
That Salter cleaned his dirty son up one day
Brought him to foster care and said, "Take him away"
But Salter didn't want to be living all alone
So instead of having a new kid, he made himself a clone
In size and shape and name, it was just like Bernard
But this time fatherhood wasn't quite so hard
'Cause Salter was nicer the second time around
Turned over a leaf, kept his feet on the ground
And Bernard Number Two grew up happy and strong
Till one day this cocky doctor came along
And said, "Oh, by the way, you're a clone of someone else
And there's nineteen more of you, so watch yourself"
Bernard and Salter were dismayed by these clones a-plenty
Instead of having one son, Salter now had twenty
And Bernard Number One came back into town
Seeking revenge for being jerked around
He didn't like the idea of a Second Bernard
Let alone nineteen others, the news hit him hard
So he set up a meeting with his new little brother
Shouted and yelled, he was a pretty scary mother
And Bernard Number Two was scared out of his mind
Ran away where he thought his clone never would find
But he was wrong, and the first son came to his door
Saw the untidy room, saw the books on the floor
And said, "Daddy loved you more and that makes me cry,
But it's all over now, bitch--get ready to die."
So he killed Bernard Two and then he killed Bernard One
Committed some suicide, like mother like son
And the father was left all alone once again
No one to eat blueberries with in his den
So he called up one of the other nineteen clones
And said, "Hey, let's have some dinner, 'cause I'm feeling all alone."
Now this clone's name was Michael Black
A professor of math, and that's a fact
And he came in and said, "Yeah, my life's pretty swell,
Sorry to hear both your sons are dead, but--oh well!
We share genes with lettuce, does that make you happy?
That's what I think about whenever life seems crappy."
So the father, seeking some sort of direction
Found that he and Mr. Black had no form of connection.
But what happened next, nobody can say,
For this, my friends, is the end of the play.

Learning as I go.

2011-03-23T13:27:00.001-04:00

Travis Bedard has said more than once that when it comes to social media, you can't get away with anything. At all. Ever. Yet I've gotten away with some things on this blog I didn't expect to get away with. I took Mamet to task (sort of). I've blogged about domestic abuse and confessed to being a former schoolyard bully. I expected some kind of backlash from most of these, and instead was mostly met with support and love and gratitude for speaking my mind.

Yet it was this post -- which was meant to be the most love-y, campfire-y, you-can-do-it-y post ever -- which has had unintended negative repercussions. Somehow, I managed to paint an institution that I adore (and which is responsible for me having met a number of amazing people, including the love of my life) in a negative light, all in just a teensy here's-the-context-for-these-emails-that-I'm-copy-and-pasting intro paragraph.

So let's talk about ESPA, where this discussion started.

I found ESPA (which wasn't called ESPA then) because I had responded to a playbill ad for script readers for Primary Stages. I was reading their scripts and developing a little sister-crush on Tessa LaNeve, and I saw that they were offering a class with Lucy Thurber. I'd taken a one-day workshop with Lucy at New Dramatists in which I'd produced a couple of pretty stunning pages, so I signed up.

Lucy rearranged my brain. I'd been rather enamored with myself as a writer since childhood, and she was the first teacher to say to me, "Yes, you're a very good writer, but what are they doing?" I was working on my Wizard of Oz adaptation (The Yellow Brick Road Trip, which I will finish one day), writing very poetic, pretty scenes in which not much was happening, and she was the first one to challenge me to do better than that. And starting with that class, I did.

A guy named Larry Kunofsky was in that class. He had a play up at the time called What to Do When You Hate All Your Friends. I saw it, and liked it, and liked him, and then class ended and he disappeared from my life.

From there, I went on to take a rewriting class with Julia Jordan, where I revamped a script called A Man of His Word. Julia helped me make it better, and more active, and sexier, and more dangerous, and both cleaner and dirtier. I had a damn good, well-attended reading of it at New Dramatists. My director for the reading was a member of LAByrinth and offered to submit it to LAB for me, which made me do a spit-take with glee.

Then there was the one-day workshop with Sarah Ruhl, where I had snot gushing from my nose the whole time and was pretty much miserable, but I ran into Larry Kunofsky and he emailed me after class and, long story short, we've been together for almost two years and are starting a theater company.

Then a class with Michelle Bossy. This time I decided to dig up my senior project from college, The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret, which had begun as a collectively-conceived ensemble piece but which I wanted to make my own. And with Michelle's guidance, that script became fucking fierce. In a "jam session" with fellow ESPA students, most of whom I didn't know, three young women named Miranda Wilson, Tess Paras, and Yolanda K. Wilkinson blew me away with their cold readings of the script. After class was over, I put together a reading, which a couple friends from the Rapscallion Theatre Collective attended, and they produced the show. Miranda, Tess, and Yolanda (which is now spelled Yeauxlanda) were in it and are still my friends. Most of my classmates from that class still come see my work, and Genderf*ck is about to receive its second production with Purple Rep in April.

Then another rewriting class, this time with Rogelio Martinez. I was working on my modern-lesbian-Romeo-and-Juliet-musical, and his notes were consistently insightful, smart, and helpful. Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story racked up 20 Looking Glass Forum Awards over the course of two workshops at the Looking Glass. At a friend's birthday party, Leta Tremblay, who'd seen both workshops, flat-out offered to produce it. We've submitted to Fringe and, even if they reject us, one way or another that sucker's getting produced.

And then there was Eddie Sanchez, who gets my work and gets me and gives feedback in a way that makes me not want to ever stop taking classes with him. I started work on Magic Trick, which is about a paraplegic girl who leaves her boyfriend and starts doing burlesque. After I finished the class with an incomplete script, I decided (aided by some pressure from fellow classmates) to come back for a second semester of Eddie, in which I am currently enrolled. Five (five!) classmates from the first class are repeating Eddie's class, by the way. And I'm still in touch with those who aren't: we share opportunities with each other, try to see plays together. One of them is in The Un-Marrying Project (which, if you don't know what that is, you should go here and come see it in April). And Magic Trick, when I finish it, is going to fucking rock.

And because I apparently don't want to ever get any sleep ever, I am taking another ESPA class concurrently with Eddie's class, Chris Burney and Don-Scott Cooper's "Marketing and Production for Playwrights," all while working full-time and trying to produce two plays at once. And the lack of sleep? Worth it. Our instructors are nothing if not supportive; they're helping us take real, concrete steps towards making ourselves as marketable and sexy as possible. We've met an agent who's downright dreamy, and we're having provocative conversations about our own personal self-marketing journeys. My classmates are smart and supportive, and I can't wait to get to know their work.

Which brings me to my most recent post: It was in the context of these provocative conversations that I noticed some frustration amongst my classmates. Not with the instructor or the class, but with the difficulty of "breaking in." It's a frustration I think every single playwright who is not Albee or Mamet shares. And as we talked about how to make the most of network-y, shmooze-y events, one classmate asked, "How do we find out about these events in the first place?" And that's where my most recent post was born.

In between the emails Larry and I sent, Chris Burney sent the following to the class. I omitted it in my last post for length, but this post has gone on long enough that a few more paragraphs are just going to be a drop in the bucket, and it's definitely worth sharing:

To all,

Thank you Larry for taking such care to write a thorough, thoughtful and eloquent response to the somewhat commercial notions of networking we discussed in class.

One of the things I said in class, and one of the things I firmly believe, is that there is no inherent reason to create theatre; there is no singular reason to create art. It only exists because we have a belief, a passion, an insistence that we have a story to tell and a belief to share. The moment we lose touch with this incessant need, I think we need to re-evaluate our work (and it is the moment many choose to leave “the business”). It is the vision we have for our work that both fuels our art—and also fuels interest in our art.

Every artist I know who excels at networking shares their unique point of view and passion. From observations, artists who have sustainable careers create a community—one that supports them as well as one they support. This is true of most industries—but it is essential in the arts.

Larry gives a lot of great resources to check—and I would reiterate that the most important thing to do is look, get out, meet as many people as you can. Find those networks that feel right to your life and your art. Of course, people who work in the arts are great resources—but also be sure to spread your network to all areas that interest you—you never know when you will meet someone who can have a positive impact on your life, your career or your art.

Have a great weekend—and try to meet a few new people!

Best,
Chris

So I guess this whole post is just to say:

I don't want one poorly-worded paragraph to negate three amazing years.

My scripts have gotten better and I've seen a fuck-ton of free shows, but more importantly, I have a community. This community comes to my plays, is sometimes IN my plays, writes me letters of recommendation so that other people do my plays, busts my balls until I take a class with them and write more plays, and hugs me a lot. I guess it's been a networking process, but it hasn't felt like that; it's felt like making friends. Which is, like I said, the best kind of networking.

It's not frustrating or frustrated, it's fucking awesome. And they throw a good party.

So there's some context for ya. I wouldn't take the time to write such an extensive post had ESPA not done right by me, time and time again. Like I said in the last post: when you like something someone does, tell them.

So ESPA, in case I haven't told you lately: thanks for the laughs. And if you're in New York (or not, as they now have online classes), take a class there. Who knows, you might walk out with a boyfriend.

Advice for playwrights: The Networking Beast.

2011-03-20T21:35:00.001-04:00

So my Purple Rep co-artistic director (and boyfriend), Larry Kunofsky, is taking a class with me at ESPA, entitled "Marketing and Production for Playwrights." After a somewhat frustrated class in which our instructor, Chris Burney of Second Stage, tried to school us on networking and a few people voiced that they didn't even know where to begin, Larry wrote this email to the class. I then wrote a response. I think they're worth sharing and have concrete, immediately actionable advice for New York-based playwrights who don't understand this networking thing. Enjoy.

To my colleagues in Chris & Don-Scott’s Class,

Hi, everyone. I’m a little self-conscious about how often I shoot off my big mouth in class, but I humbly suggest that since I’m learning a lot as I go along with plans for Purple Rep, I have some ideas about networking that some of you might find useful. I hope that this note begins a dialogue with and for everyone in the class, and I have no doubt that I can learn a lot from all of you, as well, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of this.

Firstly, I just want to say, as the guy who introduced himself as the Networking Whore on the first day of class, that a deeper truth about my journey in networking is that I love the theatre and I particularly love independent theatre, and so it’s been one of the joys of my life to interact with the talented and intrepid community that makes up Off-Off-Broadway theatre. If I were just some soulless shill hawking my wares, I might still be getting comps, I might still be getting invitations to parties, but I wouldn’t be making real and long-lasting personal and professional connections. But I have been. Seriously, when I first started writing plays, all my friends were non-theatre-goers, who only went to the theatre to see my plays. I thought that this was righteous, since I was introducing the uninitiated to theatre, but now, along with my non-theatre-peeps, I have a really good group of theatre friends, and we all support each other’s work. End even if it sounds like a cliché, this really is a sustainable community.

I think that the two reasons why I feel comfortable going to a party thrown by fancy(-ish) theatre people where everyone in the room is much, MUCH cooler than I am, and shaking everyone’s hand, looking everyone in the eye, and walking home only after having made real connections, is 1) because the people in this community are really, really cool; they are very generous with their resources and information, and want you to succeed along with them, and are EXTREMELY grateful for your interest in their work, and 2) you can’t fake sincerity, integrity, and enthusiasm, and if you possess a modicum of these traits (and everyone in the room does, of course), others will see it in you.

Taking classes at ESPA is a great step towards connecting with a larger community. I met Mariah in a Playwriting Workshop taught by Lucy Thurber. That was just an amazing experience in all kinds of way. I took a TV writing workshop taught by Blair Singer that not only got me on the path of writing pilots, partnering up with a fellow classmate to go to LA and pitch for a while, but also kind of shamed me into getting on Facebook and stop being a misanthrope. And ESPA always has comps to lots of shows.

But a number of people in our class have asked how to get invited to the events where the theatrefolk are hobnobbing, and I’d like to state yet again how vital the independent theatre community is in NYC. The Amoralists, who were referenced a number of times in class, are buddies of mine. I’m also in with companies such as Packawallop, Flux Theatre Ensemble, Nosedive, and Rising Phoenix Rep. If you’re interested in becoming more connected to theatre events and their participants, Facebook all these companies, go to their websites, check out their shows, get on their mailing lists, and contact them directly, introduce yourselves to them (if you’d like, feel free to use my name), and, if you can, volunteer for them – hand out programs or take tickets at their shows. Indy companies need cheap labor and if you provide that for them, you are officially their friends. Also, if you see work that truly means something to you, tell everyone you know about it and be very vocal about doing so (so that you help spread the word, and that the people whose word you’re spreading know that it’s you who’s spreading it), and, if possible, throw an indie company a tax-deductible donation. I promise you that this goes a long way in helping the future of theatre in America, and in establishing good faith between yourself and a larger community.

Perhaps this all sounds obvious, but I went from someone who worked in the theatre but whose life was elsewhere, to having a genuine life in the theatre. It seems that most of my fellow classmates have made quite an impact in their careers as playwrights, but if you’re finding all of this a bit daunting, I can assure you: if someone as socially awkward as I am can talk to intelligent, attractive people and get them interested in my work, so can anyone. Talent, the quality of one's work, and goodwill rise above everything else, but if one is talented and genuine about all of this, that's even a further imperative for self-promotion.

I hope that we can all check in with each other about more direct and specific ways to expand our communities and to ultimately combine them. I also look forward to helping all of you move the next time you find a better apartment.

Best,

Larry Kunofsky
Co-Artistic Director
PURPLE REP

www.purplerep.com

My response (edited somewhat for online):

Thanks to my brilliant (and handsome) co-artistic director for starting and continuing this great conversation. I just want to throw a few more tidbits/ ideas/ tips into the pot:

My experience is that the best networking is just as simple as making friends. You often don't know how a relationship will pan out when you initiate it, but people will remember that they had fun with you or that you were kind to them.

So if you like someone's work, TELL THEM. No matter how fancy/unapproachable you think they are. They'll be flattered and, quite often (in my experience), will want to know about you: how'd you hear about their work, what are you working on, etc. And stick around after shows--often, the cast/creatives will all be going to the same bar together, and want friendly, like-minded people to join them. So join them.

Example: Larry mentioned that we are friends with the Amoralists. How did we get that way? Facebook. It just took a "Happy Birthday, your work is awesome" message to break the ice (and to discover that they were fans of Larry's, as well). Soon we had a discount code to their show and were drinking with them afterward. They love meeting new people, and they have a show up right now, called BRING US THE HEAD OF YOUR DAUGHTER. See it and hang out with them after. You can say we sent you.

And when you do favors for people, they usually know that they owe you one. So help people out, unsolicited. Tell people about opportunities that you think they could take advantage of. Connect people that you think should be working together. Spread the word about a good show. It WILL pay off.

Larry also mentioned Rising Phoenix Rep, who you should DEFINITELY reach out to. Their Cino nights (more info on them is here) are some of the most gorgeous, energized evenings of theater you'll attend--and are completely FREE. And people are there to hang out and have fun. We've made lots of friends at those. Not to mention that Daniel Talbott is one of the most generous people in the theater business I've ever met, and is also an ESPA instructor. He loves people and loves helping a brother/sister out in his (admittedly skimpy) spare time. Facebook him.

Also, anecdotally: facebook is super important, but twitter is no slouch, if you use it well. Artistic directors in Austin, San Francisco, Chicago, and Florida have all read my script because of twitter, and one of them is planning to produce it. None of these people would have read my script had I sent it unsolicited--they read it because we were already having engaging conversations about the current state of theater (and, sometimes about things TOTALLY unrelated to theater--as frivolous as it may seem, posting a funny YouTube video online can endear you to total strangers). Introduce yourself, get in on the conversation, make a few jokes, and this will be more valuable (and more fun) than the best-written cover letter you could have sent cold.

There's a subculture/ongoing conversation on twitter that is mainly responsible for the social and professional connections I've made there: #2amt (or, "2am theatre"). It would take up too much space to explain what exactly it is, so here's an explanation of what it is and how it came to be. The conversation has continued for over a year now, and has spawned a blog (to which I contribute sometime) and, now, a meetup with the American Theatre Wing and the Public. Here is the info about the meetup. It's tomorrow at 11am. People will be there specifically to mingle. Don't be scurred. (ETA: The meetup has passed, but it was awesome and you should reach out to the #2amt community to express your regret at missing it and connect with the people who were there.)

And if you haven't seen it, Adam Szymkowicz's blog is full of great advice from fellow playwrights--and, you should contact Adam and ask him to interview you on the blog. I know asking someone to interview you may seem like an imposition, but trust me, he wants to hear from you. It's got a huge readership (my interview on there is the first hit when you google "Mariah MacCarthy"), and he's always looking for new people to interview (especially women).

Also, do you know about The 15th Floor yet, which was started by the last group of people who took this class? If not, you should. Go to the website, read up more about them, and go to Judith's reading of THE COOKIE FIGHT on Tuesday.

Larry also mentioned Flux. They have all kinds of readings/programs that are free and to which you can invite yourself. Gus, the artistic director, is warm and lovely. Facebook him too.

The Tank has a program called SLAM, where playwrights bring in 5 minutes of a new play to workshop and compete (in a fun, good-natured kinda way). Bring an excerpt of your play or just show up to watch. It's fun and it's cheap and low-key, and people are there to network and drink.

This should give you a start.

Most of all, remember that you are not alone! Everyone else is trying to network, just like you, and most of us secretly feel awkward about it. But networking needn't be corporate, or insincere, or icky. Often, it's just partygoing and friend-making--both of which are, actually, usually quite nice.

Love,

Mariah MacCarthy

Co-Artistic Director
PURPLE REP
www.purplerep.com

All Grown Up: Thoughts on BLACK SWAN (warning: spoiler alerts)

2011-02-02T23:09:00.000-05:00

Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is the sort of movie I would have worshipped—worshipped—at the age of fourteen. For many reasons:

-It’s about a daughter’s relationship with an overprotective mother who won’t let her grow up.

-It’s about a perfectionist, which I most certainly was at fourteen.

-It’s got girl-on-girl action.

-It’s about becoming a better artist through discovering and owning one’s sexual prowess.

-She thinks she turns into a fucking swan. To a fourteen-year-old, that’s totally dark and original and badass.

-She dies in the act of achieving her full potential. To a fourteen-year-old, that’s romantic and hardcore.

-She’s a ballerina. Until the age of twelve, I was a ballerina. RELATABLE!

-It’s about embracing your dark side. BADASS! HARDCORE!

-It’s a movie where having and acting on desires makes bad things happen. To a fourteen-year-old, this is how the world works, or how we think we’re supposed to think the world works.

-Natalie Portman is talented.

-I wrote a story at age fourteen about a girl who was saving herself for her boyfriend but then her evil slutty alter-ego takes over one night and gets drunk and has sex and gets a tattoo. I think you can make the connection yourself if you've seen the film.

However, that was nearly half my lifetime ago, and now I find Black Swan obnoxious, trite, a little offensive, and an overall shame, because it’s a movie with potential. For the following reasons:

-Having desires doesn’t make bad things happen. Having and acting on desires makes the world go round. And achieving your potential usually doesn’t kill you no matter how repressed you are. There was no reason for that ending. It was tragedy for tragedy's sake. And that is annoying.

-The girl-on-girl action is actually kinda meh. It’s perfectly inoffensive, it’s mildly hot, but it was like porn without the porn: the girl climaxes in 15 seconds but we don't see anything.

-If I watched Natalie Portman’s skin ripple with the feathers-under-the-skin effect one more time, I was going to throw something at the screen. Aronofsky overused that effect the way the Matrix sequels overused slow-mo.

-You cannot dance ballet with a shard of glass in your stomach. You just can’t. If your core strength is compromised as a ballerina, you’re up shit creek without a paddle. It’s just not possible. Sorry.

-Also, ballet dancers don’t practice with their hair down, no matter how sexually liberated they are. ‘Cause then you can’t SEE. Dumbass. (And if you have a ginormous tattoo on your back, you will probably not get work at a Big Fancy Company. This may sound nitpicky but it annoyed the crap out of me.)

-If I heard that sexually predatory choreographer fire the same fucking notes at Natalie Portman one more time (give in to ze passion!), I was going to magically transport through the screen and fart on his face.

-Most of all, it had such an uncreative idea about what "Sexual People" act like. Sexual men molest anything with a vagina and are French and aggressive. Sexual women have tattoos and wear black and eyeliner and eat cheeseburgers instead of salads to show what sensual beings they are.

Lame, Aronofsky. I loved Requiem for a Dream. I heard great things about The Wrestler. But this was lame.

Victim?

2011-01-02T17:39:00.000-05:00

I've got a lot of blog posts in "drafts" right now.

One is just a subject line: "I think..." which was going to be about the tendency to constantly second-guess oneself while speaking (somewhat along the lines of this brilliant poem). Specifically, how/when/why women - yours truly included - do this, and why, and where's the line between acknowledging that you're not an expert on what you're talking about/open to suggestion/offering an opinion that you've formed half a second ago and are not really attached to, and just sounding like a self-doubting ninny?

One is called "Getting Better, Part 2," which is an "It Gets Better" message for date rape survivors (especially in light of Samantha Kelley killing herself).

And one is entitled "My 'Crossing the Street to Avoid You' Manifesto," which proudly and unapologetically asserts my right to cross the street to avoid a guy if I feel jumpy or unsafe or for no reason at all.

I haven't posted any of these for various reasons: chickening out, lack of time, not wanting to spoil the holiday season, whatever, whatever. So why am I talking about them now instead of finishing and publishing them?

Well, because they all sort of came to a head with a conversation I had after watching Young Jean Lee's Untitled Feminist Multimedia Technology Show. Toward the end of the piece, one actor says to the audience, "If patriarchy is everywhere, what do I do about it? How do I live my life?" A few people in the audience resented and/or challenged the assertion that patriarchy is everywhere, and I continued the conversation with my boyfriend later that night. "I mean, do YOU feel like a victim of patriarchy?" he asked me, sometime around 3 in the morning.

Just hearing the question made my stomach jump a little bit and made my eyes a little wet, but I tried to blink this back. "What do you mean by 'victim'?" I said. "I mean, it affects me every day."

"Well, sure, but are you crippled by it?" he said.

The jumpy-stomach and wet-eyes feelings got a little stronger. "You know what, I think this is a bigger conversation than I have the time or energy for at 3am..." And then I was crying. Full-on weeping. And finally I said, "Yeah, I do feel like a fucking victim sometimes."

Aside: the word "victim" is anathema to me, and to many feminists. I almost religiously prefer the word "survivor," to the point that I once accidentally called Anne Frank a "Holocaust survivor." It's always date rape SURVIVOR, hate crime SURVIVOR (unless, of course, the person didn't survive it). Self-identifying as a "victim" has a tendency to move nothing forward except self-pity, and thus I have a very well-practiced habit of avoiding the word.

My identity as a strong, sassy, independent woman is also incredibly important to me, and this is the identity that, at any given moment of the day, I am probably trying to project, with varying degrees of success depending on the situation and my mood. And I have no interest in compromising this identity.

But what I said in tears at 3am was true. Is true. It's totally cliche and perhaps obnoxious to say, but it's honest: I feel like a victim of patriarchy.

My boyfriend was surprised to hear this, as he is most familiar with my strength and sass, my ambition, my anger, my sometimes dickheaded sense of humor. The idea that I would self-identify as a victim blew his mind a little bit. So he asked me to explain further. This is as much as I can remember of what I said to him, with some additions:

It's the seven guys who catcalled me in one thirty-minute walk from Hell's Kitchen to Chelsea.
It's the guy at the bagel store who always jokes with me and pretends he's getting my order wrong--I say "not toasted" and he says "OK, extra-toasted" with a smile--and I'm torn between feeling amused, and feeling creeped out because he's flirting with me, and feeling guilty about feeling creeped out because he's "just being nice."
It's the colleague who made a drunken comment about my tits over a year ago, and now I can't ever have a comfortable conversation with him, and I distrust any nice thing he says or does.
It's not just the catcalling, but the muttering, the under-the-breath "hey how you doing?" from some guy on a corner that's meant only for my ears and which makes my heart jump into my throat--or the guy who's just trying to get past me on a dark sidewalk and quietly says "excuse me" and I yelp from being startled so badly.
It's never knowing the line between friendly and predatory--especially when this line is different for every person. And thank God I'm not single anymore, because trying to feel all this shit out AND trying to get laid by someone who's not a scumbag? Fuhgeddaboudit.
It's the constant, constant search for some way to interact one-on-one with straight men in a fun way that doesn't involve either sexualizing myself/the conversation, or trying to act like "one of the boys" by jokingly insulting them.
It's the feeling of doom I get in my stomach whenever I hear some new statistic about how few female playwrights are getting produced, and the inordinate amount of significance I place on the success of women like Sarah Ruhl and Annie Baker--and, again, my guilt about feeling that sense of doom because I'm an independent woman, damnit! Fuck the statistics, I'm gonna win the Pulitzer and any doubt in my ability to do so is weak and unacceptable for a strong sassy bitch like me!
It's hearing intelligent people whom I respect trying to downplay the significance/existence of Julian Assange's sexual "misconduct," or Roman Polanski's. It's the constant fight against the perception that sexual assault is something that only sexual deviants and crazies do. It's the feeling that these people are telling ME that I've never been sexually assaulted, or that it didn't matter.
It's the constant struggle with how much of my body to show off. I love my body, I see no reason to cover it, no reason not to wear a tight or short or low-cut dress if I love how it looks. Yet almost every time I do so, I regret it because I'm bombarded with disgusting comments.
It's struggling to find the line in myself between politeness and flirtation. If I smile big and make constant eye contact and joke around with the host at the restaurant in order to improve my chances of getting a table sooner, there's nothing wrong with that, yet I often find myself feeling as though I've flashed him or something.
It's struggling with ordinary conversation: juggling my desire to feel more knowledgeable/certain than I am with my fear of making people uncomfortable with my knowledge/certainty with my fear of being found out as not being that knowledgeable/certain with my desire to express my opinions with my desire not to offend with my desire to be open-minded and fair with my desire to stab some people in the face. And so on.
It's no one big thing, but millions of little things, every single day, and they build up and build up and build up and mostly I deal with them EXTREMELY well, but then sometimes I end up sobbing at 3am.

It's all that, and more.

And I know that not all men perpetuate these things. But I also know that I can't be the only one feeling all this. So I thought I'd share it, 'cause hey, solidarity and all that shit.

I stand by using the word "victim" because "survivor" implies that one has already survived the event, that the offending incident is in the past. And I have not survived patriarchy. I am experiencing it every day. And its invisibility, and the feminist notion that I should be above it all and not let this bullshit bring me down, just adds to it and complicates it. I'm survivING patriarchy, but not a survivor.

I also struggle to share this because I believe in being the "nice feminist." It's in the URL, after all. I oppose vilifying men as a group, and believe very strongly that one must look at the whole picture in order to get anywhere.

But this is a part of the picture that I keep ignoring, for fear of violating the image of Mariah MacCarthy as Strong Sassy Wonder Woman. And it needs to be acknowledged. So here it is.

Anyone else feel a little victim-y sometimes?

Play Development: Necessary Evil? Necessary? Evil?

2010-12-01T00:52:00.000-05:00

Hi friends - check out my latest blog for 2amtheatre, with lots of questions about the play development process, literary departments, and how we may or may not be chopping the balls off the Collective American Theater...enjoy! (Some great insights in the comments, too!)

Getting better?

2010-11-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

OK, confession time, everyone. First of all, I LOVE the "It Gets Better" project. I LOVE that so many people wore purple on October 20th. I LOVE the increased attention to The Trevor Project. And I thought of uploading an "It Gets Better" video myself.

But then after talking a little bit about bullies and bullying, I realized I felt a bit hypocritical about it. Because I was a bit of a bully once, too.

Not a lot. I was not someone that anyone would be scared of. I was not physically strong. I did not look for fights. But I can remember at least two times that I bullied other kids.

The first time I can remember, I grabbed a girl by her collar and shook her violently. I don't remember why. I was in third grade. I do recall a few things about this girl: first of all, she was unhealthily obsessed with sex for a third-grader, and would jokingly say that she'd seen other kids having sex. Like, ALL THE TIME. Second of all, you always knew whether or not she was happy with you because you always knew whether you were invited to her birthday party. If you pissed her off, she'd say, "You're not invited to my birthday party." Then when you were on her good side again, she'd say, "Mariah, you can come to my birthday party."

Anyway. As I said, don't remember why I was mad, why I shook her - though I guarantee it wasn't because I thought she was gay. But I do remember how I got out of trouble: when a teacher questioned me, I said, "Well, I thought you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and I like it when people do that to me." I mean, what a transparently bullshit excuse, right? But as I recall, I didn't get in trouble. I'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that I was a good student, and I was a girl.

Flash forward to fifth grade. This time, I kicked a sixth-grade boy in the nuts. His name was Tyler. A few kids made comments about his effeminacy behind his back, but in my memory he wasn't tormented about it a great deal. I could be wrong about that. Anyway, a comment I'd gotten repeatedly throughout my life was, "You look so much like your brother," a comment which infuriated me because how DARE anyone say I look like a BOY? And, of course, sometimes when another kid found out how much this annoyed me, they'd say it just to piss me off. Tyler was one such kid. One day, when he'd said "you look just like your brother" just one too many times, I hauled off and kicked him in the crotch. And he doubled over crying.

The teacher saw him crying and came over. "What's going on here?"

Tyler, crying: "She kicked me in the balls."

Teacher, to me: "Why did you do that?"

Me: "Because he kept saying I look like my brother."

Teacher, to Tyler: "Well, you know, sometimes words can hurt more than actions." And to my memory, she walked away and I got off scot-free. (I also decided to tell my father this story in the car later, and, again, did not get into trouble.)

This teacher in particular was enamored of my writing and math skills, though this wasn't unusual because for much of my life I was something of a perpetual teacher's pet. So again, my two hypotheses from the collar-shaking incident apply here: I think I got off the hook because I was a good student, and because I was a girl. Oddly enough, I got in much more trouble for straddling a girl on the swing set, or for a false rumor that I'd been masurbating in class (I hadn't, but whatevs), or for doing a striptease on the playground down to my leotard and tights from dance class, than I ever did for hurting fellow students.

(By the way, Tiffany and Tyler, if you're out there, if you see this: I'm sorry. I truly am.)

I didn't come out to myself as bisexual until my senior year of high school, for a number of reasons: Catholic guilt, internalized homophobia due to hearing "that's so gay" about 1038249632478 times, and so on. Once I came out to myself, I was so close to graduation that I kept my news to a few close friends, so I escaped any bullying or harassment at the time. (Incidentally, a number of people who were not out in high school have since come out on facebook. I think the environment trained us to wait.)

I then went on to a liberal arts college, where I also went on to revise my self-definition to "pansexual" or just "queer," and where most people were completely unphased by the idea of two people of the same gender getting it on. I was pretty much unharassed; for the most part, the one annoyance (which I still get to this day) is when people would ask, "So, do you like girls or guys more?" or express disbelief that bisexuality even existed. (Also, when I shaved my head on a whim, apparently some people thought I did it "because she's a lesbian," which baffles me to this day.)

The one time I did feel harassed at college was when I took a female date to a formal dance. We were dancing very close, and some jagoff in a tie and a baseball cap (beer in hand) approached us and said, "Kiss."

"No," we said.

"No?" he replied.

"Not for you," we said. And he went away.

Still, even that wasn't that bad. It pissed me off, but I didn't feel unsafe. The times when I've felt unsafe as a result of expressing the not-straight parts of my sexual orientation have all come since graduation from college. Getting catcalled or getting comments when I show affection to a woman in public, even if nothing sexual is actually going on (I got some comments for just scratching a friend's back on the subway), has mostly been a part of my adult life.

So I've made the reverse journey from a lot of my LGBTQI siblings. I've gone from a sometimes bully to the sometimes bullied. I've gone from a position of incredible privilege - the teacher's pet who can do no wrong - to one of...well, still incredible privilege. Because I have a boyfriend and the only people whose gaydar I seem to tickle are often gay themselves, I go about my life mostly passing as straight. When I don't, though, strangers - men - sometimes comment. Sometimes approach me and the person I'm with. Sometimes make me wonder if I'm going to have to call the police.

Then again, I've gotten harassed much more often for simply being female than for my perceived sexual orientation. And that has been a constant throughout my life. If I'm out after dark, I always feel unsafe as a rule. But that is another blog post entirely.

The point is: I was never bullied or harassed as a kid, not really. Now, sometimes, I am. And after reading this phenomenal essay about two trans people's experience with things really NOT having gotten that much better, I can't shake the thought that "it gets better" isn't always true. In no way do I question the "It Gets Better" project's value - anything that gives people hope and keeps them from killing themselves is a great thing in my book. But things do not always, in fact, improve. There is harassment at the workplace. There are hate crimes against grown people. We should take schoolyard bullies to task and give bullied kids hope, but we should take the grown-up bullies to task, too.

(Also: we seem to have an image in our head of bullies as being male, hateful, and unable to be anything other than a bully - I've heard more than one person say that there's no changing bullies. I hope my stories about my own bullying can change that perception. If someone had simply disciplined me for hurting my classmates, I would have felt ashamed and never done it again. But nobody did so. I only did it twice, but what if I'd gotten a taste for it? Kept going, because I knew no one would stop me? The bullying I did called for greater vigilance than was shown. And that should concern us all.)

As far as "it gets better," though, I will say this: I've been through rough times. Not as a result of bullying, but still plenty rough. I've literally not known whether I'd survive those times. And I did survive. Maybe I'll make a video about that. When I feel braver.

For now, I'll just say that I'm pretty damn happy these days. Consistently. I'm full of hope, I laugh a lot, I feel creatively fulfilled. I spend lots of time with really lovely people, but I'm content to be alone too. I fell in love. I learned what I needed to do for myself in order to be consistently creating. I found good situations for myself and stuck with them. None of this seemed possible when I was grieving or heartbroken or traumatized, but it WAS possible, because it has happened.

It gets better.

Let's talk about sex, baby...

2010-10-19T10:57:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure has happened to every playwright since the dawn of time, it's quite often that I'm out and about and am introduced to someone who finds out that I'm a playwright, and they ask me, "Oh, what kind of plays do you write?"

It's by no means a bad question, and I understand that it's asked in an effort to get to know the playwright's work, but I have yet to meet a playwright who enjoys being asked that question (if you do, please chime in). Yes, it's an opportunity for self-promotion, but I think that's precisely why it stresses us all out so much.

Usually, in that situation, I stammer a bit about writing plays that have something to do with genderqueerness or gayness or re-imagining familiar stories - all of which is true but, of course, incredibly incomplete - and then I am often asked, "So, are they comedies? Tragedies?" which I also never know how to answer, seeing as the saddest of my material tends to get the biggest laughs.

After being asked this question enough times, I've thought of what I'd LIKE to say, but have not yet said for fear of people thinking I am flippant, or immature, or promiscuous, or just trying to be provocative, or fill-in-the-blank. But this is the truest, most complete answer I can think of, and I can elaborate on it more here than I usually can in conversation, so here it is:

I write plays about sex.

I write about sex because when you write about sex, you're writing about vulnerability. You're writing about power. You're writing about people at their most joyful and most anguished. Writing about sex creates the conflict for you: the fear that the sex, and therefore the accompanying comfort or joy or love or acceptance or distraction, will go away. Or the fear that it may never come.

I write about sex because it is nearly universal. Because most people who will see or read my plays will have had, wanted, and/or thought about some form of sex, perhaps extensively.

I write about sex because it is so funny, yet we take it life-and-death seriously.

I write about sex because whenever sex becomes a possibility, so does heartbreak.

I write about sex because when you write about sex, you're writing about gender: how you're allowed to express your gender in pursuit of, or in the having of, that sex. And I write about gay people because they, more than anyone else, have at some point been told they were wrong for wanting the sex they want. (I also joke sometimes that I'm 25% gay, but that's another blog post.)

I don't write only about sex, but sex has been an element in nearly every play I've written so far. I write about sex, but I rarely write sex: there's only one literal sex scene onstage thus far in my work, which is not sexy at all, it's actually a bit scary since it's not totally consensual. I don't write sex because sex isn't sexy enough; the wanting of it, the pursuit of it, the leading up to it, is infinitely more interesting to me.

I know that writing about sex hardly makes me unique, but I also know that I write about sex in a different way than, say, Adam Rapp, or Sarah Kane, or Pinter. I write about sex as a goofy twentysomething feminist/gender activist woman who places a high value on playfulness and compassion.

Also, I think the fact that I'm able to get so much mileage out of writing about sex reveals just how broken our cultural attitude about sex is, or can be. We put it on a pedestal and then guilt trip ourselves about doing so; we equate it with love or self-worth, then are confused when it doesn't give us either of those things. All of which makes for juicy, meaty, delicious subject matter for yours truly to yoink.

As for whether I write comedies or tragedies, well, writing about sex opens you up to quite a bit of both. It took me a few years to accept that my work got laughs, because I was trying to be "artsy" and "deep," which is also another blog post, but for now let's just say I rejoice at the laughter.

So: to answer your question, imaginary party guest, those are the kinds of plays I write. I'd love to send you one.

Anyone else have an answer to that question they've been suppressing?

Love the Way You Lie: some thoughts.

2010-10-15T17:08:00.000-04:00

For those of you who haven't seen it (or need a refresher course): Eminem's single featuring Rihanna, "Love the Way You Lie."

I realize I'm a bit late in responding to this video, as it came out a couple months ago. This is partially because the first time I watched it, I was bawling so hard I couldn't breathe, and to write about it would mean having to watch it again. Heck, I can't even hear the song in a restaurant or bar without either tearing up or just getting the hell out of dodge, and so I resent the fact that it's such a popular single and that I have to hear a song about domestic abuse when I'm just trying to get a bagel.

In other words, the song has done its job.

I found myself thinking of this video because one of my favorite bloggers, Tom Matlack, waxed poetic a few weeks ago about how Eminem sounds like "raw unfiltered manhood" to him.

Now, Tom: I love you. I love your HuffPo posts (HuffPosts?). I love The Good Men Project (seriously, everyone, check out Good Men Project). But when I hear Eminem, I hear (along with UNBELIEVABLE talent and occasional humor) hate and rage. That's why the song is so effective. Perhaps what you're trying to tell me, by equating Eminem's hate and rage with "manhood," is that every man is suppressing hate and rage. Sure, that's probably true - most of us are suppressing hate and rage, but I don't know very many women who would express it the way Eminem expresses it (then again I don't know very many men who would either). So, OK. But you go on to celebrate how "Eminem's opus is about the fundamental disconnect between a man and a woman: about the way we lie to each other."

Is it? Really? Because in "Love the Way You Lie," as you so eloquently point out, the lie is that "this time will be different" when it comes to beating up your girlfriend. Is that really fundamental? I'm personally skeptical of any claim of a "fundamental disconnect" between men and women, as that assumes that there is some "essence" of men and some "essence" of women that are at odds with each other and that lead to some universal disconnect. Frankly, I think that's bullshit, and that most of our disconnects are socialized. But, let's assume for the sake of argument that there is such thing as a fundamental disconnect between a man and a woman. Is it really outlined in this song? Are all men and women in coupledom together going through some version of this relationship?

My guess is no. But, the song also wouldn't affect me so deeply if I couldn't relate to it somehow. No, I've never been in a domestic abuse situation. But I think most of us know what it's like to promise, or have someone else promise, to change. And then not change. Or not change enough. Not even a lover, necessarily - friends, family members, colleagues. I think most of us know what it's like for things to get better and then worse. I think most of us know what it's like to get mad and act on it, and to have someone get mad right back. I'm pretty sure that's universal. Most of my plays have at least one moment of violence, often more. I once had a teacher ask me after reading one of these scenes, "Do you want to hit people?" Yes, I responded - doesn't everyone?

So perhaps there is some universality here. Some fundamental something. Just not in the way that Tom meant it.

Some people have accused the video of glorifying domestic abuse. What's glorified about it? Because it shows that people in abusive relationships have sex? Because it acknowledges that abusers do something besides abuse? Because the people in the relationship are good-looking and well-lit? Please. If that's "glorifying," then any honest discussion of domestic violence will "glorify" it to a degree, because the very problem is that abusers don't act like abusers 24/7 - they have good days like anyone else, which from what I understand is often the whole draw for their partners sticking through the abuse in the first place. Perhaps I can't comment, not having been in an abusive relationship, but I will forever be haunted by the words of a domestic violence shelter worker who came and spoke to the cast of "The Vagina Monologues" the year I performed in it. She said (and I paraphrase), "The most common reason women in abusive relationships don't leave their abusers is, quite frankly, because they love them. And yeah, it gets bad sometimes, but it gets better eventually so they just wait it out until it does." Which is an attitude that many people who are NOT in abusive relationships take every day - just not taken to that extreme.

The most important thing is to discourage domestic violence. If this video in any way counteracts that, then yes, we should be concerned. But I'm not so sure that's the case. After watching this video for the first time, sobbing uncontrollably, I didn't feel turned on or excited by the sexuality. I felt terror, rage, "oh fuck it happened again." That's not a sexy feeling. It's awful.

What do people think? Does it glorify? Is it pure raw manhood? Something else?

In defense of dance breaks

2010-10-06T10:07:00.000-04:00

Hey, go check out my 2amtheatre.com blog about how theatre needs more dance breaks!

Oh, and if you're not doing anything tonight, you should definitely come to this, because I have a play in it that pretends gay marriage is legal in New York. "Telephone" and trans men are involved. COME!

Microcrisis

2010-10-04T23:18:00.000-04:00

Sorry to, again, drop off the face of the earth. It's been a crazy few weeks.

We interrupt this silence to bring you Michael Lew's Microcrisis, presented by Ma-Yi Theater Company and playing at HERE Arts Center through October 23rd. Full disclosure: I used to work for Ma-Yi. Also, Mike Lew was my intern supervisor when I was a minion for New Dramatists. So I was a bit nervous heading into the show, thinking (as I know we all often do), "Ah, crap. I really like all these people. What if all these people I like put up a lame show that I'm gonna have to pretend to enjoy?"

I should have known better. I'm pleased to report that no pretending is necessary. Mike Lew has given me the laugh that I haven't had at The Theatah in quite a while, and desperately needed. Microcrisis is not only timely, cynical, and well-executed; it's freakin hilarious.

The concept of the show is easy enough to explain: "A gut-busting look at what happens when scheming Wall Street bankers use the Nobel-prize winning concept of Microcredit to ravage the world economy" (stolen directly from Ma-Yi's website). In other words, it's like the current financial crisis, but with microcredit instead of mortgages. This sounds depressing - and it is - but getting depressed was never so much fun.

First of all: the cast. Alfredo Narciso is all cool sleaze as Bennett, the greedy "man behind the curtain", and Lauren Hines and David Gelles are all youthful-innocence-turned-Zuckerbergesque-greed as the clueless kids that Bennett snookers; but two actors in particular are gonna get some gushing from me. William Jackson Harper inhabits his multiple roles with magnificent comic timing, especially as a African microcredit borrower who gleefully ends everything with "THIS IS A JOKE!" And then there's Jackie Chung. Dear God. JACKIE CHUNG. I think in the world of comic actresses, Jackie Chung might be New York's best-kept secret, and I hope that's about to change, because (with much love to the other actors) she steals the show. I mean this as the highest of compliments, but one of her best turns is as a computer-automated voice. If she can rock that as hard as she does, I look forward to seeing what else she can rock in the future. (The last member of the ensemble, Socorro Santiago, while always easy to watch, is sadly underused.)

Secondly: the script. Mike Lew is a hysterical mofo. So hysterical that I hesitate to tell you any of my favorite moments for fear that I will spoil them for you. I will say that this is NOT realism, and that this is awesome, because I think even a pseudo-realistic approach to a financial crisis right now would make us all go home and cry. But while the play is clearly stylized, the situation seems all too possible. Not hard to imagine at all. Which makes it scary and unsettling as opposed to merely hilarious. Which is also nice.

Thirdly: the direction, and accompanying accouterments. Director Ralph Pena, where possible, has maintained a snaptastic pace; where not possible - like, say, where costume changes are necessary - he rolls with it, incorporating awesome things like dance breaks (choreographed by Dax Valdes). Clint Ramos's set design, while minimal, is elegant and well-suited to the "faster than thought" pace; and the rest of the design elements unobtrusively enhance the action (costume designer Theresa Squire has given Jackie Chung one deliciously hideous outfit to wear for a social misfit character).

My only complaint - which I'm not sure is even a complaint - is that the hilarity kind of drops off about 4/5 of the way through. This, incidentally, is also the point in the script where the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial fan - so I'm guessing this is intentional. And while there is something refreshingly disconcerting about going "hahahahaha WAIT A SECOND," some steam and oomph (and other onomatopoetic words) is lost at this point as well. But, this is a small complaint for such an enjoyable evening. See Microcrisis, laugh your ass off, and follow it with some $3 wine at the HERE bar to chase your wandering mind away from your own financial woes.

A few beefs

2010-09-12T22:12:00.000-04:00

Dear Well-Meaning Theater People With Whom I May Interact Socially:

1. I am not an actress. I have never told you, or anyone you know, that I was an actress. I performed a 1-minute monologue as part of a site-specific piece in 2007 and took a 5-session performance class at BAX, none of which you know, so there is no reason for you to think I am an actress. Yet so, so many of you have made this mistake. I'm not really mad, so much as confused. I wish I could be optimistic and assume that people only think I'm an actress because I'm so fabulously good-looking, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not the only female playwright/ director to whom this has happened, and that people unconsciously assume that Girl Working In Theater = Actress. Since it's unconscious, I can't be that mad about it, but hopefully by calling it out, I can make it less unconscious.

2. If you're gonna talk to my boyfriend, and I am standing next to him, and I'm not talking to someone else, talk to me too. Or at least make eye contact with me a few times as you're talking to him. You may know him better, and I'm not going to butt into the conversation just to hear my own voice, but I am going to privately seethe if you completely ignore my presence. And vice versa: if you're talking to me, don't ignore him. He's fantastically interesting and charming, and the conversation will probably be much better with his input.

3. Thanks for reading my blog, and for letting me know when you see me that you've been reading it. It totally makes my day. (That's not a beef, but I could only think of 2 beefs and I like things in 3's.)

I am a crappy lead.

2010-09-09T23:45:00.000-04:00

It was brought to my attention tonight - not that I didn't already know - that I don't blog enough. I know. I put a lot into big posts like the Mametfesto and Whiney Boys and such, and I have a day job and a boyfriend and plays I'm supposedly writing and stuff. But, there's no reason why I can't post little things more often. I've had this blog for a year and only have 38 posts to my name.

So I will share an anecdote that saddened me a bit, in the hopes that other theaters will refrain from making this mistake.

Big Subscriber Theater calls me. It's a very nice sounding girl who's probably my age or younger, and she wants to know what I thought of the two plays I saw last season at Big Subscriber Theater (hereafter BST). I know she wants to sell me a subscription package, because strangers don't call me to ask what I thought of plays otherwise. I don't do subscription packages, but I figure, what the hell, she probably needs practice refining her shpiel, and I'll be nice, which (if my box office days are any indication) I'm guessing she needs. So I share my opinions, and I listen while she tells me about the following season, and at this point I find a way to let her know I don't buy subscriptions, and she says she's not selling subscriptions.

Oh. OK. Go on, I say. Apparently, she's selling "single ticket packages." That's where you buy a certain number of discounted "blank tickets" ahead of time, and can use them however you want throughout the season - one for one show, three for the next, whatever. And then she says, "Well, you got four tickets to our last season, that must have added up to about three hundred dollars. But with this package, you get those four tickets for just $215."

Now, if BST had enough of my information that this girl was able to call me, they also had the information of how much money I spent on my tickets. And while I don't know the exact amount, I guarantee you it wasn't $300, or even $100. 2 of my tickets were a student ticket deal; 2 were won in their lottery.

I calmly told this girl I wasn't interested, and we parted ways. What I want to know is: why was this girl given this particular pitch for me? Why, when I know that BST must have the ability to generate info about how much each patron spent on tickets, did they give her the "you're saving $85" angle when it didn't apply? They can still call me, if they want, but just find a different line for the cheap shmuck who won half her tickets in your lottery. Or, don't call me, because I have no money and you should know that because I didn't give you very much last time.

It saddens me, because I want theaters to make money, but they'd really be better off asking someone other than me for it. I know, I know, I'm part of the problem of the entitled audience who waits for discounts and never pays full price and that's why theaters aren't making money, but I'm a broke 20-something practitioner, what do you expect? At any rate, calling me was not an efficient use of their time. Perhaps I didn't help that by playing along, but hey, cold calling sucks and I know from experience that a friendly voice, even one that ultimately rejects you, can make the day go faster.

So Big Subscriber Theaters: don't waste your development/ telemarketing/ box office staff's time by giving them crappy leads. I am a prime example of a crappy lead. Don't call me, and if you do, don't tell me that $215 for 4 tickets is an amazing discount. It probably is; I'm just the wrong person to tell that.

Damnit, Mamet.

2010-09-08T19:38:00.000-04:00

Travis Bedard on the subject of David Mamet: "He is not a douche. He is used inelastic scrotal skin. He once contained something useful but that is long gone."

OK. I promised I'd do this. When I did my whiney boys post, I promised Mamet wasn't getting off the hook. This blog has been a long time coming, but various things - summer, guest blogging, life, etc - happened. But now that everyone's coming back from Labor Day, school's back in session. It's time to stick it to the man. And that man is Mamet.
So, Mamet.

We've had some good times together, honey. I discovered you on my lunch break at a summer temp job with The Cryptogram, which remains, for my money, one of the most accurate depictions of the terror that is Realizing The Grown-Ups Are All Fucked Up But Not Knowing Why. I fell immediately in love, and plowed through the rest of your plays that I'd checked out from the library willy-nilly, not knowing the classic must-reads from the obscure stuff. That's how I discovered The Woods, which I immediately hated. It made no sense to my seventeen-year-old mind, and I was furious at Nick for changing his mind so many times about whether he wanted to be with Ruth.

Long story short, I ended up rediscovering, loving, and directing The Woods my senior year of college, which was one of the most difficult - and rewarding - experiences of my life. Difficult, for some reasons that were not your fault - like the fact that I decided to do this the same semester as assistant directing another show on the mainstage, and the fact that my Nick would show up half an hour late to rehearsal only to announce that he had to leave an hour and a half early. But, also difficult because, damnit Mamet, you were taking your time, weren't you? All that freaking subtext and emotional foreplay. All the reading-between-the-lines I had to do. All the tension I beat myself up trying to create so the play wouldn't drag. But I learned, as you've often said, that the best thing I could do as a director was get out of the way and let the play speak for itself. And once I did that, and once both my actors were showing up for rehearsals, well, the thing was on fire. About 20 people saw it, but I didn't care. I had put up something beautiful. It's a shame no one knows that play; I think it's one of your best.

Among some of my other favorites are Edmund, another horror story; random little tender one-acts like Dark Pony and Reunion; and yes, even Sexual Perversity in Chicago. I think everyone is so fucking sick of that play that we forget that it's any good, but when I go back and revisit it, I remember, damn, that's good. And this brings me to my first point, which is in your defense:

David Mamet's Plays Are Emphatically Not Misogynist.

I'm just gonna say that one more time for emphasis for all the people who aren't you, Mamet:

David Mamet's Plays Are Emphatically Not Misogynist.

This is, for some reason, a controversial thing to say. People accept that Mamet=Misogynist as fact, without feeling the need to back it up with evidence. My "whiney boys" post started a small shitstorm (which resolved as happily as you could want a small shitstorm to resolve) because I was frustrated that a sorta misogynistic story seemed to be being told repeatedly, and I wasn't sure to what end. While I started this shitstorm by asking whether you'd set the precedent for Rapp, LaBute, and Sherman to tell this story - and I think you kinda did - I also think you've spent the better part of your career operating on a far more original level than the plays I just skewered. I have major beef with you, Mamet, don't get me wrong, and we'll get to that beef. But I don't think any of your plays - that I know of - fall into the "Nice Guy Whose Quirky Hot Girlfriend Has Sex With His Douchey Best Friend" pattern, nor do I think they're misogynist. Observe.

Let's start with Sexual Perversity in Chicago. So, OK. Couple of kinda obnoxious guys, talking ad nauseum about getting trim. One of them can pass for the Nice Guy described in the previous post, while the other is clearly the Douche (though they're both a little douchey). The "Nice Guy" starts dating a Nice-Seeming Young Broad (NSYB), they say "I love you," they move in together. Douche's love life is confined to a few hilarious tall tales that we think and hope aren't true, and hitting on NSYB's best friend, who has no interest in him, which he takes very personally.

NOTICE: the Douche does not get laid. Once more for emphasis: the Douche does not get laid. This makes Sexual Perversity VERY different than these plays.

Meanwhile, "Nice Guy" and NSYB hit rocky road in their relationship, which causes them to break up. NOTICE: NYSB ain't takin' none of Nice Guy's shit. She sees him for the emotional train wreck that he is:

DANNY: Come here.
DEBORAH: No. You come here for christ's fucking sake. You want comfort, come get comfort. What am I, your toaster?
DANNY: Cunt.
DEBORAH: That's very good. "Cunt," good. Get it out. Let it all out.
DANNY: You cunt.
DEBORAH: We've established that.
DANNY: I try.
DEBORAH: You try and try. You are misunderstood and depressed.

Deborah gets it, which means, by extension, that you, Mamet, get it. Just because this "Nice Guy" is misunderstood and depressed - which he most assuredly is, as we all are - does not excuse him from calling his girlfriend a cunt (see: The Shape of Things). ALSO NOTICE: At no point in this play does she go out and bang the Douche, not even when she and "Nice Guy" have broken up. Instead, she reflects:

"My mother used to tell a story about how I came into the kitchen one day while she was preparing an important dish. I was about four. I said, 'Mommy, can I have a cookie?', and she for some reason misunderstood or misheard me, and thought that I said that I wanted a 'hug,' so she gave me a 'hug,' and I said 'Thank you, Mommy. I didn't want a cookie after all."
(Pause.) You see? What is a sublimation of what? (Pause.) What signifies what?"

Again, Deborah gets it! Sometimes you think you want a cookie, when really you need a hug. Sometimes you think you want a "Nice Guy," when he's really a prick and you should dump his ass--which she does. Girl power!

So, Mamet, why do people think this play is misogynist? Well, because you write your misogynists well. Extremely well. Bernie is a World-Class Douche (though it bears repeating that he does not get laid! unless we are to believe his story about the flak suit arsonist, which I doubt), and Danny is pretty bad too. I'm still miffed, though, as to how people think this makes YOU misogynistic. If I wrote my misogynists as well as you do, I'd be accused of being a man-hater, a Feminazi. I have yet to hear someone accuse you of being a feminist, but I think there's a case to be made for it.

"But," I've heard people say, "he hardly ever writes female characters. And when he does, they're just foils for his manly men."

You might respond to that with some bullshit to the effect of "there are no characters, there are just lines on a page," to which I'd respond that you're full of shit, Mamet, because if that were true you wouldn't have won the Pulitzer. (Glenglary Glen Ross, for the record, is not my favorite play of yours. It's not even my 5th favorite play of yours. But that's neither here nor there.) I, personally, would rather look at some of the female characters you have written: Carol in Oleanna, say, or Ruth in The Woods. Carol, assuredly, is an awful human being. But she's hardly a foil. She's a scheming, opinionated, devastating force of nature in the worst possible way.

"See!" I hear the throngs yelling now; "that proves it! Misogynist!" So why don't I agree with Theresa Rebeck that this play has a misogynist agenda? Because as bad as Carol is, John is just as bad or worse. Neither of them begin the play with bad intentions; they're just perfectly suited archenemies who were unlucky enough to find each other. With both characters, you've demonstrated that you're plenty capable of writing very human, disgustingly flawed characters, who think they're in the right yet manage to fuck up each other's lives beyond repair. If the men and the women are all wrong, how can it be sexist? A little misanthropic, maybe. But not sexist.

In the same vein of fucking up lives, there's Ruth and her boyfriend Nick in The Woods. This one happens in a cabin in, um, the woods, with a young couple, Ruth and Nick. Ruth is as charming as Carol is repugnant. She's exuberant, funny, cute. Nick, for his part, is guarded, quieter, given to ginormous mood swings and, y'know, trying to force sex on his girlfriend. And when she doesn't go for that, he tells her to go away. And when she tries to go away, he tells her to stay, and that if she doesn't want to fuck him she's "got no self-respect." So she hits him with an oar.

Now again, the throngs are yelling: "She hit him with an oar! That proves it! Misogynist!" But, he then throws her off the porch. To which the throngs respond: "He threw her off the porch! Misogynist!" For Pete's sake, which IS it, people? It can't be both. And I'd contend that it's neither. Again, it's just a brutally honest portrait of two intensely fucked up people. The most fucked up thing, actually, is how sweet the ending is; the fact that these two people revert back to tenderness after hurting each other like that, rather than running for the hills.

At this point, I may appear to have contradicted myself. I sit here, emphatically yelling that you are not a misogynist (and maybe I have no room to speak, seeing as I haven't read your whole canon, but whatevs, it's my blog), but acknowledging that you set the precedent for the Rapps and the Labutes to write cookie-cutter-misogynist plays. Which you did. A large number of your male characters pose, preen, yell, play power games with each other, talk up the trim they've gotten, and don't like women. But you draw them with nuance, with sensitivity to the insecurity that makes them act like World Class Douches, with room for reading between lines. Your descendants have lost much of that nuance. They just see Douchey Men and create cardboard replicas of those Douchey Men. But then to make matters worse, they throw in women who can't resist those Douchey Men--a precedent which I think you did NOT set. Ruth tries to leave Nick; Deborah leaves Danny. Your women often know better.

So if I don't think your plays are misogynist, what's my beef?

My beef is that you've lost your touch, honey. Your plays are uniformly bad the past few years. I didn't see November, but I heard it was terrible. Romance was a cute SNL skit, nothing more, though it did make me laugh. But really, if I were David Mamet, I'd be ashamed of myself for Keep Your Pantheon and School, which were presented at the Atlantic under the heading "Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet." In other words, "We're Not Even Fucking Trying, People." School was more like an exercise I would crap out in a one-day workshop than a play, and Keep Your Pantheon was, I'm just gonna say it, pathetic. When you must resort to effeminate little gay boys for your comedy, guess what? You're lazy. You're the dramatist equivalent of the most disgusting couch potato. Because you know what's less original than trying to squeeze a laugh out of effeminate little gay boys? NOT A DAMN THING, MAMET. I can't even bring myself to see Race because I've heard almost unanimously that it's just a weak shadow of what you were capable of in your heyday. You've lost it, and it breaks my heart.

Which brings me to my next question...

Why do your plays keep showing up on Broadway?

Seriously. You've had lukewarm-to-dreadful play after lukewarm-to-dreadful play for years now. No one even tried to give you a Tony for Race. And yet you're, somehow, immune. Someone will still put your plays on Broadway because you're David Fucking Mamet.

I'm gonna admit, it pisses me off.

You've been one of the most important playwrights of the last 40 years, in my opinion. But until you can make 'em like you used to, I'm gonna remain annoyed when your (new) plays are on Broadway. (Not A Life in the Theatre. That, I'm excited about. Though I'm not convinced it's a play for Broadway, but whatevs, I like it.) I'm going to continue to hold you to the standard of your best work--and remember, it's your fault that I have that standard in the first place. It's your fault for once having been so brilliant that I'm so annoyed with these latest pieces of crap.

So I'll defend you to the death against well-meaning feminists who want to talk about your "Misogynist Agenda," and to draw a firm line between your best work and the copycat whiney-boy plays that have come along since. I'll always love you, Mamet. I'll defend you to the end.

But for the love of God...stop writing this crap. Or don't. But if you don't, get off the stage.

EDIT: It's been pointed out to me--and I must humbly agree--that for me to pass judgment on plays I haven't seen is, in a word, bullshit. So kindly ignore my mentions of November and Race above. However, unless I adore them when I read them, my attitude will remain unchanged.

Theatre for social change, finale: Diversify your damn stage ~ Full of IT

2010-08-22T15:44:00.000-04:00

It's been a great week guest-blogging for the NYIT Awards - one last post on theatre-as-instrument-of-social change: Theatre for social change, finale: Diversify your damn stage ~ Full of IT

Thanks all for reading and supporting! Looking forward to continuing this and future conversations. <3 <3 <3

Theatre of Compassion, Part III

2010-08-20T15:21:00.000-04:00

Guys, guys, I wrote another guest blog on the New York Innovative Theatre Awards blog! Check it:
Theatre for social change, continued: thoughts and doubts about Theatre of Compassion ~ Full of IT

My interview with the faboosh Ashley Marinaccio

2010-08-17T15:17:00.000-04:00

Hey guys! I'm the NYIT Awards' guest blogger this week! Check out my first post, an interview with writer/ director/ activist Ashley Marinaccio! More soon...

Whiney boys and the girls who are mean to them: thoughts on The Shape of Things, Things We Want, and Red Light Winter

2010-08-01T02:28:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about a blog post along these lines for awhile now, but I was only just now made aware of the appetite out there for this kind of thing. I was inspired by the heated, extended reactions to one of my posts on twitter:

MariahMacCarthy: "@travisbedard @kristofferdiaz also, who kicked off the Labute/Rapp "manlier than thou"/"women have hurt me" plays? was it Mamet? #2amt"

Cue a twitter-wide chorus of "hear, hear." There were more Labute-haters than Rapp-haters in the house (though definitely reps of both), I noticed. But by and large, everyone who joined in the conversation seemed to agree: enough already. And the conversation continued for hours. (No one mentioned Mamet, BTW, so I'm not going to discuss him here. I happen to love the guy, but more on him later.)

It's a curious phenomenon. It's not that these guys are untalented. I even admit to enjoying reasons to be pretty and Kindness, though I wouldn't bend over backwards to recommend either play to someone asking what show to spend their money on. But, it seems, I'm not the only one tired of the "manlier than thou"/"women have hurt me" plays. And within this niche, there's one storyline in particular that bugs me, and it goes like this: Nice Guy meets Hot/Quirky Girl. Nice Guy falls for Hot/Quirky Girl. Hot/Quirky Girl cheats on/leaves Nice Guy for Nice Guy's Incredibly Douchey Best Friend. Nice Guy is heartbroken. And we are supposed to feel...what? Sympathy? Betrayal? Something other than annoyance that, yet again, we have to watch this bullshit about women who just can't resist the lure of Douchey manliness?

Exemplifying this pattern are LaBute's The Shape of Things, Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want (and I must say, I love Sherman's much-earlier Women & Wallace so I'm not trying to hate on his whole body of work), and Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter. All of them are decently written, in that there's conflict and action and competently-crafted dialogue and characters wanting things. But they all annoy the shit out of me. (SPOILER ALERT: I'm going to reveal the endings of all 3 of these plays - in fact I already have - because the endings are what bug me the most). Observe:

Let's start with The Shape of Things. Our Nice Guy here is Adam, who's supposed to be awkward in that endearing way that, say, John Cusack is awkward, but not as obviously Hawt as Cusack - at least not until Evelyn gets her hands on him. Evelyn (because calling her Eve would be too obvious) is our Hot/Quirky Girl, who's obsessed with Art! that is True! and will do anything for that Art! After a few hints dropped by Evelyn, Adam starts making changes for her: changes to his diet, his wardrobe, even getting a nose job. Then he gets carried away with how Hawt he is and makes out with his best friend Phil's girl, Jenny. Evelyn, in turn, makes out with Phil, then tells Adam he has to cut off contact with Jenny and Phil, only for Adam to find out that this was all an experiment in the name of Art! and he actually never meant anything to her. Adam is heartbroken! Evelyn leaves! And we learn that It Is Wrong To Make People Get Nose Jobs In The Name Of Art And Then Dump Them!

Now in some ways, this is a more forgivable take on this incredibly annoying storyline. We're not led to think that Evelyn in any way lusts after Phil; she makes out with him purely in the interest of making a point (in the name of Art!). So thank you, LaBute, for avoiding the usual "but-I-just-swoon-around-douchey-manliness" that sometimes plagues your female characters. But it totally lets Adam off the hook. Somehow, the shmuck who gets his girlfriend's name tattooed on his body (voluntarily!) and then cheats on her is the protagonist, and is given an Empowering Monologue at the end about the dangers of Hurting People With Art(!). So, apparently, we are to fear both women and performance art, especially if we are an adorable Cusack-ish shmuck.

Moving on: in Things We Want, the Nice Guy is Charles, who we know we like because--aww!--he's still sad about his last breakup! He's got two brothers: clean-cut Teddy, who works for a scam artist named Dr. Miracle (really), and the alcoholic Sty, who rarely leaves the couch. Sty, worried that Charles might try to harm/kill himself, gets Hot/Quirky Girl Stella who lives in the building to babysit Charles while he goes out, and of course Charles and Stella share feelings and dreams in a very cute heart-to-heart that ends with them making out! Awesome! But then Act Two comes along, a year later, and now Teddy and Sty have flip-flopped: Sty has been sober for a year now, while Teddy has moved to the couch, alcoholic and embittered that Dr. Miracle turned out to be a scam artist. As Charles goes out to get groceries for his fabulous anniversary dinner with Stella, he leaves her there to babysit Teddy, and THEY share dreams and feelings in a heart-to-heart that ends with THEM making out! And then Charles figures out that Stella and Teddy are about to get it on and is devastated, but then comes to some kind of peace with it in a matter of minutes and decides to go out somewhere with Sty, and we learn that Brothers Who Don't Make Out With Your Girlfriend Are Awesome.

Teddy doesn't have the Douchemarks of, say, Phil from The Shape of Things; he only becomes Supremely Douchey in Act 2, because he's devastated that his idol turned out to be a scam artist and so he doesn't give a shit about being polite anymore. So, OK. Not everyone becomes a disourteous couch-bound alcoholic when they lose their job, but maybe we can go with it. But it takes him, I dunno, 20 minutes to make out with Stella? I mean, at least make it look like it took SOME effort. And, OK, maybe we're supposed to think they're kindred spirits because they both lost something (she used to be a pianist until her right hand ceased to function), but, well, we've all lost something. She's depressed because the rest of her life will consist of checking items off a list (get a job, get married, buy a house, etc)? That list depresses me too, but you don't see me snogging other dudes because of it. At the end of the day, the Nice Guy is a Nice Guy, the Hot/Quirky Girl is easy, and the Douche gets to fuck her six ways to Sunday.

Lastly (and most infuriating, to me): Red Light Winter. Matt is in Amsterdam with his best friend Davis. Davis brings a prostitute, Christina, back to their hotel - as a gift for Matt, though he (Davis) already purchased her services earlier. The three of them hang out in an overlong scene where it's clear that Matt is Awkward and Davis is an Asshole. Then Davis leaves, Christina and Matt have a heart-to-heart, have very brief sex, and Christina skips town. Then Act 2, a year later (or is it longer? I don't have the script next to me), Christina shows up at Matt's door looking for Davis. Matt's been pining after her since they met; she doesn't remember him at all. Actually, she's been pining after Davis because, why again? Because he was "sweet" when he was dicking her, even though he was clearly an Asshole when he was hanging out with her and Matt. Oh, and also maybe because he made her orgasm 3 times. Anyway, she's got AIDS now, so Matt says she can stay with him, confesses his love for her, and goes out for food. Then Davis comes over, trashes Matt's apartment, is an Asshole to Christina, and then fucks her because she literally throws herself at him. And then! THEN! He leaves, and SHE FUCKING KILLS HERSELF. Does anyone else see a problem here? A prostitute follows a client to America and kills herself because he doesn't remember her, even though another dude just offered to put her up and help her out? Quoi??????

This is, to me, the most toxic of these plays (though that first scene where Christina and Matt are alone together is gorgeously written). Like Phil in The Shape of Things, this Douche lacks any charm whatsoever, I mean, ANY charm. Yet this girl - who seems plenty savvy and independent in other ways - follows him to America and kills herself when he, y'know, acts like a Douche?? Being willing to make out with a Douche for an artistic statement, or bang a Douche because you're not happy in your relationship, is one thing. But the Nice Guy is gonna sleep on the floor so you can have his bed and ya kill yourself? This is DEFINITELY a situation that could have been avoided if Christina had a Sassy Gay Friend. Second City, get on that, wouldja?

So why am I bitching and moaning about these plays? Well, because it seems to reveal a collective neurosis that worries and disgusts me: the fear that, if you're a Nice Guy, your Hot/Quirky lady love will fuck you over and go get it on with your Douchey Best Friend. Is this a thing that happens often enough to warrant mass alarm on behalf of our male playwrights? 'Cause last I checked, none of us Hot/Quirky ladies were looking to bang a Douche. We may not always be into the Nice Guys, but generally it's because of something other than their Niceness (like, if they're boring or insecure or have no social skills or no sense of boundaries or what have you). Niceness, in itself, is actually pretty damn ideal.

But! If you're a Nice Guy and your girlfriend HAS left you for your Douchey Best Friend (or brother) and you're sad about it, rather than writing a play that depicts the one female character as a slave to the Douchecock, here are some tips:
-GET RID OF THAT DOUCHEY BEST FRIEND. Every Nice Guy character in every movie has one and I still can't figure out why, but if you have one, DROP HIM. Not only might he fuck your girlfriend, he's just a bad person. Kick him to the curb and meet some other Nice Guys at a coffeeshop or some shit.
-When you meet girls, don't obsess over them, especially not immediately. That seems to be a mistake made by all 3 protagonists in these plays.
-And if you absolutely must place this particular plotline in one of your plays, maybe don't have that girl be the only female? Jenny in The Shape of Things doesn't count - she's a bland little Girl Next Door who just can't resist Adam when he gets all Hawt. That - much like a prostitute following you across the ocean because you made her orgasm in triplicate - just seems like a bullshit male fantasy that gives your bros a bad name.

All right, I'm done. Thanks for listening. But seriously, boys, STOP WRITING THESE PLAYS. I'm sick of 'em, and I'm not the only one.

Tiger Beatdown › Dirty Girls and Bad Feminists: A Few Thoughts on “I Love Dick”

2010-07-30T12:00:00.000-04:00

Tiger Beatdown › Dirty Girls and Bad Feminists: A Few Thoughts on “I Love Dick”: "I’ve been having some serious doubts about my place in Internet Feminism...there are problems, I think, with the terms of the conversation I’ve set up here; there are problems with my own place within that conversation, the person I’ve agreed to be when I talk to you. That outraged, righteous, upright, know-it-all person who has compassion for all the right people and scorn for all the wrong ones, who’s on the right side (your side) of all the issues: I think she’s dangerous, and I think she’s at least partially false."

I haven't read "I Love Dick," but this essay is magnificent.

Some things I support.

2010-07-20T22:35:00.000-04:00

1. Sorry to always be talking about Amanda Fucking Palmer, but she just released an EP of Radiohead covers and it's really beautiful and you should go download it.

2. I saw The Kids Are All Right and liked it. The Lesbian Mafia did not. I thought I loved it at first, but upon further reflection found that I only liked it, but I certainly did like it. TLM's issues are valid: showing a woman who is married to another woman "getting f*cked every which way to Sunday by a dude" is potentially damaging to popular conceptions about lesbians in general, and potentially reinforces the misconception that all any lesbian needs is a proper man to "cure" her. But, here is some food for thought:
-Sexuality is complicated and fluid. I think the film establishes that up front, by showing Nic and Jules watching a gay male porno DVD together - not exactly expected viewing for two women who are married to each other. Why is it only politically correct to adhere to cookie-cutter definitions of sexuality, where lesbians are only attracted in any way, shape, or form to women? Isn't that a little biphobic, ladies? I know plenty of lesbians who identify as such who've had sex with men and enjoyed it, or who would consider it, or whatevs.
-Which brings me to my next point: TLM takes issue with the fact that this "lesbian" is enjoying sex with a dude. Well, actually, I'm not sure anyone in the film ever calls Jules that word. She's a woman who's married to another woman. A bisexual woman could certainly be capable of as much. Yes, with as few depictions of lesbians as there are in the media, I get that the uninformed masses *might* assume from this movie that all lesbians are bisexual, but that's really not the movie's fault.
-Moreover, Jules' attraction to Paul makes total sense to me - not because he's such a studly dude, but because he's the polar opposite of Nic. To me, it reveals a tiredness with Nic's high-strung nature, rather than a lifelong craving for The Cock. The "pathetic" and "embarrassing" sex scene is hardly accidental; it's an extension of this tiredness.
-And why get hung up on this and miss out on all the other wonderful stuff happening in the movie? Sure, it's got its share of Bad Movie Moments, but it's got some absolutely gorgeous stuff too. Mia Wasikowska is radiant, particularly in one heartbreaking moment at a "last hurrah" party. Mark Ruffalo took a potentially two-dimensional character and infused him with some real heart. And the mother-child relationships, despite not having grown up with lesbian parents, felt very true to me - like how Jules keeps asking her kids if they "want to talk." There's a lot going on in this movie that I haven't seen in other mainstream movies.

Yes, it's troubled. No, it's not perfect. Yes, on a certain level it's a shame that the one mainstream lesbian movie of our day has one of the lesbians committing adultery with a man. But if a breadth of lesbian experiences were being showcased in the mainstream media, it wouldn't be such a problem. If only we lived in a cultural climate where there could be room for this movie without potential damage being done to the Collective Lesbian Reputation.

3. I support hugging and being in the sunshine.

Theatre vs. Rock.

2010-06-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

Don't be scurred by the subject line - I don't want to pit theatre and rock against each other. If anything, I think the two should be combined more often. But, I've always kind of wanted to be a rock star, and while that looks increasingly unlikely by the day (mainly because I have no musical ability, despite the fact that I'm currently writing a musical), I think keeping in mind the reasons I want to be a rock star can help me be a better maker of theatre.

I saw Evelyn Evelyn last night at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. And, um, weird show. Great, but weird. Weird, because it was in a theatre and it started on time and the audience, while clearly into the show, was very polite and mellow. I'm used to seeing Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley in venues where everyone's standing and drinking and talking through all the songs, and you expect to wait an hour after the time that was listed on the website for the show to start, and people are a lot louder and more obnoxious - but also a lot more enthusiastic. Amanda Palmer happens to be a theatre geek (she's going to be the MC in ART's Cabaret this fall, for which I could not be more excited), but ultimately chose music over theatre:

"I started writing songs and wanted to be a rock star and all that stuff because I wanted desperately to connect with people. Not the other way around," she explains. "I think the music was an accident - not an accident, but it was one of several choices where I looked at possibilities and it was like, well I could do theater, but that's not as immediate a connection... and it's a lot of logistics and work. And I think, you know, I wanted to be at an art party with as many friends as possible. And this was the way to do it."

As sad as it makes me to admit this about my profession of choice, she's right. Theatre is not as immediate of a connection. For one, theatre just takes a lot of fucking work. It's significantly and frighteningly easier to throw together a musical act than to throw together a play, in my (admittedly limited) observation. My brother was in a band in high school. He wasn't a founding member; when they lost their guitar player (I forget how), he learned all the songs in... a day? A weekend? I don't remember, but he played like a rock star at his first show. Sure, we've heard of the same thing happening in theatre, but usually with an apology to the audience and the actor either carrying book, or having someone on-book should the actor get lost. You can't have someone on-book when you're playing guitar - you just have to play the fucking guitar.

And then there's the post-show. The post-show! After a rock show, presumably you're at a bar, or a venue that has a bar, so you can all just stay at that bar and you can bond with the people who just saw you play and maybe get laid. After a play, you get fifteen minutes in the lobby for people to say "that was great!" and for you to say "thank you" and then maybe suggest to your immediate friends who came that you all go out together, and some will and some won't, and probably the whole group of you will just take up one booth at South's. You'll have a great time at South's, don't get me wrong, but the random girl who just found your show postcard and came on a lark and had her mind blown by your show probably won't be there. And you'll miss a great opportunity for connection.

Here's another thing about rock: it's loud. And even when it's low-energy, its loudness can mask that pretty easily. When theatre is low-energy, there's no disguising it - and then everything feels like death. Rock also doesn't have to be THAT good to be at least enjoyable. Neither Amanda Palmer nor Jason Webley have what I would call beautiful voices, but they're both so innovative, so heartfelt, that I don't give a shit. Theatre, sadly, has to be REALLY good to be enjoyable. As nice as we all are to our friends who also practice theatre, and as fond as I am of looking for good elements of a mediocre evening, we've all thought to ourselves during a play, at least half the time, "How much longer is this thing?" It's not because our friends aren't good. Our friends are probably very good. But throw in a little unmotivated blocking, a few lines that don't land the way the playwright intended, and you start to feel your ass hurt and wonder what you're going to eat after the show. Theatre is fragile, and always two steps away from not working. It's so easy to take those two steps.

I certainly don't think the low energy of the Evelyn Evelyn show can be attributed entirely to the fact that it was in a theatre, but I certainly think that that had something to do with it. At a rock club, if there's space in the front, you smoosh forward. At a theatre, if there's space in the front, you can't go sit there because what if the person with that seat shows up? Horrors! At a rock club, someone probably steps on your foot at least three times in a night, but you don't care. At a theatre, someone sneaks in ten minutes late and you want to hunt that person down and kill them. It's all very polite, and the bright house lights make you feel exposed and self-conscious. We need the constant alcohol and bad manners of rock clubs to make us let our guard down. Then we can scream for our favorite band and feel free to shout out song requests, rather than feel awkward that we're being asked to participate.

It also didn't help that the Evelyn Evelyn act is, in my opinion, much more theatre than rock - and not great theatre. Amanda and Jason, as Evelyn and Evelyn (respectively), really ham it up by playing "shy." They whisper to each other, they fuss with each other's hair, and they spend a long time staring at the audience before they begin to play each song. That's all very precious and cute, but it gets old fast, and it's not energizing the way their solo music is. I enjoyed Evelyn Evelyn, but give me "Astronaut" or "Icarus" any day of the week. We were also held back from the wonderful way that Amanda and Jason connect with their audiences by the fact that they were playing roles, and never once addressed us directly as Evelyn or Evelyn. And yes, that's because they were "in character," but their staying in character didn't make me feel connected.

Then again, Amanda Palmer also created one of the most heart-rending, gorgeous theatre pieces I've ever seen, With The Needle That Sings In Her Heart. And one of the most engaging moments in the Evelyn Evelyn set was the one moment of "actual" theatre, the puppet show. So it's not as though I'm claiming that rock is inherently superior, or even that Amanda Palmer's rock is inherently superior to her theatre. All I'm saying is, if theatre is how you want to connect with people, you gotta work harder for it. If you just want to make theatre and the connection with people is a happy side effect for you, then just make theatre. But if the goal is connection, I think we're going about it all wrong.

When theatre people try to create connection, we tend to do it in the most awkward ways possible. Talkbacks! Readings! Think about all the talkbacks and readings you've been to. Were most of them fun? Or were most of them like taking medicine: necessary, but gross? Don't get me wrong: I've been to some readings and talkbacks that were on FIRE. And I could probably count them on one hand.

Or: fundraisers! Now, look: I'm poor. Unless I'm in a long-term relationship with someone in your theatre company, it doesn't matter how much I support your mission statement; I can't afford a $50 fundraiser ticket to support you. But, fundraisers are fun: there's usually performers and food and drinks and schmoozing and we all like that stuff. So, definitely have the $50 fundraiser, or the $80 fundraiser or the $150 fundraiser, because you need it and I'm sure it's fun for the people who can afford it. But have the $10 fundraiser too. I'll be there, I'll meet your company, you'll make more money, and we'll be able to connect.

A group that is, I think, taking their cue from rock clubs in a good way is Youngblood. Have you ever felt your ass hurting at a Youngblood brunch? My guess is no. My guess is that you enjoyed the open bar and the pancakes, and so what if it was jam-packed and you had to wait awhile for it to start? That's rock and roll, baby! It gave you more time to hang out with people! And the ambiance made you more receptive to the 10 minute plays you were watching about sex or death or whatever they're brunching about these days. If more theatre audiences were like Youngblood brunch audiences, I'd never fear that the theatre was dying. But, as long as theatre audiences more closely resemble the Evelyn Evelyn audience I saw last night - timid, quiet, and in fact not unlike the Evelyn sisters themselves (aside from the conjoined part) - I'll continue to be a little scared.

The Theatermaker's Theatergoing Manifesto

2010-05-24T15:25:00.000-04:00

If you have an all-male season (especially if all your directors are male too), don't expect me to come to your show.* Even if you're a classics company.

If your season includes women playwrights, and you insist on congratulating yourself very loudly that you're producing women playwrights, and those plays by women playwrights are bad - meaning you've taken a production opportunity away from a GOOD play by a woman, of which there are many - don't expect me to come to your next show.

If you have an all-white season (by which I mean all your playwrights are white), I MIGHT still come to your show, giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe you didn't know all your playwrights were white when you chose their plays. However, there better be some actors of color on your stage, or else don't expect me to come to your show.

If I have repeatedly invited you to my work and never gotten back so much as a one-line "Sorry we can't make it but best of luck!" email (and these are not anonymous invitations - I'm talking customized shit here, addressed to you by name, with explanations of how my work fits your mission statement and the plays of yours I've loved and everything), don't expect me to come to your show. This does not apply if you are the Literary Manager/Artistic Director of a ginormous theatre company and get thousands of invites. However, it applies double if I know you personally.

I see a lot of theater, but in the past three years I've never spent more than $25 on a ticket. Three times in those three years, I have seen theater for more than that on someone else's dime; they were RUINED, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, and NEXT TO NORMAL. If your play has not won a Pulitzer and I can't see it for $25 or less, don't expect me to come to your show.

99% of the time, when my interaction with a box office rep or house manager is anything less than pleasant, it's because they're being forced to enforce some bullshit policy that a higher-up who's never down in the trenches has come up with. If you have a bullshit policy, don't expect me to come to your show. (Example of a bullshit policy: only being able to buy one student ticket with my student ID; being held up for any reason from picking up tickets I already paid for; etc.)

If you have screwed up my ticket order more than once, don't expect me to come to your show.

If a patron's cell phone went off repeatedly at your last show, or someone was talking at an inappropriately loud level, and your house staff did nothing, don't expect me to come to your next show. Also, it's not their fault--it's yours for not training them better.

If you're doing your show somewhere with uncomfortable seating, and your work isn't so breathtaking that I forget about the uncomfortable seating as I'm watching it, don't expect me to come to your show. I know good spaces are hard to come by (I'll miss you, Ohio!), but life is too short for a sore ass. Ditto a lack of AC in summer or lack of heating in winter.

If I have met the artistic director of your theater company and he/she was dismissive, snooty, or just a downright asshole to me, don't expect me to come to your show.

If I heard that you didn't treat your interns, volunteers, actors, or artists well, don't expect me to come to your show.

If I worked with/for you and you didn't treat me well, don't expect me to come to your show.

If you force your ushers to do obnoxious things at intermission like pass out buttons or force me to sign up for your mailing list, don't expect me to come to your show. Applies double if I've ushered for you and you made me do this.

If I got stuff thrown at/splattered on me at your last show, and I wasn't warned, or if I sat outside of the splash zone and still got splashed, don't expect me to come to your show.

If there are excessive typos or spelling/grammar errors in your program and/or website, I'll come to your show, but I'll judge you.

If you claim to accept unsolicited submissions, but my colleagues have either received a reply back within days or never heard back in response to their unsolicited submission, don't expect me to come to your show. We don't expect you to do our plays; we just wish you'd make it look like you put a little effort into rejecting us.

If you are overly self-congratulatory about your mission statement of producing "new plays," but half your season premiered at regional theatres before coming to you, don't expect me to come to your show.

If you keep trying to court me and my age group, yet continue to do work that panders to the upper-middle-class 60+ white crowd, don't expect me to come to your show. I get it, I know they have more money than me, but I'm just not gonna come.

If you are an actor, and I offered you a role at some point and you never got back to me, don't expect me to come to your show--or to ever offer you a role again.

If I came to your last show, and afterward in the lobby you asked me if I liked the show, I may still come to your show but I'll avoid you afterward. If you really want to know and you're not just fishing for compliments, let's get a drink or email each other; don't ask me in front of our friends and colleagues.

If we have known each other for years/ went to college together/ were supposedly friends at one point, and not only don't you come to my shows but you don't respond to my invitations, don't expect me to come to your show.

If you are an asshole, don’t expect me to come to your show.

Any additions?

*"Don't expect me to come to your show" doesn't mean "I will not see your show under any circumstances." It just means I'm more reluctant to see it than I would be otherwise.

Recommendations

2010-05-09T20:22:00.000-04:00

Gonna keep this short and sweet - just a few recommendations as I put off cleaning my room...

-Please Give is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Directed and written by Nicole Holofcener, who is BRILLIANT (but only makes a movie every five years since she's a woman working in Hollywood), it's devastating, funny, and compassionate. The excellent Boston Globe review is here if you're interested: "There are no villains in Nicole Holofcener’s movies. Instead, there are rumpled, recognizable humans, constantly fretting over the line between being a predator and becoming prey."

-The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is an intensely energetic, fiercely intelligent, truly unique powerhouse of a play. The fact that Mariah Feminist McGee is recommending a show with a male director, male playwright, and all-male cast - not to mention that I saw it in the non-ideal environment of a Saturday matinee - should let you know how much I liked it. If you're like me and you think, "Hm, a play about wrestling? Doesn't sound like my thing," let me say...just shut up and go see it and prove yourself wrong. Because you ARE wrong. Trust me.

-Just had a delicious brunch today at Elephant & Castle on Greenwich Ave. One of the best brunches I've had in awhile - a cheddar/ apple/ walnut omelet. Also, their lattes are a work of art. And not heinously expensive. Highly recommended.

-Did you hear that Amanda Palmer is playing the Emcee in American Repertory Theater's production of Cabaret? I'm getting chills already.

-I also recommend that you hug or call your mother today, if you haven't already. Or if you're not able to do that, hug or call someone who's mentored, parented, and/or nurtured you. They'll like it.

Theatre of Compassion, Part 2

2010-05-04T16:38:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite people in the theatre world, Ashley Marinaccio, wrote and directed a play called Decadent Acts, which closed on April 25th. Ashley was the one who invited me to speak on the Left Forum "Creating Lasting Change Through Radical Theatre" panel last month. I'll be collaborating with her theater company, Co-Op Theatre East (producers of Decadent Acts) on a project next month. She interviewed me for her People Who Want Change blog. As you might have guessed from this intro, she is someone I anticipate keeping in my life as a collaborator and friend for years to come.

So I wanted to blog a little bit about Decadent Acts. However, since the script is still in progress and will be shown at the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, I did not want to go the safe route when blogging about your friends' shows of list-the-stuff-you-liked, skip-the-stuff-you-didn't, call-it-a-night deal. I want to do right by a fierce woman that I respect tremendously - by being honest, and hopefully giving this play the chance to be as good as it can be. So, here goes.

Decadent Acts is a hugely important play that is, in many ways, quite beautiful. And like most hugely important plays, it's got issues. I think it's even part of the package when you're doing the hugely-important-thing. Heck, Angels in America has issues. Decadent Acts is about a lesbian couple in the late 80s (fictional, I assume, since googling the characters' names only brings up results for the play). They have a daughter. One of the women gets cancer. And for the rest of the play, we watch these two women go through Lesbian Hell; whether it's being denied hospital visitation rights, or having their daughter taken away, life pretty much sucks for these two.

Important Stuff. Unfortunately, the play knows how Important it is. And this self-awareness keeps the play from having its full impact; it becomes a play about issues, but the play is at its strongest when it's a play about people.

This isn't helped by the lack of discernible faults in our protagonists and the lack of discernible virtues in our antagonists. Dr. Jolene Shatila and Farah White (played by Anna Savant and Hannah Rose Barfoot, respectively) are magnificent parents, both very accomplished in their careers, and mostly perfect people, other than the occasional tiny squabble and a bit of pride - and who can fault them for that? It doesn't hurt that they are played with incredible warmth, charisma, and verve by Savant and Barfoot. Those who antagonize them, on the other hand, are mostly painted as cartoons: one intensely homophobic student has a dreadful mullet and makes threatening phone calls to Dr. Shatila, a nurse who prevents Dr. Shatila from visiting Farah has an intensely irritating high-pitched voice, and so on. I recognize that this is sometimes an attempt to bring comic relief into a VERY brutal play, but these extremes paint a black-and-white picture of Good Guys and Bad Guys, when the shades of gray are so much more interesting.

The "gray" characters are Farah's parents, Roger and Mindy White (Mike Callahan and Joanie Fritz Zosike); a doctor who helps the couple, Dr. Landau (David Roberts); and Jolene's mother (Elizabeth Neptune). Let's start with Roger and Mindy; they seem, at the outset, like sweet, well-meaning parents who are maybe just a little old-fashioned - they want Jolene and Farah's daughter Nicole (biologically Farah's) to take up more feminine extra-curricular activities, but seem to love their daughter and, in our first few scenes with them, are very warm to Jolene. This perked me up: "OK," I thought, "This play is acknowledging that not everyone who strays toward the conservative is the bogeyman." But even these characters become black and white and are turned into Bad Guys: as he tries to explain that he wants to take Nicole to live with him and his wife, Roger tells Jolene that she never meant anything to him and his wife--that they just put up with it for Farah's sake. First of all, those first few scenes of warmth are played way too convincingly for us to believe that; second of all, isn't it more interesting if she does mean something to the family? If the grandparents believe so strongly that Nicole needs to be with her biological family that they're willing to screw over someone they care about in the process? But if they don't care about Jolene at all, their subsequent horrific actions are less significant and layered than they'd be if they did care.

Jolene's mother is not much more layered (especially since she gets less stage time), but at least she offers a healthy alternative to Roger and Mindy's villainy. She rejected Jolene decades ago when Jolene came out, but has had a change of heart and comes back to testify on Jolene's behalf in the battle for Nicole's custody. She's still very much a Good Guy, but at least she's a Good Guy who used to be a Bad Guy. Dr. Landau is also a Good Guy because he's trying to give Farah the best treatment possible, but he also tells Jolene (and I paraphrase), "Don't press the visitation issue because I could lose my job and then I won't be able to treat Farah at all." He's the only one who tries to prevent Jolene from visiting Farah who isn't portrayed as either a moron or an asshole.

This brought me back to my thoughts on Theatre of Compassion (which, ironically, I started thinking about largely as a result of Ashley inviting me to speak on the Left Forum panel). As I've said, a great play doesn't have to have compassion for all its characters, nor does it have to consider both sides of an issue. But in this case, I think taking that approach would help tremendously. If one of the people in my life who doesn't support gay marriage came to see this - people who are, for the most part, loving and kind - I imagine they'd think: "Wow. So this play thinks if I don't support gay marriage, I'm either the evil grandparent, or the obnoxious student with the mullet? But I'm a nice person, and I would NEVER wear such a dreadful mullet. I'm tuning this out."

And this would be such a shame, because there is so much in this play that is so damn good. The love scenes between Jolene and Farah are heartbreakingly gorgeous, and the ensemble has palpable chemistry that is a joy to watch. But an audience member who feels judged is going to miss all that. As for the rest of us, who know we're not the Bad Guys, I fear that we are allowed to feel too smug at these characters' expense. Because we're not given the chance to identify with them, we instead are pushed toward feeling superior to them. This, I feel, is antithetical to the alleged purpose of this play - that is, pushing us towards action. I'm reminded of (forgive the tangent) Luke 18:10 - the story of two men who go to a temple to pray. One man espouses his own virtues and thanks God that he's not like the taxpayer in the corner; the ~~taxpayer~~ tax collector just asks God for forgiveness. A little bit of "Thank God I'm not like THAT guy" keeps us complacent, which I'm sure couldn't be further from Ashley's intention.

All this being said, I'm insanely proud of the cast and crew of Decadent Acts, and especially for Ashley. I look forward to seeing how it evolves, and hope that this little blog post can have a hand in that evolution. I also hope that when something keeps my work from being all that it can be, that my friends and collaborators will respect me enough to be honest with me about what's standing in my way. Keep up the great work, COTE, and I'll see you at the next incarnation.

Feminism

2010-04-18T00:41:00.000-04:00

Found this paragraph in the blog of a self-proclaimed "smut peddler" and it gave me pause:

What could you possibly have against feminism?For starters: "feminism" doesn't have anything close to a singular meaning, so it's too hard to have rational debate about it when it means opposite things to different people; the feminist pendulum has run its course and too often turns into pointless misandry; feminism used to be about women's right to be more than just barefoot and pregnant, and now it fights for the "right" of women to be barefoot and pregnant and be given a ton of government and corporate handouts for churning out babies; feminism is commonly embraced by people who's underlying beliefs are that women are stupid, feeble creatures who need to be controlled and saved; feminism these days focuses way too much on imaginary first-worlder problems like women choosing to feel badly about themselves because they think they're not pretty enough, rather than real-world problems in the Global South where women aren't allowed to own property, vote, or have a safe abortion; some feminists are obsessed with fanning and exploiting insecurities in women in order to indoctrinate them to their style of victim feminism, rather than being positive and helping women see that they're strong and powerful. Last but not least: it's REALLY FUCKING DIFFICULT to spend your entire life being viciously picked on by girls and women for various reasons, then swallow the idea that women are your true solidarity sisters and that men are the cruel enemy that oppresses you.

(You can read the whole thing here, but be warned: it's very much NSFW, unless you work in the same industry as this blogger.)

As a self-proclaimed "nice feminist," it made me think.

While the above blogger rejects the term "feminist," I'd still classify her as such. She's definitely right about one thing: "feminism" means a myriad of confusing and contradictory things, but all these things unite under the banner of women's empowerment; it's the individual interpretations of what "empowerment" means that make it so difficult to navigate.

For instance: some sex workers and strippers do what they do because they find it fun and empowering.

Some of them do it in spite of NOT finding it fun and empowering, purely because they need the money, and they resent their customers and wish they had some other means of supporting themselves.

Are feminists who are concerned for the latter in the wrong? I don't think anyone would try to make that case.

Are feminists who assume that all sex workers and strippers fall into the latter category in the wrong? Quite possibly, but it often comes from a place of concern and compassion. And yes, in some cases, prudishness, moral absolutism, and a general attitude of holier-than-thou, but not always.

So you can be a feminist who takes her clothes off for other people.

And you can also be a feminist who is concerned for women who take their clothes off for other people.

Both are legit. Yet they seem contradictory.

How do we navigate this?

I guess that's why I prefer the term "gender activist." By "gender activist" I basically mean "anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, anti-transphobia, anti-anything that gets in the way of an environment where people can do what THEY think is best for them (without hurting anybody)." And yes, sometimes what you think is best for you isn't actually what's best for you, but everyone is entitled to learn on their own terms and their own time.

Basically, no matter what you do, some feminist somewhere could (and probably would, given the chance) construe it as feeding into patriarchy. If you're wearing a dress, you feed the patriarchy because you feel you have to be "girly" and feed into men's hyperfeminine ideals. If you're wearing a pantsuit, you feed the patriarchy because you have to make yourself masculine to succeed in a man's world. If you're wearing a dress suit, worst of both worlds. Or: if you don't have sex, you feed the patriarchy because you're conforming to this virginal idea that women aren't supposed to have sexual desires. If you have sex, you feed the patriarchy because you're conforming to men's fantasy of the voracious whore. Etc. Etc.

Nice Feminist say: Fuck that.

Nice Feminism is: wearing a pantsuit if you want to wear a pantsuit, or a dress, or a freakin' potato sack if that's what gets your rocks off. Have sex if you want it, don't if you don't, but if you have it, make sure it's safe, sane, and consensual - and enjoy it, by all means. Or just make out. Or remain celibate if that's what you want. Shave your legs if it makes you feel good. Or if you're lazy and get cold easily like me, you don't have to shave. Take a burlesque class, take your clothes off, or cover yourself head to toe if that makes you more comfortable. Do one on Monday and do the other on Tuesday.

In short, Nice Feminist say (to quote my hero, Amanda Palmer): “You know what’s really cool? Wake up every morning, decide what you feel like doing, and do it.”

we interrupt your regularly scheduled silence to bring you this very important message

2010-04-15T01:43:00.000-04:00

1. The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret happened. It sold out every show. It was called "supremely entertaining" (SheWired.com), "a refreshingly enjoyable lampooning of gender stereotypes" (Backstage.com), and "one of the best off-off-Broadway productions I've seen" (Theatre Is Easy). It was basically a dream come true and I've been utterly melancholy since its (hopefully temporary) closing. If you have a theatre space/season that needs filling and/or a few thousand dollars that need to be spent on a remount, let me know.

2. Rescue Me, by my former employer Ma-Yi, is happening through April 18. There's a lot to love in it - for instance, Paco Tolson. (Is it just me, or does it seem like that role was written specifically for Paco? Not that I'd blame Michi Barall if that were the case - if I knew he'd take them, I'd write roles for Paco till my hand fell off. But there's one extended TV sequence that is totally unnecessary to the plot, but completely necessary because it's 100% Pure Paco.) Or Leon Ingulsrud (who knocked me sideways in such SITI shows as bobrauschenbergamerica, which you absolutely MUST see) in a very, very bright pink suit singing Elvis. Or David Greenspan being, well, David Fuckin' Greenspan. After the nonstop action that was Soul Samurai and the emotional powerhouse that was American Hwangap last season, I will admit that Rescue Me tends toward the heady and the scholarly perhaps more often than I'd like - though Greek Geeks will no doubt disagree with me. But the movement - choreographed by Julian Barnett - is truly gorgeous, and the set (Loy Arcenas working his magic yet again) will rock your world. And, hooray! Ma-Yi is finally doing a female playwright! (Female director next, perhaps?) I also find it kind of awesome that Chuck Mee and Michi Barall are probably the only couple ever to both have a show at the Ohio in the same season...how cool is that??

And, as so helpfully pointed out by Indians for Male Shirtlessness, there is a bathtub scene. So go get yourself some male shirtlessness, if you're into that sort of thing.

3. Becca Blackwell, who rocked the stage as my MC in Genderf*ck, is trying to raise moolah to take her Qweer Punk Rawk trio, Inner Princess, to Istanbul Pride 2010!! Help her out here. Also see her perform whenever possible. Actually see ANYONE from Genderf*ck perform whenever possible. Because they're fabulous. And I miss them. Sigh. I'm sad.

4. Anyone else feel like throwing themselves off a bridge because of tax season?

5. On April 23rd, the fabulous Larry Kunofsky (who happens to be the love of my life) is having a reading at The Potluck! (If you don't know about The Potluck, check yourself before you wreck yourself.) 411 on the reading:

YOUR BOYFRIEND MAY BE IMAGINARY by Larry Kunofsky

Direct from the playwright: “It’s a busy, happening Saturday night in the big City, and everyone we know is throwing a party in their apartment, and we want to go to all the parties tonight, and we will. Apartments! Parties! People! Music! Dancing! Cell phones! Flashbulbs! Making Out! Longing.”

Time and Place:
Friday, April 23, 7:30pm
At Heidi's apartment: 34-25 42nd Street, #1-R, Astoria, NY

Directions: Take the R or V to Steinway. Be at the back of the subway, and exit the subway station at 34th Avenue. When you get through the turnstiles, make a left to get out of the station. Walk straight along 34th Avenue (you should be going east -- you'll see the Brazilian-US Grocery, if you're going in the right direction). In two blocks, make a right onto 42nd Street. We are half way down the block, on the left side of the street. Ring buzzer 1-R. Enter the apartment on the right, at the end of the hall.

Please bring something edible or potable, and please RSVP to potluckplays@yahoo.com.

These Potlucks are always a good time, so bring some food and join us!

OK, it's nearly 2am and that'll have to be all.

You are beautiful inside and out and I validate you.

Some wisdom from Amanda Palmer

2010-04-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

Theatre of Compassion

2010-03-21T21:01:00.000-04:00

I spoke at a panel at Left Forum yesterday, entitled "Creating Lasting Change Through Radical Theatre." Actors from a few different walks of radical theatre performed (including Yolanda Wilkinson performing "Pussies of America" from a previous entry on this blog), and the panelists ranged from yours truly (i.e. young whipper snappers who don't know nothin' about nothin') to the incomparable Joanie Fritz Zosike of The Living Theatre. It was a tremendous experience for many reasons, not least of which was speaking alongside Joanie, but I'm not going to get into every detail of the panel. I will, however, talk a little bit about a term that I talked about at the panel, a term that, as far as I can tell, hasn't been officially "coined" yet as a popular phrase in theatre academia. And that term is "Theatre of Compassion."

I consider myself a compassionate person and a compassionate playwright, and am drawn to work that treats its characters with a compassionate touch. That's one reason I so love the work of The Amoralists, or Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, or Blair Singer's Meg's New Friend. There are no saints or villains in theatre of compassion - or you could say that every character is a bit of both. All these characters have love in them, and insecurities, and terrible shortcomings, and they all fuck up but they really don't mean to or want to. We are given the chance to root for any or all of them, and to be appalled by some or all of them, and to feel some empathy and maybe some discomfort and to make our own conclusions. It's not necessarily a prerequisite for great theater - Ibsen is not big on this, and Ibsen's a genius. But it's the kind of thing I'm digging these days, and the kind of thing I'm trying to write.

So how does this figure into radical theatre? Well, I think if you want someone to listen to you, you should listen to them. We can't say "THIS MUST STOP HAPPENING" and expect it to stop happening if you're not willing to look at WHY it's happening. For instance, plenty of young women on college campuses are enraged at all the violence that is enacted against women and want to stop it. So do I. But why does this violence happen? Violence is a symptom of sickness, not a sickness in and of itself. Who's teaching the violent people to be violent? What are the values that contribute to that teaching process, and how can we interrupt that teaching process?

I don't have all these answers, but I do know this: you can't change people by yelling at them. However, if you disarm them, if you approach them as an equal and not as an evil person, they'll be a lot more likely to listen to you. And this is what I think Theatre of Compassion should do. Theatre of Compassion should say, "Hey. Here's this guy. He's just like you. He's funny and vulnerable and full of longing. He also is obnoxious/ bigoted/ causing harm to other people/ what have you. He's just done something dreadful, but don't dismiss him for it. Think about it. Are you this guy? It's OK if you are. You're not hopeless or evil if you are. But think about it."

I've tried desperately to do this with Genderf*ck. There's a lot that isn't quite there. But I'm fairly certain that at least some of it does do this, and I'm proud because of that.

What do people think? Is this an effective tool of change? What are some other examples of Theatre of Compassion?

an excerpt from "Genderf*ck" for International Women's Day

2010-03-08T23:58:00.000-05:00

KATE: Good afternoon, esteemed employees of Wimpington and Kraine. My name's Kate. Think I passed a couple of you on my way in here today. Nice to see you. I'm representing the Pussies of America; you may simply know us as the PA. I am here today because there have been some charges of sexual harassment in the workplace. I understand that you do not actually want me here, but that my presence here is required, so perhaps you are hoping I will keep this short and sweet. I’m afraid, however, that that won’t be the case.

I'm here to talk to you about bravery.

First, a word about our name. We at Pussies of America have never understood the characterizing of cowards as "pussies." I have encountered many a vagina in my time, but I have never seen a cowardly vagina. Every day, vaginas are sacrificing themselves to bring life into this world. Is this not the purest kind of courage--facing agony in the face and saying, "Bring it"? Yet anyone who fails in their bravery is a "pussy." We degrade pussies when we give their name to cowards.

Conversely, who here has ever met a brave ball sack? If I got my knee too close to your family jewels, what would you do? You’d flinch and scream bloody murder. Can you imagine balls taking the same abuse that pussies do? And yet "grow some balls" among you gentlemen means, "Be courageous."

Here at Pussies of America, we refer to people of courage as "pussies," and to cowards as "ball sacks." This is how I will refer to these two groups of people throughout this speech.

A little background on ball sacks: The first ball sack would be Adam, way back in good ol' Eden. God gets up in Adam's face about eating the fruit, and what does Adam say? "She made me do it." What are we, five? Adam, rather than admitting to his fuckup, passes the blame to Eve. Thus, Adam becomes the first ball sack--the first coward.

Today, things aren't much better. Adam's sons are still total ball sacks. Have a domestic dispute? It's feminism's fault! Accused of rape? Blame hemlines and sexual liberation! Economy sucks? That's what you get for letting women into the work force! Why, oh why, must these wicked women insist on ruining our lives? It's eating up valuable time that they could spend cooking and spreading their legs!

When will you stop whining, gentlemen? You accuse us of being the whiners, yet you are the whiniest, neediest, most insecure ball sacks I've ever seen. Do you hear yourselves when you all get together? "I'm the man, right dawg? I'm the motherfuckin' greatest, right? Come on, who's the man? Tell me I'm the man! VALIDATE MEEEEEEE I FUCKED FIFTY WOMEN AND BASHED TWELVE FAGGOTS PLEASE JUST LOVE ME I'M SO INSECUUUUUURE... [Pause] ...bro."

But not to worry, gents. I'm not here to guilt trip you. I'm here to appeal to your greed. I'm here to tell you that, by being a bigger pussy, you will have everything you've ever wanted--more money, more sex, and more power. Real power.

And your power begins with this little secret: we women know you're scared of us. You don't have to pretend. It's OK to be afraid. You're afraid because even though you infantilize us, belittle us, beat us, we just keep coming back for more, like those damn whack-a-moles at the carnival. We're roaches. Despite millennia of oppression, we're running your companies, running for president, directing and writing your movies and plays. This after you've spent all this time "keeping us in our place." It's bad enough when a fellow guy beats you--how bad will you look if a WOMAN kicks your ass?

I don’t deny that we are terrifying. Our strength makes us so. But this is precisely why you should let us have our way.

If you pussied up and stopped being so insecure, this country could be filthy fucking rich. If you stopped raping us, catcalling us, letting your wife take care of the housework while you go out for beers, promoting our male peers who are doing an inferior job--if you stopped letting every action toward women be dictated by fear, don't you realize this would create more wealth than all the stimulus packages in history combined? Do you think that it is easy for us to produce when you keep trying to intimidate us? And yet we continue to do so. In spades. Imagine what more we could do if we felt safe. Imagine the advances in science, business, art, medicine, aero-fucking-dynamics. You want a cooler iPhone? Then stop fucking women over. It really is that simple.

Moreover, women don't actually want to have sex with cowards. Oh, they still do it, when there's no one else. But it makes you ugly. It makes you unsexy. Your cowardice closes your ears in bed, whether it's to your lover's needs or to the word "no," because to listen to her is to validate her, and that would threaten your status as the most powerful person in the room. But I don't need to tell you that feeling powerful is a huge fucking turn-on, and when women are turned on, their partners get more sex.

And this brings me to power. Don't get me wrong--I know you have plenty of power. You have all the American presidents, more money, and better job titles, but you can't enjoy it because a] your lives are devoid of emotion, b] you know didn’t earn it fair and square, and c] because us damn women still might outperform you and dash it to shit.

Well, that's not real power, now, is it? That's dress-up. That's a ticking time bomb. If you accept us as equals, we promise to give you a run for your money, but never expect to be judged on anything but merit. We promise to enrich your environment with all our knowledge, of which we have quite a bit. And knowledge, of course, is power.

So be a pussy. Be courageous enough to quell your condescension, because it's weak and it doesn't serve you. If you don't... if you keep treating us as children and prostitutes, rather than as your peers--well, that's what you're doing now, and we're still doing pretty OK. But we can help you. A lot. Just saying.

Thank you.

Awesome Knows No Gender.

2010-03-08T23:33:00.003-05:00

Happy International Women's Day, y'all.

Blog for International Women's Day!

2010-02-28T21:09:00.000-05:00

Blog it up, yo.

Emotional constipation.

2010-02-24T20:57:00.000-05:00

So I was watching Funny People, which is a masterpiece for the first two thirds or so, and I thought of something.

See, what makes the first 2/3 of Funny People a masterpiece is its protagonists' inability to deal with shit. Adam Sandler (and I am not giving anything away that you don't learn in the first 5 or 10 minutes), who plays a successful comedian named George Simmons, finds out he is going to die, so he takes a young comedian, Ira (Seth Rogen) under his wing. In one scene, in which our main dudes are getting brunch at a fancy restaurant, Ira asks George to please tell his other friends that he's dying so Ira's not the only one who knows - and Ira starts crying. It's not the kind of crying where you think you're gonna cry too, though - it's gross, kind of embarrassing crying, which just makes the whole thing sadder. And George just chides Ira for embarrassing him in this fancy restaurant and making a scene, but then he does what Ira asked of him. It's a gorgeous scene.

There are a number of other bromance-y scenes like that, in which the only way the protagonists know how to express affection or emotion is through the most bass-ackwards ways possible. It's funny and a little cringe-inducing and kind of great. The last third of the movie basically goes to shit but I won't go into that right now.

I bring this up because it's a very, very dude-tastic movie. Yes, Judd Apatow's wife is in it and yes, she's great, but she's not the focus (until the shitshow of an ending) and she really shouldn't be. This is a movie about a couple of guys who are trying to take care of each other but keep fucking it up and it's really really funny and sad. This movie's biggest asset is its subtext, its understatedness and its subtleties - all of which follow from the fact that these dudes don't know how to be expressive, emotionally healthy human beings.

Follow me a little further and I will propose - though I'm by no means sure of this myself - that the brilliance of Funny People is directly related to the lack of good female roles in Hollywood.

I found myself remembering Sociology readings from good ol' Skidmore College - specifically, Lillian B. Rubin's The Approach-Avoidance Dance: Men, Women and Intimacy and Scott Swain's Covert Intimacy: Closeness in Men’s Friendships. It's been awhile, but as I recall, both essays make the case - with some documentation - that men express affection and experience intimacy through actions and activities, as opposed to verbally. Thus, the Ira/George relationship is not unique. And really, if Ira and George COULD just express themselves a little better and get more in touch with their emotions, it wouldn't be as good of a movie. It wouldn't be as complex/sad/interesting.

So I'm posing the question: do we assume that movies by and about men will be more complex/sad/interesting because we assume as a culture that men are emotionally constipated?

I'm not saying yes or no, I'm just posing the question because it needs to be posed. Emotionally constipated people really do make fantastically interesting characters. But I'm having a hard time thinking of good female examples of this in film; the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, or maaaaybe Juno, who hides behind her wittiness.

What do people think? Am I onto something, or just indulging in some "reverse sexism"?

It's coming.

2010-02-22T17:09:00.000-05:00

saw this today in my inbox

2010-01-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

Why not just call it, "Sausagefest 2010"? Am I right here, people?

Not that I'm knocking Shepard, but just take a look at this: Two plays by the same dude, both directed by dudes, with two dudes on the poster. Considering that A Lie of the Mind also features such powerhouses as Marin Ireland, Laurie Metcalf and Maggie Siff, would it be so terrible to feature just a little bit of estrogen in the artwork?

I personally am totally stoked about Sausagefest 2010 (not that I have the $$ to see it), but since apparently neither Atlantic nor New Group was able to find a female director capable of handling Sam Shepard's genius (which baffles me - every single director I've worked with in New York, in the two years I've lived here, has been female), you'd think they'd try to make it look a little less like, well, Sausagefest 2010.

Just sayin.

I got interviewed again!

2010-01-13T08:46:00.000-05:00

And this time it's personal, folks...

Ashley Marinaccio (one of the coolest human beings ever, BTW), has this awesome blog called People Who Want Change. And I'm on it. And she took some AWESOME pictures of me, too. Go read it. The whole blog kicks ass - it's all about people who are, well, changing the world. I love the questions she asked me, too.

A teaser:

What do you believe in?
I believe in listening. I believe in laughing at ourselves and at tragedy. I believe in some higher something or other, and I believe that this higher something is neither male nor female (or both), and that it has a sense of humor. I believe that every feeling you create, good or bad, comes back to you at the end of your life. I believe that a little androgyny is good for the soul. I believe that art can and does change the world, but not often enough. I believe in gratitude. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in paying it forward.

I wear many hats...

2010-01-05T23:45:00.000-05:00

...the newest of which is producing. I'm the proud Associate Producer of a new happenin' show at Ars Nova, FOUND, based on the popular eponymous magazine. It's THIS FRIDAY ONLY, at 7:30pm and 10pm, and it's so freakin' funny you will pee. I promise. With musical numbers like "The Booty Don't Stop" and a new number called "Mufkins," how could you not?

I've been a fan of FOUND Magazine for years and was delighted to discover that a play of it existed, and that it's crack-your-ribs funny. It's had a few performances in New York already, but this one includes brand new material, including improvised scenes based on the "finds" that audience members bring in. Das right - a brand-spankin'-new scene based on the random crap YOU, yes YOU, bring to the show. Also, ever heard of Pete Holmes? You've probably seen him if you've ever watched a VH1 comedy show or frequent collegehumor.com. Well, he's the opening act on Friday night.

AND ANOTHER FREAKIN' THING: If you're buying two or more tickets, and you use code FOUNDMAG when you buy your tickets, you not only get $15 tickets (regular price $20), you get free copies of FOUND Magazine #7 for you and your date(s). That's right. Discounted ticket + free magazine. Simply because we love you.

Enough blabbing from me - here are the deets!

Story Pirates AfterDark Presents FOUND
Based on the bestselling Found Magazine
At Ars Nova - 511 West 54th (Just west of 10th ave)
Friday, January 8th at 7:30pm and 10pm
With Special Guest: Pete Holmes
Tickets are $20, but bring a friend and get a $15 ticket WITH copies of FOUND Magazine #7 for you and your date!!!

See you there, loves!

so, I fail a little bit at blogging

2009-12-22T00:55:00.000-05:00

Forgive the extended silence. A busy/engaging new job + just having had a show up have given me very little time to devote to the online world. Which is silly, because part of the point of having a blog is so that when you have a show up, you can pimp it out. But hey, I'm only human.

Now that the show has just closed and it's after the fact, though, I'm gonna take a moment to brag a bit about it.

The show is called Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story. The tag line is "A cynical take on star-crossed lesbians and small-town politics, with music and cross-dressing," which I think sums it up quite nicely. Long story short: Romeo and Juliet are two early-twenties chicks in a midwestern college town, and their mothers (played by men in drag - the lovely Ray Chao and Jeremy Lagunas) are running against each other for mayor. There's singing (with music by composition genius Brendan Barr), dancing (including tangoing to Lady Gaga and death by Electric Slide), a freaky-ass dream sequence with Billy Idol karaoke and the most terrifying wedding pictures ever, and two beautiful women who kiss each other A LOT. Basically, you're probably gonna like SOMETHING in this play.

So Act One was performed as part of the Looking Glass's Winter Forum this past weekend, and it went absurdly well. Not only was the Forum sold out for 3 out of 4 performances, but the vibe in the room was just, y'know, good. With laughter and positive feedback and all that stuff.

And the cherry on the sundae was that, now that I'm back in San Diego and considerably warmer, the Forum just had its awards ceremony, for which I was not present. But Ampersand cleaned the f-ck up.

We won:
Best Production (Audience & Judges Awards)
Best Design (lights & sound composition)
Best Script
Best Actress - Brigitte Choura (Juliet - Audience Awards)
Best Actress - a tie! Susan Merenda & Brigitte Choura (Judges Awards)
Best Actor - Craig Hanson (Audience & Judges Awards)
Best Couple - Ray Chao and Jeremy Lagunas (Lady Capulet & Lady Montague - they beat out Romeo and Juliet, but their initials ARE R & J... hmmm...)

So a huge, HUGE congratulations to this amazing cast, crew, and director Amanda Thompson for these well-deserved awards. But there actually is more of a purpose to this blog entry than just patting myself on the back.

As I said, this was just Act One. Act Two is still in process. And I have to say, being able to just focus on one act for production purposes was kind of wonderful. I was able to make the first act as good as possible, develop it with a cast, and get audience feedback, and Act Two is definitely going to be very, very influenced by that process.

So...why isn't this a more common practice? People had a good time; they were left wanting more, and they'll bring their friends back when the whole thing goes up, whenever that may be. It makes the play better. And suppose I'd been on the totally wrong track with Act One? I would have been able to discover that through this process without writing an Act Two that was even more on the wrong track. This seems like something that should happen way more often, and yet I can only think of a couple of other places that would only present an excerpt of a piece: New Dramatists, obvi, and HERE. Plenty of places present works-in-progress, but which places will just do one act? And why aren't there more of them?

Just a thought.

I'm probably going to continue to suck at blogging for a little while, but everyone have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Girls with guns

2009-11-03T18:28:00.000-05:00

Good going, TCG. Marsha Norman's fantastic essay on the underrepresentation of female playwrights spoke to me in light of my recent musings on male vs. female plays. A (somewhat long, but too good to cut) sound byte:

This brings us to the final group that has been blamed for the underrepresentation of women in the theatre—the playwrights themselves. Women's plays are boring, people say. They have too much talk and there's no event. They choose "soft" subjects and aren't aggressive enough about promoting themselves and their work.

But I fear that a more accurate picture of the writing complaint can be seen in something the late critic and author Mel Gussow once told me. He said, "Marsha, people like the plays of yours where the women have guns." In other words, Gussow was saying, people like plays in which the women act like guys, talk like guys, wave guns around and threaten to kill each other. In my experience, his observation is true. The critics have liked my "guy" plays—the ones with guns in them—and pretty much trashed the rest. Seven of the nine plays I have written go virtually unperformed. Thank God I had the sense to write for television and film and write books for big musicals, so I could get health insurance, feed my family and can now afford to teach.

Are those other seven plays of mine worse than Getting Out and 'night, Mother? Well, how would you know? You haven't seen them. They are perceived to be "girl plays," concerned with loss and death, love and betrayal, friendship and family. But no guns.

Are you with me here? There's no such thing as a girl play. But the girl's name on the cover of the script leads the reader to expect a certain "soft" kind of play. I don't get this. Lillian Hellman did not write girl plays. Neither did Jean Kerr or Lorraine Hansberry or Mary Chase.

The expectation of soft work from women writers comes from something way more awful in the society—the commercial romantic idea that all female stuff is soft, an advertising idea. Buy these products and you will have soft hair, soft skin and a soft voice. Unfortunately for writers, soft is perceived as playful and decorative and insignificant, not worthy of our time. We don't like soft in this country—we like hard here. Hard guy stuff, like in guy plays.

The problem is—and I say this having seen what feels like thousands of them—plays by men are not more violent or more active or smarter or raunchier or more tragic or more anything than plays by women. But plays by men are expected to be better even before they are seen, even before they are read—even, yes, before they are written. This is bias, pure and simple. And we also don't like bias in this country, so it's time to stop thinking this way. Women's plays are written by women, that is all.

What's up with those atheists?

2009-10-22T17:46:00.000-04:00

So I was a little miffed, and not totally comfortable, when I briefly glanced a news story in my neighbor's newspaper about the subway ad campaign by the Big Apple Coalition of Reason. And, upon reading further, I'm only more miffed, and less comfortable.

Yes, yes, freedom of speech; yes, yes, plenty of religious organizations (notice I did not say "other" religious organizations, since atheism likes not being a religion) have subway ads. I'm not contesting that they have the RIGHT to put up the ad. But, um, what's the point?

First of all, to call an atheism-awareness group the "coalition of reason" is kind of insulting to people of any religious belief. The implication of the name is, "we're reasonable BECAUSE we're atheist - therefore you, believer, are unreasonable." Reason and religious belief are not mutually exclusive.

Secondly, do atheists in New York really need an advocacy group? Maybe it's because I work in the arts (where, sadly, people of faith are often assumed to be closed-minded/stupid/have leprosy), but I don't really know any atheists in New York who think, "Gosh, if only I knew OTHER New Yorkers who didn't believe in God!" Sure, there are a ton of religious communities here, but I have trouble imagining that they're so prolific as to make an atheist here think he/she/ze is the only one. Other parts of the country, OK. But New York? C'mon. The "one million" statistic also seems a bit shady to me - according to the linked article, apparently it's an extrapolation of the statistic that 15% of Americans are atheist. Well, New York ain't the rest of America, honey. I'm not sure whether the statistic would be lower or higher if you actually polled New Yorkers directly, but this is certainly not a typical American landscape.

Thirdly, those ads cost $25,000. Apparently this ad is supposed to bring awareness to the fact that you can be a good person without religion. A) Is the being-good-without-religion thing news to any atheists? and B) If your prime concern is being a good person, why not put your $25,000 where it will actually DO good? Pick a charity, any charity. Yes, that money was donated to Big Apple CoR with the specific purpose of putting up these ads. So I ask you, oh anonymous donor: why in the nonexistent-hell would you want to spend your $25,000 on that?

My own spirituality has nothing to do with my objections to these ads. I do believe in God, but I'm a mediocre-to-dreadful practitioner of religion, and probably have more in common - at least in my external practices - with this ad's target audience than with most of the people who will be upset by it. But I have difficulty believing that BACoR really hopes to encourage "talking and thinking about religion and morality," as they claim. If that were the case, why not try an inter-religious community like Faith House Manhattan? I have trouble even imagining what you'd talk about at a BACoR meeting. When you believe in an entity/entities, you can go on for years and decades and centuries and millenia about HOW said entity/ies exist and manifest, who it is, what that entity/entities did/does, etc. What do you talk about when you're all agreed that there are no entities? Yes, there are some fascinating conversations about morality that you can have without ever bringing up any sort of deity. If those are the conversations you're having at your meetings, why limit its participants to atheists?

All right, I lied. My own spirituality IS related to my objections, but not because I think there's anything inherently wrong with being an atheist. It's because, as a person who was raised Catholic who attended a liberal arts college and then moved to NYC, I've heard the "well I just think organized religion in general does more harm than good" argument an awful lot and it never ceases to bother me. Because of this bias, I can't shake my knee-jerk mental image of BACoR as a place where they just sit around saying "fuck organized religion!" all day. Yes, organized religion has done plenty of harm in its day. I know very few people--least of all its practitioners--who would deny that. But when it reminds us to be kind, to be thoughtful, to love and to share, it's the shit. No, you don't need religion to do that; nor do I need a history class to read up on the events of World War II, but I'm probably not going to do so unless it's within some kind of structure. Structure gets people to do things, good things, that they wouldn't do on their own.

So I suppose BACoR is an effort to provide people of no religious persuasion with that same kind of structure, and power to 'em. But since you're forging your own path here anyway, why must your community be exclusively atheist? If a deeper understanding of morality really is your goal, don't you have more to gain by making your community as diverse as possible? Unless, like some people I've met, you assume that everyone of faith is trying to convert you and you want to circumvent that. But, then, that's your bad for making that assumption in the first place.

Middlemen

2009-10-20T22:28:00.000-04:00

I had one of those really lovely theater experiences last night, where everything just kind of works. That experience was the inaugural Human Animals production, Middlemen at Walkerspace. In it, two middle-level employees come in early for what they think will be an ordinary day of work, and instead end up getting drunk and possibly bankrupting Bolivia. Despite this silly description (and it is silly for sure), it's also an oddly tender, lovely play, with Godot-ish camaraderie and just-barely-staved-off despair. There's also a truly badass set (theater in the round FTW!), with soul-crushing fluorescent lights and walls of metal filing cabinets.

But it is the two actors who make this evening such a joy. Every playwright should be so lucky, to have every word of theirs given as much care as Michael Crane and Christopher Burns give David Jenkins' lines. Not every line is a gem, but in the mouths of these two, you can't really tell. When the play takes a shift that maybe it hasn't completely earned, it's hard to even care because the place that Crane and Burns are taking us is so exhilarating. And being able to look dead-on at your fellow audience member is a real treat. There were two girls who looked like they were in high school sitting across from me, who looked completely involved and invested in a way I haven't seen in a while.

Unemployed? No problem - they offer free tickets with proof of unemployment. Employed? I was fortunate enough to see it on a pay-what-you-can night, but I don't know when else they offer that, if ever. Even so, it's well worth the $18.

This is the inaugural production of Human Animals, and if this is what they start out with, I can't wait to see what they do next. Go forth, laugh, prosper, and be merry.

11-1, men

2009-10-16T17:52:00.000-04:00

American Theatre Magazine just posted a list of the most produced playwrights in the 2009-10 season. And, surprise surprise, the men far outnumber the women in this list. 11-1, to be exact. That's about 92% men, 8% women.

So I thought, hm, maybe if I look at the list of most-produced plays, it won't be quite so lopsided. Maybe there are more female playwrights that are just getting one play produced a number of times in the season. But, sadly, that list is only slightly better. It's a Top 14 list instead of a Top 12, which brings the ratio to 11-3. That's 79% men, 21% women - and that's only if you count 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which the book writer is female, and Boeing-Boeing, for which the translator is female. If you don't count them, it's 13-1 - 93% men to 7% women. In both cases, of course, Sarah Ruhl is the 1.

Um, what's up with that?

Don't get me wrong, Sarah Ruhl very, very much deserves that spot. But she is by no means the only one. In my interview on Adam Szymkowicz's blog, 80% of my favorite plays of the year were by women. Now, granted, I'm by no means unbiased. If I see that a play has both a male playwright and a male director, something else has to bring me to that play - either it's got to sound really compelling, or be by someone so good or famous I can't resist, or have someone I know in the show. I'm a bit more likely to take a chance on a female playwright, especially if there's also a female director. Also, four of those plays were by people I knew. Nor am I, or should I be, the authority on what a good play is. Nevertheless, I don't understand why, say, Scarcity or Ruined aren't getting oodles of productions, and a lot of people would agree with me.

In short, American theaters, all I gotta say is: why you gotta be ignorant all your life?

No homo.

2009-10-14T01:13:00.001-04:00

Somehow I'd missed out on the phenomenon that is "no homo" until now. This is exactly what my life has been missing!

Against the Night

2009-10-13T22:16:00.000-04:00

If you have not yet discovered the beauty and genius that is Jason Webley, I consider it my duty to share him with you.

Some have compared him to Tom Waits:

There are definitely worse people to be compared to.

I got interviewed!

2009-10-12T22:54:00.000-04:00

Adam Szymkowicz runs a sweet-ass blog where he interviews playwrights, and he interviewed me! Check me out...

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Current Town: Astoria, NY

Q: You have a couple shows coming up. Can you talk a little about the plays and productions?

A: The first play I have coming up is Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story, the first act of which will be performed as part of the Looking Glass Theatre's Winter Forum (December 17-20). It's a contemporary cynical lesbian adaptation of, you guessed it, Romeo and Juliet--with music and cross-dressing. Keep reading...

pop.

2009-10-06T00:14:00.000-04:00

I have resisted pop for years. I am too cool for pop. I'm too busy discovering indie bands that you haven't heard of but will know in two years. I'm an artsy creative theater artist and I am so much better than pop.

But it's time to fess up.

Confession #1: Lady Gaga gives me an artistic boner. Not with her music - it's about as generic and safe as pop music gets, though she's shown with her live performances that she has genuine talent - but with stuff like this:

Paparazzi - Lady Gaga from George Maxwell on Vimeo.

From the indulgent two-and-a-half-minute prologue, to the entrance on stilettos & crutches, to the random shots of dead Lady Gaga and the multiple false endings, this video is pure over-the-top genius. I think the "Paparazzi" video is to rock star decadence what Enchanted was to cheesy Disney movies: simultaneously embodying and mocking a paradigm or stereotype. Moreover, it's scary. It elicits discomfort, it's jarring - I mean, just the "hanging" shot alone would be enough to make this video disturbing, but this video has dozens of such moments.

I also am delighted to see a mainstream artist daring to not make complete sense (what are those dogs doing there? why are those people licking each other?). While the act of not making sense does not make you brave in and of itself, it's a welcome change from the safety of, say, an average Britney Spears video. I've given up on hating Britney Spears - I must admit I feel pity for her - but let's hate on her videos for a moment. Each video follows the same script: this is Britney. Britney is sexy. Watch Britney and some other sexy people dance. Even "Womanizer," which prides itself on the illusion of ain't-taking-no-shit girl power, still follows this script: telling off this womanizer, no matter which identity she does it as, generally seems to involve rubbing her body all over him. Is this punishment? Doesn't look like it.

"Paparazzi," on the other hand, while it's certainly got some sexy in it, is kind of too weird to be sexy - which makes it far more interesting. I'll take Lady Gaga in that Mickey Mouse outfit poisoning her boyfriend over seeing Britney naked AGAIN any day, thank you very much.

I think the world needs Lady Gaga. We need mainstream pop artists who are willing to bleed all over the stage at the VMAs. What ever happened to the Marilyn Mansons? The non-marginalized shock rockers? Lady Gaga is no Manson, but she's a very welcome distant cousin.

Confession #2: I don't mind "I Kissed a Girl." I know this makes me a bad queer, but I really don't. Yes, it's exhibitionistic and playing into male fantasies. News flash: female pop artists have been being exhibitionistic and playing into male fantasies for quite a long time. Here's what makes this song OK with me: first and foremost, it's teaching the next generation of girls that kissing girls is, well, an option. No, it doesn't portray girl-kissing in the context of healthy happy relationships, but that's the next step; we need to start with "I Kissed a Girl" before we can move onto "So I Kissed That Girl Again and I Still Liked It and I Think I Want to Get a Cat with Her." The music video is also mercifully non-exploitative, in that there is no actual girl-kissing; it leaves the anonymous makeout session in our imagination, where it belongs.

I will grant that the "hope my boyfriend don't mind it" line is frustrating, because it screams: "Don't worry, guys, Katy Perry's straight! This girl-on-girl makeout session was no threat to you, and you can still have sex with her!" But, all in good time.

My bigger beef with Katy Perry is with the Hot N Cold video. It's almost a really great video; the disgruntled brides with baseball bats are a hell of an image, and the song is a great rallying cry for those of us who've dealt with the hell that is a wishy-washy partner (or would-be partner). But then in the end, she still marries the guy! Basically the same message as "hope my boyfriend don't mind it": Don't worry, guys, Katy Perry might get pissed off at you, but you can be as much of a noncommital shmuck as you want and she will stay with you! The guy doesn't always have to get the girl, Katy Perry. Give it some thought.

Confession #3: Kanye West was right. He's still a tool, but he was right. There's a reason "Single Ladies" was an instant classic. Its simplicity makes it damn near aesthetically perfect, and as with "Paparazzi," its weirdness is its asset. Some of the dancing is sexy, but a lot of it is kind of awkward; this makes it distinctive and interesting to watch, especially to see how Beyonce manages to whip through all of it and make it look easy. There's no pretense at a plotline, no glamorous club scenes, just three ladies doing something they do very, very well: dancing their asses off.

However, Kanye: you are still a tool, and Taylor Swift's You Belong with Me, as Disney Channel as it may be in sound, theme and look, is a "beauty is on the inside" anthem I really wish I'd had in high school. Finally: a band geek who gets the guy! And even though the butterfly transformation at the end of the video is as cliche as it gets, he liked her when she was still dorky. This is huge news for heretofore underrepresented girl-dorks everywhere! We can play in band, dance around our bedrooms like freaks, and still get the guy! Thank you, Taylor Swift!

I'm out of confessions, so I leave you with my favorite "beauty is on the inside" anthem, Pink's hilarious "Stupid Girls."

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work

2009-09-23T17:45:00.000-04:00

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Stolen from Fem!n*Ally

we can't stand on the shoulders of giants unless we know who they are

2009-09-21T15:13:00.000-04:00

Blog's got a new name. "I Kick Men's Asses and I Vote" was more aggressive than I really am or intend to be, and doesn't mesh with the "nice feminist" moniker. So because the focus of this blog will largely be on gender, theater, and the intersection between the two, we now have the slightly cheesy "A Rehearsal Room of One's Own." Enjoy.

I've found myself puzzling lately as to whether there is, or whether we assume there is, a "male aesthetic" and a "female aesthetic." (Forgive me if the use of quotes gets tiresome - they're employed solely because I doubt the validity of "male" and "female" as labels when it comes to art or pretty much anything.) My teenage hero Neil Gaiman believes that all books have genders, and his examples of "male" and "female" books make sense. I had a playwriting teacher refer to another student's play, which dealt largely with teen boys having sex and the inability to express emotion/affection except as it related to sex, as an "intensely male" play. And another playwriting teacher once pointed out that most of the women in the class had written more lyrical/poetic, less linear plays, while the two guys in the class had written within more linear, recognizable structures - both plays were mostly naturalistic, about fathers and sons, about tough love, about some form of abuse, etc. She said that this - including the larger population of women - was typical of most classes she'd taught.

Is there something to this? Do women tend toward the experimental, while men keep to "tried-and-true" structures involving family, violence, and sex?

On the one hand, I can think of dozens of examples off the top of my head to support this. Another kind of "male aesthetic" I can think of is, say, a stereotypical Mamet play - where there's a bunch of men being violent, chauvinistic, and a little crazy. I know that when I put it like that, it sounds like I don't care much for plays like that, but even I can't deny how good and fascinating some plays/movies like this are: Goodfellas, Stephen Adly Guirgis's In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, Mamet's Edmund, etc. And as far as the butch "family plays" go, there are of course your Arthur Millers and your Eugene O'Neills, and their dozens of descendants. Classic, vital stuff.

When the time comes to think of women playwrights, though, I have to mainly think of the ones that are alive now, because I've had such little access to my predecessors. There's no shortage of women to cite as examples of the lyrical and the unconventional: my former teacher Stephanie Fleischmann, Naomi Iizuka, Sarah Ruhl, Maria Irene Fornes, the list goes on. But with the exception of Lillian Helman, I really can't think of ANY female playwrights - lyrical or not - from earlier in the 20th century, and certainly not from pre-1900 (other than Aphra Behn, who I honestly only know about because of Liz Duffy Adams's sexy new play Or). Here, I quote Crystal Skillman from her report on the 50/50 in 2020 event: "As Susan read the list of women playwrights in history - Elizabeth Inchbald, Cicely Hamilton, Eva Le Gallienne, Margaret Webster, Hallie Flanagan - I realized I didn’t know who they are. Any of them. And I’m a theatre geek!" Therefore, any conversation about non-male playwrights ends up being sadly limited to a contemporary context. Not that there is ANY shortage of talented people working today (of ~~both~~ all genders), but when our models of "the greats" are almost exclusively male, no wonder women don't get produced.

I can easily think of a number of "male-to-female" crossovers like Lorca and Genet, as opposed to very few "female-to-male" crossovers (the only examples I can think of immediately are Lucy Thurber - whose Killers and Other Families you MUST see at Rattlestick - and Sheila Callaghan. And neither example is an exact fit of what I'm talking about - which, in my opinion, is a testament to their genius, but more on that later). But again, Lorca and Genet are "classics," studied in many a classroom, and dead. Callaghan and Thurber are very much alive. Why don't I, a total theater geek, know about Lorca's and Genet's female contemporaries? Where my dead ladies at?

This conversation is bigger than I have time to blog about, but at the end of the day - as was so helpfully pointed out at the 50/50 in 2020 event - we can't stand on the shoulders of giants unless we know who they are. Any argument about the way men and women "tend" to write is bullshit if you're not looking at the whole picture. Frankly, I think it's bullshit anyway - men and women are writing in all kinds of different ways, and we should embrace all of them on their own merit rather than try to isolate patterns based on gender. But again, when my predecessors have been starkly absent from my education, from most anthologies of theater history, etc, we can't even have that conversation.

Amidst the hubbub about the drastic underrepresentation of female playwrights, one argument has been that men write more conventional, commercially marketable plays, while women write "kookier" stuff that is harder to sell. Well...I call shenanigans on that. Look at the whole canon of work, not just male work, and then we'll talk.

"I am a WRECK without you!"

2009-08-27T11:33:00.001-04:00

Amazing.

Death Panel Advisors - watch more funny videos

Yet another asshole with a blog.

2009-08-26T01:34:00.000-04:00

I kept telling myself I was going to get a blog, and then I finally got one.

The straw that broke the camel's back was going to a really amazing event tonight at the Women's Project, "50/50 by 2020" - a panel/event revolving around the idea that we can, and will, have gender parity in the theater by the year 2020. (Side note: every time I hear "gender parity," I always hear it as "gender parody." I personally think we should have way more gender parody in theater by the year 2020, but that's neither here nor there.) That means that women and men will be employed in equal numbers as playwrights, directors, designers, etc - a big leap from today, where just 12.6% of plays at major New York nonprofits are by women. (Also, I found out tonight: the bigger the budget, the fewer female playwrights/directors they employ. Sad.)

I was both energized and frustrated by the event. Energized, because it seems very possible: by putting pressure on theaters all around the country and not just in New York; by established theater artists acting as mentors to emerging artists, and emerging artists seeking those mentors out, and women creating a home for each other (something we often do quite well); by addressing the gender disparity at the funding level; on and on - a lot of great ideas were proposed.

But I was frustrated too. For one, I was a bit dismayed by the contempt displayed for the recent study by Emily Sands on discrimination against female playwrights. One presenter objected to the conjecture that female artistic directors and literary managers are harsher on female playwrights than their male counterparts - a conjecture that, admittedly, publications ran with before examining it too closely. The minute the name "Emily Sands" was mentioned, a number of people muttered or snickered contemptuously, and I'm not quite sure why. I was there the night that Ms. Sands publicly presented her findings, and I, too, was a bit uncomfortable with some aspects of the presentation - using the grossly incomplete information on doollee.com to draw conclusions about how many plays are being written/produced, for instance. But the bottom line of the Sands study was that women ARE being discriminated against as playwrights, and as female theatre artists, it seems to make no sense to place ourselves in opposition to Ms. Sands.

I was further dismayed by how little I'd heard about the event beforehand, and the lack of familiar faces I saw there. At the Sands presentation, I saw tons of people I knew, and a small handful of men; here, I knew only a couple of people, and verrrrry few men. Now, it was still a full house, and this of course delighted me, and naturally the success of an event on the whole has nothing to do with how many people I know there. But the fact that I knew no one there means that they were two different crowds, and this is what disturbs me. Do I think that as widespread of an audience as possible should hear this message? Of course. But the Sands study was meant to be a starting point, the beginning of a dialogue, not the dialogue in itself, and it was presented as such. Here was a chance for that dialogue to continue, and yet none of the people I knew who had attended that first event were here. I saw such an impassioned, resolved crowd after the Sands presentation, I assumed surely I'd see them there tonight. But they weren't there, for whatever reason. Maybe they found out ahead of time that they were going to diss on Emily Sands. I don't know.

Whatever the reason for the two different crowds, this event certainly encouraged the crowd to be much more proactive and concrete-thinking than the Sands presentation did, through no fault of Ms. Sands's; she is an economist, not an activist, and it was not her place to suggest the next course of action. But it seems like a missed opportunity, that so many of those passionate, appropriately enraged women weren't there tonight to discuss the most important question of all: what the hell do we do next??? (Fortunately, a website and email list are in the works to keep people in the loop and keep the conversation going, so don't worry too much if you wanted to be there but couldn't make it. I'll keep you posted.)

Long story short: no one is going to wave a magic wand and create gender parity (/parody) overnight. But the more voices there are, the harder it's going to be to ignore us. And one way to be loud is...to blog. So here is my blog.

(Re: my blog name, by the way - "nice feminist" - is because while I may be enraged, passionate, and loud, I also strive to be a kind, loving, compassionate person, and would love to see the "bitchy feminist" stereotype die out, stat. So I'm not going to sit down and pretend that sexism doesn't exist, but I also enjoy things like hugging and going to the beach and spooning my boyfriend and telling jokes that only five-year-olds would find funny. "I kick men's asses and I vote" is an Achewood reference, but both happen to be true.)

Going back to diversity: I find myself conflicted because, in a way, it seems like one of the most effective ways to make theater more diverse is to do it on the sly. I find myself thinking of something that Vampire Cowboys said at a panel after Soul Samurai: one of their secret missions - which you will never find in writing in any of their literature - is to reflect diversity onstage. (Sorry for blowing your cover, VC.) Because if people come to their shows for awesome fight sequences and robots and vampires, and their favorite superhero in the show is played by an actor of color, they'll take that with them, even when the shows apparently have nothing to do with race.

Or, take New Georges. They (along with VC, incidentally) just got a shout-out in L Magazine, and with good reason - I've never seen anything by them that didn't rock my socks in one way or another. But you can see a New Georges play and never realize that they're a theater company specifically for women, because it's not advertised on a huge kiosk above the theater like it is at the Women's Project. I'm not saying one is better than the other - Women's Project just added a third show to their season, so they're doing quite well for themselves too (and I'd hate for it to seem like I was pitting women's theaters against each other - solidarity, y'all). But when you "sneak" diversity in, you normalize it. And it should be normal. Diversity should not be remarkable, but sadly, it is. But maybe a way to make it the norm is to treat it as such, at least in public - and then behind the scenes, commit yourself totally to a diverse workplace, a diverse cast, and a diverse season.

On the other hand, when you're championing a voice or a story that won't get heard elsewhere, you should be proud. Why should you have to be secretive about it? As an employee of a pretty awesome Asian-American theater company, I believe very strongly in championing voices that otherwise would go unheard. And for all the naysayers who think limiting yourself to such a specific niche will somehow get in the way of producing quality work, I say, check out Ma-Yi's work. You might notice that it's, well, fucking awesome. I've only been with them for the past year and a half, so I can't speak to any productions that were before my time. But I do know that, according to some of the interviews I've scanned and archived, the founders were some of the (if not the) only Filipino actors in New York at the time, and it was damn difficult to cast something with an all-Filipino cast. That's a much different story today - I've organized our head shot files, and there are plenty of Filipino actors in them.

The moral: if you build it, they will come. I have no idea whether the first plays produced by Ma-Yi were as great as the stuff they do now, but even if it wasn't, it sent the message that you can be Filipino AND be an actor - what a concept. So now we have more actors of color, and can keep doing awesome, culturally specific theater. That end would not have been served by being "sneaky" or blasé about their mission.

What are your thoughts? Is it more effective to advertise your commitment to diversity, or to simply let it be a fact of your production/ theater company and let it seep into the collective unconscious? Comments are incredibly welcome and encouraged. Make my new blog feel at home in the blogosphere.