Parabasis

Interesting Interview with David Adjmi

Can be found at Tablet, a new website about modern Jewish identity.

Our Long National Nightmare is Over!

Norm Coleman concedes!

I Think That's What My People Call "Chutzpah"

Netanyahu offers to freeze settlements! Uh, except for the fact that:

• It's only for 3-6 months

• It's conditional on a bunch of shit that's going to happen

• It's not actually a settlement freeze, as it doesn't include anything currently being constructed or the entirety of East Jerusalem

In other news, I'm offering you all a free sandwich. The following conditions apply:

• You must walk to my office in midtown to get the free sandwich

• I will only be giving out free sandwiches until 2Pm

• You must give me five dollars for the free sandwich.

RIP Pina Bausch

Sad news. Read about it here.

Today's Must Read

August Schulenberg's On Quality, Value and Criticism, which can be found here. It's long, and difficult to exerpt, so let's just say it's an attempt to begin a conversation about artistic quality amidst all the talk in the theatrosphere about models, getting the younguns in etc. The basic premise, and I agree with it, ist hat we don't spend a lot of time talking about artistic quality because it's... well... tough to talk about something so subjective. So Gus tries to get the ball rolling.

There's a lot in there, and I hope he writes more on each point, I just want to quickly address for myself something he says when talking about critiqueing each other's work:

But how do we imagine ourselves within another company when it is so difficult to critique work within our own? Flux has annual and post-play post-mortems, but they focus entirely on the process of producing, not on the quality of artistic decisions. And this is, of course, because feelings get hurt. And yet we must improve the quality of work, and we can do that best by talking about it.

So how do you talk about it within your company? Do you use the Liz Lerman Critical Reponse Process? Do you just say the ugly truth and wound each other terribly and then recover over beers to do the whole thing over again, like Valhalla? How do you do it?

I can't speak from the perspective of being within a company, because I'm not, but I'll just say that in discussions with theatre artists of my generation I hear-- and share-- a great deal of discomfort if not outright disillusionment with the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process. If anything, many I talk to think it's basically used these days as a way to avoid having authentic conversations about work. And many playwrights I know are made incredibly uneasy by it, because they basically feel like people responding to their work are, essentially, hiding what they really feel about it in an effort to make the process work.

When I receive notes from people as a director, I expect them to be both direct and considerate. Both of those are important. We have this weird association in our society between honesty and assholitry. A good example of this would be Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites. We all know the type-- "hey, man, I'm just being honest" when in fact the value of honesty is used to basically be inconsiderate and cruel. Fuck that, I have no patience for that shit, you can tell the truth and not be a dick about it.

You have to ask yourself when offering an opinion on something-- why am I saying this? What goal do I have with this note? If your goal is to actually affect the thing you're talking about for the better, than you must on some level also be concerned with being heard.  If you aren't heard, by which I do not mean the sound waves pass out of your mouth, vibrate the air and are received into the ear where they're translated into signals in the brain but rather someone actually takes what you say and considers it honestly and discusses it with you, than what you said doesn't matter. A lot of people say shit to just say shit. It's a pervasive problem.

If you want to be heard, you have to give feedback in a way that allows it to be heard. And that way is going to change in a way that's contextually dependent on who you're talking to, where, around who else etc. Which is why I think the Liz Lerman Process feels a bit off to me... my conversations with Dan Trujillo, a writer I've worked with many times, co-produced work with, acted with, directed his material, acted in his material etc. are going to be very different with my conversations with Gus about his work, given that he and I have (sort-of) worked together once, and both like each other but aren't close friends.

And there's another problem, which might be subject to another post, which has to do with the lack of honesty in our responses to each other, the common problems of thinned-skinnedness and taking things personally etc. This is why, as I think I said in an earlier post a year or so ago, i don't tend to offer my opinion on people's work (to them anyway) unless they ask me, and then I try to respond honestly. If they dont' indicate they want my opinion, that's okay, there's usually others who do and I can talk about it with them.

Stunning

Stunning might not be the best play I've seen this year, but it's certainly the most exciting. Even the parts of it that are problematic are problematic in fascinating and exciting ways. And the first act is just fucking flawless. Stunning, even. And Cristin Miloti is amazing.  Go see it. It just extended until the 11th.

Blogroll Awesomeness

Hey Guess what?  We just added a bunch of blogs to the ole 'roll due to reader suggestions. Thanks for writing them in. If you've got more, keep 'em coming!

On The Dearth Of Female Critics...

Tom Laughlin, in the comments to an earlier post, writes:

Amidst all this talk about discrimination and sexism in American theatre on so many levels, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts about the relative lack of female theatre critics and bloggers. I went through your blogroll this morning, and my unscientific poll revealed that 29 of the bloggers listed are male, 12 female (one blog is a male/female partnership, but even though the male seems to write more I gave it to the female). And apparently all the blogger/critics who write or have written for the NYC press are male (Cote, Jacobs, RWK, Teachout, Isherwood, etc.). Since the internet is open to all, why is this particular phenomenon happening? I'd be interested in your take on this matter. TIA. -twl

(First off, forgive my acronym ignorance, but does TIA mean thanks in advance? thai initiative accumulate? torridness is awesome?.. it took me the better part of amonth to figure out what RTWT means, it's just something I'm bad at)

Anyway, it's a good question. I should just say my own blog roll is a really bad determinant here, as I would gladly and freely admit I have a terrible blogroll. I hate updating it. I basically only add new blogs to it when people e-mail me to ask if I'd add them to the blogroll. Every four months or so I think Today is the day I redo my blogroll! And then I never do it.  So if you're a blogger wondering why you're not on my blogroll, I apologize in advance. E-mail me if you want to be on it at parabasisnyc[at]gmail[dot]com if it really irks ya and i'll put you on it.

i don't know, in other words, if there's a dearth of female theatre blog writers. most of the ones i read are, now that i come to think about it, by men.  i don't know if that means that most of the ones being written are by men, but it's also worth differentiating between blogging and being a paid critic. For the part, anyone can start a blog without anyone else's permission or hiring them to do it.  If there are fewer female (or Black or Asian or anything else) bloggers on a particular subject, it reflects something different than if there are fewer female critics at daily newspapers. 

As to the other point... there are very few female first string critics in this country, and the point's been raised a few places (most recently on a dramaturgy listserv discussion of the gender bias study).  In New York, there's Elisabeth Vincentelli and Linda Winer (for the Post and Newsday respectively) that I can think of off the top of my head. Some places-- like Backstage-- I'm really unclear who the first stringer is. 

Many places have female second (or even third) stringers or regular freelances. Clearly, this is an issue. And, like the race of critics issue, it probably has some impact on the shape of the theatre scene. But I think, just like how beauty magazines both promote unreasonable beauty expectations of women and take advantage of those already existing expectations to make money, it's a pretty circular issue.

I agree, fwiw (what does that mean? five wookies inside Waziristan??) that this is a problematic state of affairs. i don't know what to do about it necessarily.

Theatre as Case Study?

If you're someone who is interested in workplace discrimination, equal employment opportunity, bias and affirmative action issues (as I happen to be right now) theatre makes for an interesting counter-factual case study. Why? Because there aren't class-action lawsuits against theaters fort discrimination.

I'm not suggesting there should be, but it's interesting to think about it in this context. In many other industries, there have been big ole class action lawsuits, it's one of the main ways that employment discrimination laws get enforced. But not theatre.  To more Conservative thinkers, claims employment discrimination is overblown and we are an overly litigious society.  The idea put forth is that what discrimination does exist is the cause of a few bad actors and the more mundane stuff can be solved by giving "everyone a fair shot" (by which they mean eliminating affirmative action), punishing the few people who are truly bad and have negative intent and working the other stuff out on a more peer-to-peer level.

Well, here we have the American Theatre (not the magazine, obviously, the theatre system) which is not only staffed by well-meaning liberals (the exact kind of people who should be trusted to voluntarily enforce equal opportunity rules) but doesn't have to deal with those pernitious, poisonous lawsuits, why not study it to see how that whole diversity and equality thing is working out?

I would guess that the end result would be a rather good example of how intentions don't really matter when it comes to discrimination. Or, to put it another way, that even though our theaters are largely staffed with well meaning liberals, there's still entrenched, institutionalized discrimination, discrimination of effect rather than cause.  I might be wrong about that, that's just my guess of what such a study would show, but I have a feeling ultimately the evidence would point to the fact that we need more than good intentions to create equality and diversity.

NYTimes on Female Directors

In the midst of the American Theatre's Institutionalized Sexism discussion, here comes the Times with a piece about how it's been a (relatively) good year for female directors.  Check it here.