Parabasis

From The Recipe File: Mascarpone Spread

I'm a big fan of the following, which I was introduced to by Dan, my favorite food guy in the world, who is currently working at Stinky, the pretty-new specialty food/cheese shop on Smith St. in Cobble Hill. If you happen to see Dan at Stinky, tell him I say "hey".

Mascarpone is... well, it's basically Italian cream cheese, but it's a lot more luxurious than that. It's a very fresh, very rich cow's milk cheese with a shitload of fat in it. It's got an awesome, somewhat sweet, sticky flavor to it. You can buy it in many places, although a supermarket might not be the best place to look for it. Anyway.. here is a nice spread you can make with it:

Ingredients:
Mascarpone Cheese
Honey
Ground Cinnamon

1) Dump your carton of Mascarpone out into a bowl
2) Begin adding honey and ground cinnamon to taste. This is going to be different for everyone, so quantities are a bit useless, but go ahead and make the whole carton of Mascarpone. It'll keep for a week or two. I like to add enough honey that it is *just* sweet, and enough cinnamon to make it look flecked with golden brown.

Two examples of uses:

(1) With dried figs. Take dried figs. Cut off the woody tips. Cut in half. Then cut a little slit lengthwise down the fleshy part exposed by cutting them in half. Pinch them open, spread a little Mascarpone Spread on the face of the fig. Refrigerate.

(2) On english muffins. Here is the little breakfast I made myself this morning:
Ingredients:
Egg
Butter
Cream
English Muffin
Mascarpone Spread
Seasoning

-- Preheat your oven (or, for me, toaster oven, it's faster) to 375 degrees
-- Take a rammekin and butter it
-- Put a small amount (like 2 tsp. at most) of cream in the rammekin
-- Crack an egg into the rammekin (DO NOT BEAT THE EGG OR BREAK THE YOLK)
-- Put in the toaster over for at least 10 minutes. Really, the doneness is up to you, but traditionally, the yolk should just be set and the whites should just be solidified. But if it's more well-done than that, it'll still taste good
-- Take the rammekin out (it'll be hot!) and put it on your counter. Season how you like it (for me, pinch of salt, quite a bit of ground pepper and a pinch of oregano)
-- While the egg is cooling (don't forget, it'll cook more because the rammekin contains a lot of ambient heat), turn your toaster oven up to "toast" and toast the english muffin
-- Spread the Mascarpone Spread on the English muffin, and enjoy your delicious breakfast mix of sweet and savory

(if you decide not to make Mascarpone Spread, obv. you can have your english muffin any way you like it. this is a really delicious, simple and cheap breakfast)

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

NBC has done a fairly brilliant and innovative move in marketing two of their new television shows, the Aaron Sorkin/Thomas Schlamme project Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and the thriller television show (Starring, amongst others Six Feet Under's Jeremy Sisto) Kidnapped. They released both pilots on a DVD to Netflix subscribers. Having just finished watching the first one yesterday, I think a little advance reviewing... or at least advance ruminating... is in order.

First off, let's just make some things clear. I was practically salivating when the show was announced. Aaron Sorkin is the second best writer working in television next to David Simon. He manages to write in a distinctive style that borrows from the best tradition of theatrical American Realism. Sorkin's two previous efforts-- The West Wing and Sports Night are both remarkable in that they are, at the heart, feel-good efforts that pull off the considerable feat of being neither condescending nor false. And into it Thomas Schlamme, Sorkin's almost-symbiotic director and producer, and you've got a behind-the-scenes dream team.

Not to mention that for an hour long dramedy, it had a good cast of established and newcomer talent. Television stalwarts like Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford and Stephen Weber, a well-liked and very well known comedian (DL Hughley) and Amanda Peet, who I think has always shows more talent than the projects she chooses deserve (and, at least in Igby Goes Down some non-comedic acting chops).

The good news is that Studio 60 might shape up to be a really great television show. The bad news is that it isn't, yet, and could very easily not be in the future.

This is difficult to judge based solely on the pilot, which has a lot of backstory and premise to establish very quickly, and thus isn't allowed to do much else (and, let's face it, it's the "much else" that is Sorkin's strong suit). Quick recap: Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford play an ex-writer and ex-director for a long running successful sketch comedy show on the NBS network. When Judd Hirsch, the executive producer of the show, has a Paddy Chayevsky moment on the air after being forced to cut a sketch due to potential sensitivities amongst more religious viewers, he is fired. Newcomer exec. Amanda Peet suggests bringing Perry and Whtiford back and giving them the show. The problem? They were fired by Peet's boss, the villain of the show, Stephen Weber. Oh, and Matthew Perry, until very recently, was seriously involved with one of the shows' stars, played by Sarah Paulson.

That's a lot of set up. Sports Night and The West Wing had much simpler premises ("we're behind the scenes of a sports show!" and "we're behind the scenes of the white house!" respectively) and allowed character backstory and premise to gradually expand. Part of how this worked (and worked well) is that both stories started In Medias Res. The West Wing took place during the second year of the Bartlet administration, while Sports Night's eponomous TV show had been on the air for some time.

This leads the pilot to suffer from a serious saying-it-instead-of-showing-it problem, a frequent Sorkian trap. Another trap that the shows falls into is using characters in purely functional ways. As in The West Wing's Zoe and Charlie relationship, in which two actors who clearly had no chemistry together and couldn't muster any believable spart were asked to date so that the show could tackle racism, Studio 60 gives Sarah Paulson's character a rather inauthentic seeming christianity. Yep. She's a devout Christian. She prays before every show. Oh, and she also talks about accepting Jesus Christ as her personal savior.

I sincerely wish that Sorkin didn't feel a need to create another Ainsley Hayes in order to pretend that his show somehow presents a more balanced world view than his own. To paraphrase one of Sorkin's previous creations... Let Sorkin Be Sorkin, damnit. It becomes even more embarrassing considering that Sarah Paulson isn't capable of covering up for Sorkin's more heavy handed momets with good acting. Richard Schiff, who was asked on a couple of occasions to use Toby on more functional rather than character based moments (Toby's dad was a hit man for Murder Inc? Really?), was a genius at making Sorkin's writing soar (and is still, to my mind, the best at delivering a Sorkin monologue). Paulson is, um, bland. You just don't believe that this person is an exceptionally talented sketch comedian who helms the most popular comedy show on television. She has the personality for, I don't know, an executive, a behind the scenes person, a civilian, in other words.

But who knows? Remember Mandy on the first season of The West Wing? Total and complete disaster. The show was still brilliat, and got brilliant-er even after they just kinda erased her (perhaps Anthony LaPaglia could go find whatever happened to the character they pretended never existed).

That said, this is one episode. I'm willing to give Sorkin a lot more breathing room than that. Especially now that the premise has been dealt with, I'm hoping he has more room to stretch and flex his considerable writing muscles. And there's considerable potential in the interplay between Whitford and Perry, who work off each other and complement each other's talents well. You buy their lifelong friendship, and you believe that they're talented.

Also, I think there's a good chance that, considering how plot driven this episode is, we might be looking at a Sorkin more interested in serializing a larger-scale plot arc than in his previous two shows, which sometimes saw long-term plots set up only to vanish or fold like houses of cards (what happened to the prostitute character after she was unmasked? why didn't they ever show Charlie and Zoey actually breaking up?) or surface just long enough to provide a good season finale closer. Maybe he's trying to do something a bit bigger here. Who knows? Or maybe he felt all that back story is important for doing whatever he has planned next for the characters. And, looking at the behind the scenes material, it appears that character actor stalwarts Terry Handler and Carlos Jackott (go Brewers!), which is exciting.

I'll give it a month or two of slavish devotion before decided whether or not it's time to give it the heave ho. For right now, though, it remains unevenly written and acted, with a lot of potential to become something worth following. The real problem: I seriously doubt people who aren't already inducted into the Cult of Sorkin will follow it beyod the pilot. And that might mean the show never gets a chance to grow into anything good. Hopefully, NBC has distributed more episodes to critics, and hopefully they improve.

Praise and Scorn

I just wanted to quickly say that I'm really proud of Virginia, in a way. The latest polls from Virginia do, in some ways, counteract a lot of stereotypes that people (including this son of Virginians, raised in D.C.) have about the State and its inhabitants. I had assumed that when Senator George Allen was revealed as a white supremacist on YouTube, most people wouldn't really care.

As it turns out, they did. An almost 20 point race is, at last polling, a less than 10 point race. Jim Webb might be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat on this one (especially with a little help from his friends).

(NB I'm not saying that people who continue to support Senator George Felix Allen are turning a blind eye to/ignoring/embracing his white supremacist leanings. I assume they have different priorities. George Allen pretty much supports Bush on most things, including staying in Iraq for the forseeable and indefinite future. Jim Webb does not. There are understandable policy reasons why someone would continue to support George Allen, despite the fact that he is a racist. I might disagree with those reasons and that decision, but that does not make those people racists.

NB II: I would also say that some people probably aren't convinced that George Allen is a racist. Considering that pretty much each individual incident in his life that has revealed his racism can be semi-plausibly explained away, I understand this position too, even though I disagree with it. To me, the accumulation of the confederate flag pin in high school, the noose hung from a branch in his office, declaring April Confederate History Month without mentioning slavery and portraying the Civil War as a war of independance fought by valiant freedom fighters, his voting record and, finally, "Macaca" is almost irrefutable proof that he is a racist. To some people, he just might be a wanker. Or all of these things might be taken out of context. Or whatever. I don't think so. But I can understand why some people might.

In other words... those who have signed on with Jim Webb or have switched to being undecided should be commended, but that does not mean that those who haven't should be condemned. )

In other news... What the fuck is the matter with New Jersey? Sheesh...

More Innovative Thinking

I think this should be some required reading, personally. So remember awhile back when I posted on that Will Saletan article about the evils of airconditioning? (If you want a brush up on it, check the article out here).

Several people asked me how this was innovative thinking. I responded by saying that it was a creative way of diagnosing a problem, looking at how AC was making the outside hotter, thus creating a need for more air conditioning. But they were right in that it contained no innovative way of tackling the problem.

Enter Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point. Actually, enter Malcolm Gladwell's dad who decided to figure out a way to make geothermal heating and cooling work for his house. In Ontario. Not Iceland. Ontario. The post on Gladwell's blog is actually really fascinating, and highlights a real, practical, good investment. Not for us in New York, but for larger buildings, residences, etc. Really interesting stuff, writtet in a way that's cogent and easy to understand. Check it out here.

PS: Here's an article about an apartment building in TriBeCa that uses Geothermal heating and cooling.

Macacagate Update

AmericaBlog has the latest here. Basically... the race has tightened to a 5 point race over the course of a week. That means that Jim Webb is actually within striking distance. Please consider finding out more about him (and giving him money) here.

I HAVE ARRIVED

I was at a birthday party on Thursday and was, like, recognized by one of the guests. Now, it was a theater blogger's birthday party, so it's not like the time I recognized Lindsay Bayerstein on the subway and was like "dude, are you Majikthise?" which was probably, like, totally awesome.

But it was just weird to introduce myself to someone and have them go, "oh yeah, I totally read your blog!"

And, I'll be honest. It felt good. I don't blog to become well known or whatever. But it felt kinda cool to be recognized.

So thank you, for that.

Political Thought of the Day: Education is the Symptom

Here's an example of conventional thinking and assumptions that I find doesn't hold up (this particulary quote is from the Jim Webb for Senate web page, but it is simply indicative of a larger problem):

Education is the only way to level the playing field and provide all Americans with the opportunity to succeed.

We've all heard something similar. Democrats and Republicans actually pretty much agree (at least rhetorically) about this, from Aaron Sorkin's oft-repeated "Education is the silver bullet" on The West Wing to entitling a law "No Child Left Behind".

So what's the problem? Well... the problem is that this is, actually, going about the problem entirely backwards. I used to believe that having access to top-notch education from an early age for free was the only way to fix economic injustice &c. But it turns out that study after study shows that it is in fact levelling the playing field that helps boost student performance. That's right. Matt Yglesias has written about this frequently, and I hope to find the links so I can post about it, but it's actually rather startling.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be working to improve education. We should. We should have top-notch education in this country. But it turns out the best way to improve how our children do in schools, how well they learn, the kind of jobs they get etc. is to improve their starting point. That means that, it turns out that social programs are the silver bullet.

As Americans, we really like the idea that education is the silver bullet. It reinforces a classic American ideal-- that we all are, essentially, self-made. Anyone can do anything given the right drive, amount of work, skill etc. If we provide good education, the rest is up to them. Personal Responsibility and all that. (Somewhat off-topic: this attitude actually swarms through our theaters as well. The whole idea of character based on individual psychology with a complete ignorance of social forces fits into this way of looking at the world).

What this does is create a permanent underclass of underachieving, undereducated, underpaid workers. Class mobility (the essense of the American Dream) has been dropping steadily as we have gutted worker-friendly laws and social programs. Class will continue to stagnate if we don't do something about it. Education is, at the end of the day, the symptom rather than the disease.

Friday Random 10

1) 99 Problems Jay-Z and Danger Mouse, The Grey Album

2) Cheetoh Limbo One Ring Zero, Memorandum

3) How Fucking Romantic Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

4) Daft Punk Is Playing At My House LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem

5) Building Skyscrapers in the Basement Ted Leo/RX Hearts of Oak

6) Muhje Maar Daalo, Asha Bhosle, DOOB DOOB O'RAMA

7) El Condor Pasa (If I Could), Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water

8) Come Dancing The Kinks Ultimate Collection

9) To Get To Sleep British Sea Power, The Decline of British Sea Power

10) Ooh Oooh The Woo-Woos, Unknown

That's considerably more random than last week's that's for sure...

RIP, Bruno

Bruno Kirby has died. I really enjoyed his character work in many films, but my favorite thing he ever did will probably be his guest stint on Homicide: Life On The Street. Kirby played a heating repair man whose negligence had lead to the death of a family. Now, just out of prison, he returns to try to kill the cop who put him behind bars (who just so happens to be Andre Braugher's Frank Pembleton, of course). Fairly cheesy set up for a season finale, but Kirby and the script revealed a quirky, surprisingly likeable, not particularly bright villain, who has one moment of compassion when it counts.

Oh, and his cameo in Spinal Tap is to die for.

So long, Bruno!

Regional Theater Boosterism

In light of yesterday's NY Times article, I would once again like to use this blog to improve something (namely, coverage of regional theater), instead of just complaining about how bad it is. I don't get paid to write about plays, and I can't travel to every theater, or look at every theater's propaganda. But what I can do is extend an invitation to theater's to use my blog to help them get the word out.

So here it is:

Dear Regional Theaters,

I am inviting you to write me at parabasisnyc AT yahoo.com (i won't do a link because i'm trying to cut down on spam) to let me know about your upcoming productions. In order to (a) keep the volume of submissions down and (b) find work that I think will appeal specifically to my readership, let us for now establish the following as criteria. If the production:

(1) Is not being performed in New York City

(2) Is a world or U.S. Premier

(3) Is by a living playwright

(4) Is not a workshop

Please include the logistical information about the show, a link to a webpage for your theater, and a blurb explaining to the reader why they should come check out or get to know the play better. I'd prefer it (of course) if it weren't simply marketig boilerplate but were rather a considered three or four sentence answer about what makes this play special, why you are producing it, and why someone should come see it.

If you do that, and if I think it would appeal to my readership, I will post what you send me here on the blog.

Let's work together to try to help increase knowledge of exciting new regional theater! PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT SPAM ME. For those of you who aren't so internet-familiar... by comment spam I mean post a comment on the site plugging your show with no relevance to or care of what's going on on this site. It's rude. Just please don't do it.

Yours,
Isaac

Job Listing

New York Theater Workshop is seeking a new artistic assistant. Here's the details:

Job Description:

Keep Artistic Director’s calendar

Supervise Artistic Director’s correspondence and communication

Maintain Artistic Director’s files

Manage Artistic Director’s expenses

Arrange Artistic Director’s travel

Support Artistic Staff activities

Co-ordinate artistic staff communications with all staff, including space scheduling

Help select and supervise Artistic Interns

Oversee the set-up and breakdown of space; program and script copying and other related activities for the weekly readings and other workshop activities

Supervise ongoing communication with the Usual Suspects, NYTW’s community of artists

Persons of Color are encouraged to apply.

To apply, please e-mail cover letter and resume to Jenn Haltman (The current Artistic Assistant, who is moving into their castig division) at: jennh AT nytw.org

Allen and Gibson

So here's the thing as far as I see it.

For both George Allen and Mel Gibson, an apology actually doesn't cut it. Can't cut it at all. George Allen could've immediately said "I apologize, those remarks were racist, I was angry at the guy tailing me. I shouldn't've said it." He could've pulled some serious contrition. But it still wouldn't matter. I'd still be pissed and he still shouldn't continue being Virginia's Senator based solely on these comments.

Why? Because hate speech doesn't exist outside of a context. That context is the human being who utters the speech and the environment in which it is uttered. Simply put-- his comments are evidence that he is a racist not just some regrettable speech, and you can't wave a magic wand and get rid of your racist attitudes. You can apologize for expressing them, but George Allen has a history of dancing with white supremacy going back into his teens. The man had a noose on a tree branch in his office. He thinks the Confederacy was a good thing. All the apologies in the world won't make up for or abrogate the fact that at the end of the day, George Allen is still a racist. He'll just work better at hiding it. And I don't think the US Senate is a place for racists. I certainly don't think the Foreign Relations and Small Business Comittees are the place for racists either.

And neither is the writer/director chair for a Hollywood film. Especially Hollywood films with religious overtones like The Passion and Apocalypto.

So what are we to do with George Allen and Mel Gibson? Should their lives be ruined based on a five second expression of deeply felt bigotry? No, of course not. But the road back should be a long and hard one that has to do with educating oneself and working hard on the racist parts of yourself. A one hour sit down with Indian American leaders in Northern Virginia (or a group of Rabbis) so that you can explain away your comments is, frankly, bullshit. Insultig bullshit. Allen needs to own up to what he said and begin the process of education and forgiveness if he wants to stay in politics. Ditto for Gibson.

It's not like what they did is unforgiveable or unfixable. It just shouldn't be an easy fix, a public apology and then WHAMMO you're acceptable again. Racism is a deep sickness in our culture, it's not exactly easy to shake.

Let's Go On A Trip

The New York Times sent a theater writer (Matt Wolf) to London so that he could come to the conclusion that famous actors with lots of stage experience tend to give good performances in plays, while famous actors without said stage experience, especially ones that have questionable connections with the roles, tend to not give good performances. You can read the incisive analysis here.

This article raises a few questions for me:
(1) Does the Times really need to go to London to find that out? Matt Wolf is based in London, so it's not like they sent him there, or anything... but I have seen very few articles in the Times about the complicated relationship of New York Theater to celebrities (which I think is truly complicated). Perhaps because to do so would also call into question the reviewing decisions of Ben Brantley, whose penchant for famous people in roles they are unqualified and ill-suited for is well known. (Just so I can get on the record on this one-- I actually like a lot of things about Ben Brantley, especially that he does seem to simply love theater, and is a pretty good writer, but this one quality of his, which has been less on display currently than historically, drives me and most other artists and critics I know up a friggin' wall).

(2) Can anyone do an analyisis of how much ink is spilled in the New York Times covering London Theatre vs. Regional Non-Festival Theater? I think this is worth looking at. I love the London Theatre scene, and I love British playwrights. But I think the New York Times would do well to expand its national theater coverage. They've done quite a good job over the last year in expanding reviewing of Indie Theater and smaller-scale productions, and they deserve quite a few kudos for that. To me, the next step is covering more regional work and doing more feature pieces on Indie theater (the latter of which they occasionally do and I am grateful for). This has the added benefit of (at least in some cases) being practical. A roundtrip ticket to London on Air India (The cheapest carrier) for Sep. 1st-Sep. 7th costs $507. Then you have the exchange rate, hotel accomodationsm, etc. A ticket on the Fung-Wah Bus to Washington, D.C. to see a play costs somewhere around $30. A plane ticket to Chicago, making one stop en route, is $250. All I'm saying is that more of the New York Times readership actually could conceivably see a regional show than could see a London show.

I'm not trying to be provincial. I think coverage of the London scene is very important. As is coverage of plays that your audience won't see, so that they can be more knowledgeable of what is going on in Theater. But when you consider that the New York Times is distributed nationally, and is the go-to-place for cultural news and reviews, perhaps it could be doing more to increase knowledge of the regional theater scene. After all, most playwrights that break in New York have already broken elsewhere nationally. The Clean House the play at Lincoln Center next season that will put Sarah Ruhl on the map, already had productions at various regional theaters, including Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth, which will be presenting another world premier of Ruhl's work next season.

Just sayin'.

Your Thoughts?

Ladies And Gentlemen... The Junior Senator of Virginia

There seems little doubt that Sen. George Allen was very clearly using a specific racial epithet (Macaca, or as it might also be spelled, Macaque) to describe Webb campaign worker S.R. Sidarth. The question remains... was he using it, because it was a common epithet used by white French people to describe Arabs and people from Northern Africa? (In this scenario, he would've learned the term from his mother, who is white, and Frenchl, and grew up in Algeria). Or was he using it becuase Macaca/Macaque is a frequently used term in the Whtie Supremacist movement and Allen, familiar with said movement, and having a deep history of White Supremacist leanings, actually knew that and was speaking in code at an all-white gathering? Hard to say. Either way, he's a racist. It's just how loathesome of a racist is he, really?

But it turns out that George Allen has two other problems.

(A) He's dumb as a sack of rocks and a lightweight, as noted by John Dickerson at Slate.com here.

(B) He sat on the board of a business (And did $300,000 worth of lawyering for them) that is now being investigated by the SEC and the IRS (and being sued by its former stockholders). The American Prospect has the goods here.

We're Gonna Link. Around. The Clock Tonight.

Hey folks.

Busy day here at Parabasis central. I have an article due for The Brooklyn Rail that's not really coming to me, and my younger brother is in town for the week. So don't be surprised if it's a little light around here today. So I thought i'd send you some links.

First stop, George Hunka, who actually writes about a subject near and dear to my heart-- Politics and Theater. George tackles a subject I've long been harrassing him about with typical Hunkian flair. Check it out!

Meanwhile, Digby (whom I heart more and more) has a great post up about George Allen, explaining in exact terms why it's fairly easy to infer that George Allen was using white supremacist code in MacacaGate, but why it will be impossible to prove (And that's the whole point). She also takes a trip down Lee Atwater back in time to talk about the GOP's Southern Strategy as well. Good read that ties a bunch of points together. Check it out here.

For those of you who read a bunch of blogs and have a difficult time keeping track of what's going on in the blogosphere, I would recommend using a Blog Aggregator Software. Basically, blog aggregators use RSS an dother subscription systems to let you know when your favorite blogs are updated. You can have it all right there on a website. I started using one after George recommended that I do it to save time and energy. The one I use is Bloglines. Their website is here. It's really easy to use, and their site includes a browser button you can install that will allow you to subscribe to a blog with the click of a button.

Finally, the theater company I'm writing about for the Brooklyn Rail are a really cool group of people who do good work. You should check them out here. And the group blog about their new show can be found here. It provides quite a bit of depth in terms of process etc.

Also, feel free to use the comment thread on this post to talk about whatever's on your mind today!

Welcome Aboard!

Frequent commenter Malachy Walsh (if you look at the comments bar to the right, you'll probably see a few of his latest additions) has decided to join the fair ship Blogostan. That's right. He's got his own blog. Check out His Walshness here.

Macaca? Macaque?

More on George F. Allen's loathesome "Mel Gibson Moment" here. Turns out the word he used is a well known racial slur for, particularly arabs and, if you're a member of White Power circles, blacks.

And I'm sure many people will be horrified to learn that George Allen speaks French! what is the Republican party coming to when people who speak the language of Our Sworn Enemies can be Senators!

New Ad Coming Up

Dear Readers,

For some reason, a right-wing website has bought ad space on this blog. The site is called Move Over Move-On and aims to counteract the "socialistic" influence of MoveOn in politics. Obviously, I do not endorse this view, and I believe MoveOn is a force for good in this country. That is all.

Who Serves Whom?

I was hanging out with one of my bestest director friends this weekend when I got on my high horse about not serving the text but rather collaborating with it. For those of you who don't know this particular high horse, I'll make it snappy: I believe, in general, that everyone involved with the production of the play (which I'll refer to, pretentiously enough, as The Play) serves that ultimate group-created collaborative vision. We make a serious error by confusing the text with The Play. The text is one of the things that come together (along with the performances, the costumes the staging and whatnot) to create The Play. It's important to give the text's its due-- namely, that in a traditional Play, the text is the fundamental that everything else grows from. It is the primary collaborator. But if all you do is serve the text instead of collaborate with it, theater is doomed to repeat (in deadly fashion) almost-identitical productions of plays with interchangeable, vaguely different components. This is, to some extent, one of the primary problems with theater today. It manifests itself in cookie-cutter straight play direction Off and On Broadway, the over insistence on "clarity" and reduction of ambiguity in development processes of texts, the ongoing resentment between directors and writers, the lack of stylistic innovation (for there is no need) is many conventional theater disciplines, the pigeonholing of artists etc.

I have great respect for playwrights. Especially since i know i'm not one and it's an incredibly difficult and creative job. I love writers and I love texts (I am a text-based director, after all) I just think that if we view ourselves as collaborators instead of servants, better, more interesting theater can result. I don't mean this as a power grab. If anything, it also lessens the director's power because they have to treat all the other collaborators the same way. They have to be willing to not know the answer to a question, not always be "right", and not always know what to do. It's some tricky business, for sure (it's made trickier by the fact that it can be used to fascilitate a massive power grab where instead of collaborating you are simply imposing your own vision on a work and calling that collaboration).

Anyway, I was on that high horse, and my friend (Who is enormously talented, and good at working with writers) said this:

I don't think I have a problem with serving the text. I think what bugs me is serving one person's vision of what the text is. I mean, if theater really is supposed to be the ginormous, transcendental, almost unexplainable thing... if that's what we're shooting for, than I don't know how you can get there just trying to fulfill the writer's interpretation of their text. And I think that's where we get really fucked, is conflating serving the text with serving the writer. It's just reductive.

And I agreed with him. Part of me can't tell if he's saying the same thing I am in a different way, or saying something fairly different, but either way, I think that gets at what I'm trying to talk about in a different (and very perceptive) way. Coming together to collaborate on one person's vision isn't really collaboration. It's service. All you're collaborating on is the best method via which to serve someone. It seems to me a recipe for less interesting, less complicated (but easier to do) work.

I know I'm being all declarative and shit, but I really am trying to figure all this stuff out. I think we need to reexamine everything, because our current conventional recipe for doing work has lead at least in part to the major crises of artistic and financial well-being at our conventional theaters. So I guess I'm trying to reexamine the predetermined roles we have for everyone in a process and ask... are their better ways to approach this?

I'm interested in people's thoughts on this... esp. since most of the bloggers I know are playwrights.

Reprehensible or Just Plain Stupid?

It is reprehensible for a Senator to single out the only person of color at a campaign event and then demean them as Senator George Allen (R-VA) did over the weekend. But it's just plain stupid for him to do so consider his history of, amongst other things:

Wearing a Confederate Flag pin in High School. Hey, we all do stupid shit in High School. Dave H. and I were just talking about all the stupid shit we did in High School and what dickwads we could be. Sure, that's understandable. It's less understandable that a kid would wear a confederate pin to a school in California however, unless he was just trying to be a dick. I knew a kid who would greet me by Seig Heiling in my 70% Jewish school. He was an Aryan lookin' dude, and actually at the end of the day not an anti-semite, but just really, honestly, mentally disturbed. He was also a friend of mine. I felt (and continue to feel) bad for the guy.

Of course, then there's the issue of the noose that he hung from a tree outside his law office as you can read about here. I suppose that you could argue that it is just insensitive rather than, say, I don't know, clearly an indication of someone's racism that they would reference the iconography of lynching in an effort to brand themselves tough on crime. He says that it's all about the Western Memorabilia, along with his trademark cowboy boots. It might be hard to give him the benefit of the doubt considering the previous paragraph about the Confederate Flag Pin, but hey, maybe he's just an insensitive prick. Insensitive pricks can make good elected representatives, can't they?

But then there's his tenure as Governor of Virginia. You see, as Governor of Virginia, Allen got April dedicated Confederate History Month. According to this Republican website profiling various Presidential Candidates, in his proclamation dedicating April Confederate History Month, he "called the Civil War `a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights.' and neglected to mention slavery. At all. His Republican successor repealed it. That's right. It was enough beyond that pale that Allen was repudiated by a member of his own party.

And, finally, there's the fact that he (allegedly) ruitinely beat the shit out of his sister as she documents in this book published in the year 2000.

It's awfully to imagine why these personality traits are what people would want in their Senator. Especially considering that Jim Webb is politically fairly conservative and a former Reagan appointee in the military!

Learn more about, and give money to Jim Webb here. Even if it's $5.00. Just try and do something.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Via the esteemed Atrios we get two revelations. First, Allen called the South Asian-American gentlement at his campaign rally "Macaca". Perhaps he was just trying to say "see, he's furrin'! This is a funny soundin' furrin name!" But there's two problems with that.

First, Allen claims that he was calling the kid Mohawk-a, because the kid has a Mohawk, and he had called him Mohawk (After the hairdo) earlier, and this was just a harmless extension of that. Uh huh. Riiiiight. This kid totally has a mohawk:

But the second question is... and this is what Atrios hits on... could it be that Macaca is just an extension of calling someone Macaque, a racial slur derived from the name of a kind of monkey?

How much longer do you think Allen is going to say that he has nothing to apologize for before he issues one of those non-apology apologies?

We report. You decide.

UPDATE II: It turns out that the man profiled above, Senator George Allen (R-- VA), the man who calls an Indian-American by a funny sounding furrin' name, and then tells him "welcome to America" even though the man is an American citizen, it turns out that this man, clearly a tower of racial sensitivity and temperment, sits on the Senate Foreign Relations committee. So that's good. A guy whose response to an Indian-American pissing him off is to demean him racially and mock him sits on the committee that might have to deal with (amongst other things) issure regarding India and Pakistan. Oh, and he also sits on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship committee. Because, you know, there aren't any people of color whom a thing like impacts.

This is why something like this isn't just a character issue. It has practical, real life implications. George Allen is a popular and well-respected incumbent Senator who might run for President. Things like his background (and now foreground) of race-baiting matter. It's a serious issue and a very good reason to support the other guy. You don't want someone with Allen's record dealing with issues that effect people of color. Period.