Crashing the Impending Blogging Event

It was fun to crash the Impending Blogging Event. That was the closest I’ve ever come to talking to other theater bloggers in real life. Here’s a few notes.

1) I would like to address the misperception that I’m somehow advocating for a Theater for the Conservative. No, that’s not the case.

Back in 2003/4 I was fascinated by what you could or couldn’t say in theater. What content would get your script tossed out? I had a violent play that was quite successful outside of NYC, but no NYC theaters would touch it. I determined that content was the problem. and was quite angry about it.

Up until that time, I didn’t think content would ever be an issue in theater. Ever.

So what other content was bad? Around that time, I read how a Literary Manager in Chicago was complaining how there were no conservative playwrights. I found that to be fascinating. No uber-violent plays, no sad endings, no conservative playwrights.

(I no longer think these strange thoughts. First off, I’m fairly certain that there a few musical theater people in NYC are conservative. I don’t know why I think that, I just do. But I digress…)

Like Leonard Jacobs, I’m not sure what Red State Theater is, exactly. Personally, I’d like to have the biggest audience possible for my work, without compromising my vision. Shouting that Democrats or Republicans suck is going to defeat my purpose. Unless, that is my purpose. KnowwhatImean?

(And sometimes that is my purpose. On of my plays was damn near explicit against a certain organized religion, and I had no qualms about alienating audience members about it.)

2) Alabama isn’t as conservative as you might think. A study came out last year that said Birmingham was more liberal than Austin, Texas. Having moved here from Austin, I’d have to agree. While I’m still a member of Austin Scriptworks, I had mondo problems dealing with Austin’s not-so-liberal culture. During my last few weeks there, someone told me that I should’ve lived in the Austin part of Austin and not the Texas part. Maybe. The only thing I know for sure is that everyone in NYC told me that Austin was so very liberal and my experience didn’t match up with it. Maybe it was liberal – for Texas. Not liberal – for me.

3) Finally, IMO the red state/blue state thing is no longer valid. Thank goodness. While we can argue about religion all day long, those arguments are ancient. That’s why I beg off on most politics and religion here. My thoughts on stuff like that change on a daily basis. I’m constantly re-evaluating beliefs. Very frustrating if you’re trying to pin me down on an issue. Or maybe it’s just my Libra nature.

Comments

[Scott Walters]

*sigh* Did you really encounter an accusation that, because you didn't want to simply address people who already thought like you, you were proposing Theatre for the Conservative? I am constantly amazed by the stubborn determination of so many to make certain they never have to dialogue with anyone they don't already agree with.

[Joshua James]

Actually, it was quite a nice conversation and not at all that she didn't want to address people that already thought like her (and no, it wasn't I who began the discussion, nor did I accuse her of anything) but that the problem with theatre, as stated in a recent interviewer by a prominent blogger, is that liberal theatre writers don't respect red state conservatives . . .

And I never thought that about ya, Laura . . . I think you meant what you meant, and I do believe you misread you-know-who . . .

But that's just me.

[Joshua James]

And I would agree to a certain extent that red / state blue state thing isn't what it was a few years ago . . . there are blue folk everywhere south and red folk in allegedly liberal cities . . .

However, some areas have a predisposed majority over others, still . . . a fact that hasn't completely changed, not in nyc or Iowa . . . can't speak for Alabama.

[Scott Walters]

I have read the exchange now, and as you mentioned, Joshua, it was quite nice, and Laura did a wonderful job representing her ideas. And Laura, for the record, I do admire the Little Theatre movement, and you are spot on. I also admire the grassroots theatre movement that extends from the 1920s until today, with amazing theatres like Roadside, Dell Arte, Cornerstone, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Junebug, and so forth. To me, these theatres are natural inheritors of mantle of WPA's Federal Theatre Project. Anyway, Laura, thanks for trying to de-cartooon my ideas. It was fascinating to find myself regularly appearing in a "hiss the villain" role at the Impending Blogging Event without actually being invited to participate. Sort of like junior high school!

[freeman]

Scott -

My understanding was they invited those to participate that could have actually walked into the room. Probably 50% of us were actually in the room.

For what it's worth, your quote got big laughs of approval in the room.

[Scott Walters]

Matt -- And that's cool -- I couldn't have been there anyway, since I was at a conference on Theatre of the Oppressed and away from a computer. But with all those fascinating bloggers present and virtual, I wonder why the topic of conversation didn't involve ideas that those particular bloggers had floated on their blogs, rather than gossiping about people who weren't present.

[Joshua James]

Now Scott, how do you know both wasn't happening at once? Ideas and gossip can coexist.

Really, it was't gossiping . . . Mark wondered at the lunancy (and it's at Theatre Forte now) that writers should have to write for an audience (the aforementioned red-staters) they disagree with or cannot stand, basically.

No gossip, just an idea he challenged. I mean, you read the post, right?

And really, I think sometimes you like to play the role of villain.

[Scott Walters]

Yeah, Joshua, I read the post. The question is whether using as a starting place quotations from a blogger who is not present isn't kind of crappy. And I am puzzled as to why the bloggers couldn't start their own conversations without using me as a starting point.

And no, Joshua, I don't "like to play the role of the villain." I have that role thrust upon me whenever I happen to say something that diverges from the party line.

[Joshua James]

Party line?

There's a party line? First I heard of it.

And nothing is thrust upon anyone, you've put yourself and your many views up before the public voluntarily, right?

So people make a judgment on that, whether it's the one you want or not, it's what happens . . .

And yep, I do believe you understand that role and like to play it, part provoctuer, part villian who says "radical" things.

But so what?

[nick]

I hardly belong to any blogger’s clique? I more or less invited myself. Nobody even put me on the list of participants until the day of the event.

I attended the blogging event mostly out of curiosity of how the incongruent elements would translate as experience. We were seated as “audience” staring at a big movie size screen. This movie was mostly out of sync with the tiny individualized screen each of us typed at in our laps. We almost-watched, almost-listened, almost-wrote as the parade of our words and fellow readers/writers words appeared and were read aloud. Add to this comments and posts from bloggers not present in the room and the Who, What, Where do you engage in such an experience became the whole of the experience? Not the time or place for real ideas or discourse.

Scott, I mostly missed your fifteen seconds of fame, even though I was there, I guess. Yesterday you posted a long rant on your “villainization” titled “The Blogger Slumber Party” at Theatre Ideas. I had read it and began a comment/post in response. But you’ve deleted your post now. Should those of us who read your post (and still have it “published” in our cache) think of your deletion of it as a retraction?

Laura, what do you make of the black church-orientated audiences of the brand of urban theatre in this Times article? This is that conservative theatre and audience everyone claims doesn’t exist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/theater/21urba.html?ei=5070&en=fd770c9579c4790d&ex=1181188800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1181086255-svgU3u8zx5j/bTCt/gN6Zg

"Urban theater — or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the chitlin circuit — has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing millions of dollars a year."

[Laura]

Nick,

I wrote about that a few weeks ago, based on the Urban Stage play article in Jet Magazine. I've been toying with the idea all day that some of those big fancy schmancy NYC musicals could attract a conservative audience. You could maybe call those productions "conservative." Especially the B'way retreads that make their way throughout the country.

I've been floating it in my own head, when I'm not gasping for air from asthma attacks. ;)

[Owen Tew]

I don't agree that black urban theater completely covers the "conservative" audience, although it might cover a sector of it.

As a white rural person, I'm not going to identify with black urban themes any more than I will with so-called liberal themes. I could certainly enjoy a black urban production, but I wouldn't want to have that be the full extent of my theatergoing experience. I'd prefer to see a range of viewpoints: black urban, white liberal, Asian female conservative, et al. (And what about conservatives who aren't religious? These black urban plays are church-related.)

Reading books written from varied viewpoints increases our perspective, so why shouldn't theater? This ought to be true of all the arts. If we listen only to voices that sound like ourselves what's the point of ever leaving the house?

I don't mind watching "liberal plays" or even "church plays" if they are any good, but it would be nice to throw something from my own perspective that is well done every once in a while.