The Replacement Theory of Playwriting

Isobel Thom as Joan
"I, Joan" by Charlie Josephine
(Shakespeare's Globe, 2022)
Photo: Tristram Kenton

There are a few social media organizations that focus on the world of American theater and, like a lot of social media sites, generate poorly sourced and written articles which are promoted with headlines designed to drive visitors to their site and most importantly to their advertising.

This is called clickbait. But you knew that.

One of the more egregious offenders recently posted an article with the headline, [Shakespeare’s Globe Artistic Director] Michelle Terry Fears for Actors' Safety in 'Woke' Plays.

This headline is misleading. It leads one to believe that Terry fears for actors' safety when working in the company of something called a "woke play." It conjures images of actors being harmed in the rehearsal or performance of such plays, whatever they may be.

However, nowhere in the article does Terry herself use the term "woke" nor does the article attempt to describe what that word means. Her concern is for the safety of artists who are members of productions that have been defined by others as "woke."

From the article: "Some of [the Globe’s] recent productions have been accused of being 'woke'."

Really? Some have said this. Who are they? And what did they mean when they used the term "woke"? It is important to be clear about this, because these people, those "some" who have said this, they are the people who Terry believes may threaten the safety of her company of performers, and not as the headline implies, their participation in such productions.

Headline would better read: Michelle Terry Fears for Actors' Safety From Those Who Define Certain Plays as 'Woke'

The writer of this article does provide two examples of so-called "wokeism" at the Globe. One is last fall's production of I, Joan by Charlie Josephine in which the main character, inspired by the person of Saint Joan, identifies as non-binary, and a production of Romeo and Juliet which included a content warning about suicide.

It is true that I, Joan received a great deal of online bullying prior to opening from people who were angry that Joan de Pucelle was to be presented as non-binary and using they/them pronouns. They accused the playwright of "erasing" a famous woman. As far as I can see, Joan of Arc’s place in history is unaffected by the production (Shakespeare depicted her as a demon, didn't stick) though the visibility of a trans non-binary character at the center of a professional production was by itself historic and important. 

My brother, who actually saw the production, unlike any of those who decided they hated it before it had even opened or really knew anything about it, said I, Joan was, " Excellent, fun, ALIVE." It started raining the day he saw it, he says nobody left.

"The play is first and foremost about the trans experience. All the soliloquies were about identity and inclusion in very personal ways. The historical part was the body of the play but it kept coming back to Joan's experience out of time. They pondered why men are so hung up on pronouns, toilets and Twitter." - Henrik H. (my brother)

And providing a content warning for R&J? Who cares? In what possible way does taking the subject of suicide seriously, and alerting anyone unfamiliar to the conclusion of this classic play (yes, they exist and that's okay) disrupt anyone's enjoyment in watching it? And anyway, how is that "woke"?

When the article in question was posted a little over a week ago, there was a great deal of back and forth about what a shitty article it was, and I mean from a journalistic standpoint. Really stupidly written, sloppy and by extension, offensive. Written expressly to provoke, not to inform.

Read it, it's good.
#WeAreJoan

Leaping into the discussion midstream, one cishet, white, American guy on the thread (full disclosure, I am also a cis, white, American guy) attempted to define “woke” this way [brackets provided for clarity]:

"Woke people" are against a diversity of ideas and anything that questions their narcissism is deemed racist or ignorant. Actually, the majority of us don't identify as "woke" or even "anti-woke" 

We [which is to say people like this commenter, in comparison] focus on the individual responsibility of a persons (sic) instead of breaking everyone into groups based on religion, ethnicity, and whatever subgroups come out of that. We aren't interested in having a victimization contest. 

If you want a true diversity of ideas, it's best to be left of center. Reject ideology and become a complex vessel of ideas!

So many contradictions, it makes my head spin. He's true about one thing. The majority of us don't identify as "woke" because no one does that.

Further investigation (yes, I got creepy) revealed that this commenter is in fact a real-live, moderate, liberal Democrat, and not some bot or right-wing troll. It is because of him and people like him that my son is a complete Leftist.

It gets worse. Unlike some who have no particular interest but to thread-crash in order express their resentment and rage, this guy is an actual community theater director. Addressing me, specifically, he said this:

I happen to work in the performing arts as well. I can guarantee you [i.e. David Hansen] will have a harder time producing a play you've written in this climate. (Unless you live in an all-white area). Why should you give up your art to allow someone else to take your place? I think you should fight for what you've worked so hard to achieve and take a back seat to no one. Unless they prove that they have more skill.

Welp, he said the quiet part out loud. Take my place? What place is that? The assumption here is that white men remain the most-produced of playwrights because of their superior skill, that they have earned their position of supremacy, and that recent trends of centering marginalized voices are robbing these white men of their rightful place.

Here are a few reviews for the Globe Theatre production of I, Joan: 

"A rousing protest piece." - The Guardian

"A joyous celebration." - Time Out London

"Funny, fierce non-binary Joan of Arc proves sceptics wrong." - The Independent

"Joyful and unifying, this could be something of a game-changer." - Evening Standard

Does this not prove their skill? I think it doth. 

As I endeavor to get my own work produced, I am keenly aware that in a past era (maybe only five years ago) I would have had more opportunities for production. But not because my work was better.

Today’s emphasis on those whose voices have previously been ignored has inspired me to make my work more relevant, and hopefully to make me a better playwright. I want make work to be good enough and deserving enough to take my place with them.

NYC NYE 2023 (part one)

Mural, American Airlines Theatre Penthouse Lounge

New Year’s is a big deal for us. Not that we have traditionally been extravagant at the turning of the calendar. In fact, we have been quite modest the past few years. Even before the pandemic, we chose to stay home, alone. We only ever need each other, anyway.

Auspicious subway find.

We met on the street the year we rang in the 90s, headed to the same gathering, and have spent every NYE together since, for better and for worse. And last year we decided we would go to New York, where we fell in love and shared so many early relationship memories. Omicron be damned, and it was awesome.

When I missed the American Repertory Theatre production of 1776 in Boston this summer due to health issues, and they announced a Broadway run, I suggested we do it again – spent NYE in NYC. Maybe this is going to be our New Year’s tradition, from here on out. We would both be very happy with that. My wife scored first class seats, and we enjoyed Bloody Marys and held hands at 10,000 feet.

The wife found us a sweet little Airbnb where Washington Heights meets Inwood, and just a short walk to Fort Tryon Park. The place had a really nice reclaimed wood aesthetic. We asked our contact where we could get lunch and she suggested Koko Seafood, a Dominican joint on Nagle.

The ghosts of Steve & Eydie
hath appeared to me —
at Sardi's once ...

The guy dropped two menus but he also suggested we could have whatever they already had prepared, so we said yeah, what do you have back there? She got the stewed chicken, I got the grilled chicken, we each got red beans and rice. We were made very, very happy.

It was such a good meal that, following a much-needed nap (I think I got four hours of sleep the night before) we decided to skip dinner and just get drinks somewhere in Times Square. She asked if I’d ever been to Sardi’s, I said that I had not. We enjoyed cocktails seated next to a festooned caricature of Steve Lawrence, which was only appropriate.

Then onto the American Airlines Theatre for the Roundabout production of 1776. Here’s the thing about 1776, the original score for this show (music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards, book by Peter Stone) is part of my earliest memories. My father enjoyed it a great deal, and why wouldn't he. A lively celebration of the origins of our nation, created in 1969, possibly the worst point in our history. The vinyl was on regular rotation in my house growing up, I still have it somewhere. And the 1972 film was a must-see whenever it came on the TV, usually around Independence Day.

Festive NYC streets.

However, it has not aged well, as it sands down the sins of “our forefathers'' even as it attempts to address them. Even Lin-Manuel Miranda did this in creating Hamilton, entirely omitting the fact that Alexander Hamilton himself was once a slaver.

In subsequent productions of 1776, in community theaters and colleges around the country, people of color and women have been cast as members of a company of historical figures who were all white men. After the success of Hamilton, I wondered how long it would take before someone attempted a diverse professional production. The A.R.T. production (produced on Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre) features an acting company composed entirely of people who identify as women or non-binary.

This has not been without controversy, which was to be expected. I loved the production, I really did. You could say it had been produced for me or someone exactly like me, a privileged, middle-aged, liberal, white person – and one who already enjoys the score. Attending a performance like this would naturally soothe my sensibilities, as it would ideally present an opportunity for those affected by these men's actions, but not present in their decision making, to interpret and hopefully to provide context for the founders limitations.

Sara Porkolob in "1776"
(Photo: Sara Krulwich)

Company member Sara Porkolob, who plays South Carolina Congressman Edward Rutledge, started a firestorm among the theater community last October in which they dared to answer questions about the production with candor and honesty. They did not agree with the suggestion that the production is artistically fulfilling – for them – and even more aggressive comments for saying they only give 75% to this show a night.

Much, much more interesting, however, are their comments about the frustration of being a multidisciplinary performance artist who takes a job as solely a performer in someone else’s work. The fact that, in their opinion, the show still does not go far enough in critiquing the so-called “American experiment." It is a rich and interesting interview with an amazing artist, and I strongly recommend reading the entire thing.

The best excuse for being controversial, however, is when you are also brilliant. The most emotionally disturbing song in the entire show, no matter where you are seeing it, and the only part of the show which comes even close to addressing the massive errors in the American experiment which are still with us today, is the the eleven o’clock number Molasses to Rum, led by Porkolob, for which they say they give 90% and which they entirely walk away with. If what I heard that night was 90% of what they have to offer, I am literally frightened to experience their talent at full bore. I hope that someday I will.

Photo: TRG Reality

My one personal regret was that I did not get to see Elizabeth A. Davis as Jefferson, though the family did last summer. We were in the company of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Great Lakes together in 2005 as she was completing her studies at Case, and she participated in an odd “Mr. Shakespeare” photo shoot in which we first recreate the famous V-J Day photograph and then I apparently drop her (right.)  Maintaining the role in Boston on then Broadway while visibly and increasingly pregnant over the course of the fall, Davis left the production as scheduled around Christmas.

After the show, my wife and I headed back to Inwood, and sat around our Airbnb in the nude enjoying wine and adobada-flavored potato chips.

To be continued.  

The Roundabout Theatre Company production of "1776" at the American Airlines Theater closes tomorrow, Sunday, January 8, 2023.

Source: Molasses To Rum: 1776’s Sara Porkalob Has Some Notes by Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 10/14/2022 

Play a Day: Last Ship to Proxima Centauri

Greg Lam

For Friday, I read Last Ship to Proxima Centauri by Greg Lam and posted at New Play Exchange.

So-called “cancel culture” is the phrase used by those who feel threatened by the idea of one being held accountable for one’s own actions. Tearing down a Confederate statue is not erasing history, it is no longer accepting the adulation of bad history. The history remains, but we will no longer allow it to be held up as an example of good behavior.

How will future generations judge us? Four, five mass shootings in the span of one week? And we remain indoors, we aren’t in the streets, we have not called for the resignation of every elected official for their refusal to act? What does that say about us? Are we not all responsible?

Lam’s play Last Ship to Proxima Centauri is fucking hilarious, and deeply troubling. And fucking hilarious. What if the Americans were the last to arrive at a planet already resettled by all those other survivors of our dying planet, none of whom are of European ancestry? Why on Earth (or Yeni Dünya, the “New World”) would they not be less than happy to see us?

“They all had guns. And they shot all the blacks all the time.” That is our history, as it is remembered. Any argument to the contrary begins, “Whatabout ?”

What keeps this play charging along are those gut punches Lam includes, without additional commentary, suggesting that the 100,000 Americans held in stasis for the 2,000 journey include some “very fine people” or when the one BIPOC American who is received during the ship’s crash landing defends the reputation of white Americans by stating that “most of my friends are white.”

It’s devastating, devastatingly funny, and now I need to write my Senators.

Who should I read tomorrow?

See also: Last Ship to Proxima Centauri (revisited)

Play a Day: Mama Bear

Sharon Harris Warrick

For Tuesday, I read Mama Bear by Sharon Harris Warrick and posted at New Play Exchange.

A play about women and about mothers, and also about the men who fail them. This is a prison story, three African American and one white woman occupying two cells. One of them has committed what most would consider the most heinous crime, the murder of their own child. It is the stuff of classic tragedy, recast in a modern setting, or at least, late twentieth century.

Warrick has created four distinct personalities who bounce off of each other with varying degrees of caution, and it is those moments where they feel the freedom to be honest that connections are finally made. The enemy is out there, it is not each other. This is a generous tale about the eternal sisterhood.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Black Metamorphosis

Sam Kebede

For Monday, I read Black Metamorphosis by Sam Kebede and posted at New Play Exchange.

The written introduction to this play (a note on casting, not actually part of the play script) is by itself a monologue that is worthy of performance. 

Kebede’s outrageous satire on white power and global dominance is hilarious from beginning to end, first describing the Illuminati’s millennia long mission to destroy the black race, which evolves into a take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis in which a poor which man wakes up one morning to discover he is a black stereotype, with everything ugly you can metaphorically derive from that.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Millenials Suck!

Alisha Espinosa

For Wednesday, I read Millenials Suck! by Alisha Espinosa and listed at New Play Exchange.

When you grew up defines your generation. But being a young adult comes with the requisite baggage of feelings and fears and it is the manner in which the latter copes with the former that makes you Millennial, Gen X, Boomer, Silent, Greatest, and so on, back and back through American history.

I mean, don't get me started. When it comes to generational politics, I am the one who gets a conference call from the lunchroom at work if the subject comes up.

Just yesterday, a Millennial cohort lamented "Why do people hate us Millennials so much Lol," and I said who are you calling people? Only Boomers do that. Another threatened to search "Millennial" on my fb page and I told them to go ahead, because I knew I was a card-carrying ally and then I told her her to search "Boomer" on my fb page and she came back and told me I am a joy to behold.

I did a "Boomer" search on my page myself and was surprised at how much shade I throw at them. It's startling.

Millenials Suck! is a collection of vignettes on a common theme, and it is alive with music and movement, packed with tales of aching and anger in the Big City. Espinosa chronicles the desire for and fear of commitment common to young adults, but complicated by the present moment.

We, Gen X, were raised in a nation that told us we should be able to have anything, because it was America, and it was easy -- our only war lasted a month and it was a rout. So any problems we have must be our own. These young adults today have seen that society collapse like a house of cards and refuse to take the blame for it, which is only correct.

If the Post-Millennials in my own home are any indication they will be much more cynical than their parents, and far more militant. But I digress.

The playwright wrestles issues of race and class and gender and ideology, with humor and style, creating a cohort of charismatic characters, trip from one small NYC apartment to the next (and also a county fair) with a wise and open heart. I loved this. I don't miss being in my twenties.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: How Blood Go

Lisa Langford

Twenty plays in twenty days. Like most people, I feel the days are only melting into each other.

For Monday, I read How Blood Go by Lisa Langford and posted at New Play Exchange.

Lisa's work is poetic and comic and cutting and brilliantly outlandish.

Last fall I had the pleasure of seeing the premiere of Rastus & Hattie, which was inspired by the Westinghouse "Rastus Robot" from the 1930s. Did you know Westinghouse built a prototype robot for attending to housework ... and gave it African features?

That part is true. Langford took this concept to extradordinary lengths; I wouldn't call it Afrofuturism but rather Afrohistoricism, bending time and space to satirically comment upon the African American experience.

With How Blood Go she takes studies into how black patients are treated poorly as compared to white patients by the medical establishment, and weaves it into a broader historic context.

The character Quinntasia visits her friend Did in the hospital, and goes about making her comfortable in the absence of proper care by the medical staff. "We take care of everybody," Quinntasia laments. "Who take care of us?"

While my mother was dying, she was looked after by a team of compassionate caregivers. Mostly women, mostly African American women. If black women didn't show up, America would collapse entirely.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Sour Mash

Benjamin Gonzales

For Saturday, I read Sour Mash by Benjamin Gonzales and posted at New Play Exchange.

My brother's first off-campus housing, he lived in the upstairs room of a professor of English who would answer the telephone by shouting, "WHO'S THAT?"

Gonzales's play is a classic drawing room comedy of manners with additional contemporary relevance. I laughed out loud many times, the wordplay in this farce about class, race, and whiskey is truly delightful.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Aliquippa

Lydia Valentine

For Thursday, I read Aliquippa by Lydia Valentine and available at New Play Exchange.

Lately I have been made aware of the use of board games to illustrate to young people (and not young people) the concept of instutitional racism.

One example, in brief: Four people play Monolpoly. Actually, two play, and two watch. The two people playing move around the board, accumulting property and wealth.

After maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes, the other two are invited to join the game. Two people have all of the wealth and property, and the other two have nothing but are free to move about the board, scraping together cash and paying rent for everything. Got it? That's America.

With her play Aliquippa, Valentine has composed a painful and joyful family drama of tragedy and hope. Four generations of Lockwoods aspire to difficult dreams in a nation where the rules remain set against African Americans. The playwright neatly weaves issues of economics, chemical dependence, and raising non-heteronormative children, providing each of her characters the opportunity to have a voice, doing so with a great deal of warmth and familial humor.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Sources: 
Using Monopoly to Introduce Concepts of Race and Ethnic Relations by Warren Warren, The Journal of Effective Teaching (2011)
The Disturbing History of the Suburbs, Adam Ruins Everything (2017)

The Bully of Baker Street: Week Three

Newton D. Baker Elementary

In the past three weeks, Classics On Tour has already staged twenty-nine performances of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street! They have nineteen more (and one workshop) to go!

In addition to the many schools the Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street tour is visiting, we are also taking the show to fifteen libraries and other public venues.

At a few public libraries, the audience has been almost entirely made up of adults, fans of the great detective in all of his permutations. The big people are no less enthusiastic about responding to the questions the characters ask them during the performance and seem to understand they are attending a show meant for children.

Post-show discussions run in different directions with these audiences, as adults have questions not only about the show, but about the purpose of the show. About the theme of bullying, and how our student audiences have responded.

Pioneer Drama Service
(Published 2021)

On our post-show evaluation, audience members are invited to share their thoughts about what they most liked about the show, and also what they liked the least. One woman, a senior citizen, wrote, “Too preachy!” And I suppose it is. You could say it’s meant to be.

During the post-show discussion, one audience member in Lakewood, after first making clear that she was very happy to see a diverse cast, wanted to know how intentional the casting was. A generation ago it would have been the politically correct thing to just say the casting was “color-blind” and wasn’t intentional at all. 

But that isn’t true, and our acting company addressed that with their response. Because the play is, in fact, a little preachy, and because we knew we would be sending the play into schools with a predominantly African-American student body, the picture of who is doing to lecturing and who is being lectured to -- and also who is doing the bullying -- these were all issues we wanted to take into account when creating the company.

Chagrin Falls Intermediate School

One comment that has confused me was the person who wrote on their evaluation “No Politics!!” I’d like to know what they meant. There is nothing overtly political in my script. Is Vicky being called a “nasty girl” a political statement? Is Vicky’s pride in becoming an American immigrant a political statement?

If these expressions are thought to be political, whose fault is that?

To be continued.

UPDATE: "Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street" is now available from Pioneer Drama Service

Play a Day: Nutshell

C. Denby Swanson

For Sunday I read Nutshell by C. Denby Swanson and available at New Play Exchange.

The word theater derives from the Greek for to behold, or "seeing place."

The character based on the true life individual Frances Glessner Lee informs us "the word autopsy derives from the Greek for seeing oneself."

Swanson's Gothic investigation of this near-forgotten mother of forensic investigation is rich with gallows humor, presenting an unreliable narrator whose live was dedicated to making the unseen seen.

The stories we tell about women, true and imagined, are about controlling women, their behavior, they are treated as symbols, not people, in order to mold their behavior. This is true of our folk tales, as well as our modern television procedural dramas.

It is also true of the stories we tell about people of color, though, as is the case with the violence against women forever captured in the crime scene dollhouse dioramas painstaking crafted by our protagonist, these injustices are hiding in plain sight.

I have read twenty-plays in twenty-eight days, four solid weeks of play-reading. Each day I meet a new playwright, and there are so many I have not yet experienced. It is a great joy to indulge in the work of fellow writers.

Tomorrow night we begin rehearsal for King Lear at the Beck Center. Tuesday I will close the month with a thirtieth play. On Wednesday I will resume my daily ritual of writing at five each morning.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Sapience

Diana Burbano

For Tuesday I read Sapience by Diana Burbano and available at New Play Exchange.

sapience n.
sa·​pi·​ence / ˈsā-pē-ən(t)s
wisdom, knowledge, from sapient (adj) having or showing great wisdom or sound judgment.

The latin term for a human being is homo sapiens, or "man with wisdom." Coined in the late 18th century, we did seem to be the smart ones. But what is the nature of wisdom, of intelligence? In the past two hundred years we have discovered that humans are not exclusively intelligent. We are also not necessarily wise.

The action of Burbano's script resides in a laboratory, one ostensibly for the study of great apes, specifically one orangutan named Wookie. But we the audience witness a larger experiment in human interaction, between hyper-intelligent folks on the spectrum. between races, human sexuality and illness, the effect of singing Echo & the Bunnymen in a controlled environment.

How do our minds work? How much do we yet not know? How much time do we have left to figure it out? How can we be aware of death and not go insane? Have we already gone mad and we just don't realize it yet?

Who should I read tomorrow?

Play a Day: Hottentotted

Charly Evon Simpson

For Wednesday I read Hottentotted by Charly Evon Simpson and available at New Play Exchange.

At the end of Lysistrata, the men of Greece use a woman as a map to divide territory and determine the terms of peace. It's played for comedy, but as critic Amy Bracken Sparks pointed out in her review of the Bad Epitaph production in 2000, "the image is as old as strife."

"War is essentially fought on a woman's body, be she the earth, the country, or the women left behind to tend to things such as holding the country together." 

I was reminded of this metaphor, of woman's body as terrain, as I read Hottentotted, a bold and beautiful examination of the black female body, and how it is seen. Seen by the other, seen by itself. How they are watched, judged, fetishized, exalted, scorned and controlled. Led by the famous “Hottentot Venus” Saartjie or Sarah Bartman, six performers explore a life and a history of being looked at.

It is a haunting piece, exploring the dichotomy between that which is perceived as beautiful and unsightly, self-denial and self-awareness. Of wanting to be something else, and the struggle towards empowerment, safety, and self-love.

In performance Hottentotted should be a very physical piece, the stage directions are both graceful and haunting. And in the final moments the audience (and this reading audience) is reminded that the watchers watch, also.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Source: "Rowdy Romps" by Amy Bracken Sparks, The Free Times (5/24/2000)

Who Owns the Story? (panel discussion)

From left: Bobgan, Ortiz, Coble & Salter

My friend and colleague Eric Coble sat charmingly tilted to one side between playwrights Milta Ortiz and Nikkole Salter during last Saturday’s panel discussion on appropriation and authenticity, Who Owns the Story?

Presented as part of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Entry Point weekend of new works, and produced in association with the Dramatists Guild and HowlRound, the event was moderated by CPT artistic director Raymond Bobgan.

Ortiz is Outreach Director for Borderlands Theater in Tuscon, AZ, and a playwright whose work-in-progress Water (co-created by Marc David Pinate, a co-production between Borderlands and CPT) was presented in part at Entry Point this year, one of the plays for which I helped facilitate post-show discussion. I have also read her powerful and timely work Más on New Play Exchange.

Salter is an Obie Award-winning writer and Pulitzer finalist (Continuum) who is currently working on a commission from CPT and the National New Play Network titled Breakout Session, a play inspired by the Cleveland Police Department consent decree from the U.S. Justice Center.

The topic was who owns the story. But the real question is who tells the story. Ortiz, a Salvadoran American, and Salter, an African American, told several nuanced, relevant stories about their experiences with appropriation, including those where they themselves were the appropriators; which is to say, where and when they were telling someone else’s story.

I myself have appropriated. I mean, anyone who has a retold a told has appropriated. Right? Like Eric I sat charmingly tilted to one side.

Further, the more important question may be not who owns the story, but who gets to tell it. Today, if a white man tells a story, any story, it is much more likely to get produced -- and to get attention -- than that from a person of color. So if a white person chooses to tell the story of another race, walk, culture, or so on, you must ask not only why they are telling the story, but why isn’t a person from that race, walk, culture the one telling it?

It is, as Salter pointed out, about the power dynamics in our nation. As writers, we must ask ourselves, "why am I writing this?"

Take the recently-announced Academy Award nominations, which include Black Panther and Green Book. The first is an Afro-Futurist adventure created prominently by Africa-descended artists, the other a story of segregation created by a white director and screenwriters which has been criticized for being a typical “white savior” movie.

More people came out to see Black Panther, but Green Book has already won a best drama award at the Golden Globes.

Does that mean that one is limited to writing only characters from their own ethnic, racial, cultural background? I don’t know. Maybe? Why are you writing that character?

Coble wrote the outrageous satire Fairfield, about the worst Black History Month pageant ever, to examine issues of race in the American middle-class, and by his own account his first draft was criticized by African American readers as being too kind to the black characters, that he needed to be an equal opportunity offender.

This is my basic criticism with Clybourne Park, the acclaimed, unauthorized sequel to A Raisin In the Sun. It is ostensibly about race (for which its white playwright received a Pulitzer Prize) but the script is peopled with terrible white people who talk too much and blameless black people who talk very little.

I would like to write about the world around me, and include all the people in it, be they black, white, Latinx, gay, straight, trans, Muslim, atheist -- everyone. So, how does a playwright like myself know when what we are writing is appropriate or appropriating?

“Are you asking for a rule book?” Bobgan deadpanned, which got a laugh. Because it’s true. We want guidance and permission. We want a rule book. And we can’t have one. Why should we? How is it someone else’s responsibility to train me in sensitivity, to tell me it’s okay, or worse yet, to do the work to fix my play?

It is the white playwright’s responsibility, any playwright’s responsibility, to know their job, to know what they are doing, to be in the world and to be aware of what it is they are writing, and why.

Watch the entire panel discussion here:

Serial (podcast)

Emmanuel Dzotsi & Sarah Koenig
Photo: Sandy Honig

Recently, Aaron Sorkin wrote an essay for New York Magazine in which he described the journey of his new stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. He was tasked with a seemingly intractable puzzle; stay entirely faithful to the original without changing a thing, but make it fresh and new.

While Mockingbird is a widely-cherished piece of work (the book, the original 1990 stage play by Christopher Stergel, and the award-winning film) presenting it as-is to a 2018 audience held a host of challenges; two notable problems are the unchangeable (see: undramatic) character of protagonist Atticus Finch, and the fact that a story which is primarily about race has few characters of color. Those present do not speak very much.

In the first case, Sorkin has addressed the problem of Atticus’s seemingly flawless character by making that his flaw. Atticus Finch believes that, as Sorkin puts it, as another put it before him, “there are fine people on both sides.” His crisis of conscience comes when that belief is permanently shaken.

As to the other, to creating scenes where the Finch housekeeper Calpurnia, and the accused Tom Robinson get to speak their minds where previously they had not, that is an issue where the estate of Harper Lee felt it necessary to take this new production to court.

Unlike in the 1960 novel, this recent trial played out in Mr. Robinson’s favor.

But the trial in this new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird still ends in tragedy, as it must. Justice is denied. And the frustration felt by Atticus Finch and the disillusionment experienced by his young daughter Scout remains the main focus of this story, the one white Americans who love it most relate to.

Sorkin here quotes his friend and colleague, director David Fincher, stating, “art isn’t supposed to answer questions, it’s supposed to ask them.” The internet tells me it was actually the playwright Anton Chekhov who said that, but who knows. The point is, Mockingbird remains a troubling work, and in an era where violence against black men in America by those in authority is still an everyday occurrence, is it enough to simply ask questions? Do we not demand answers?

Justice is also the theme of the third season of the podcast Serial. A spin-off from This American Life, the concept is simple -- instead of one, brief story, or one episode-long story, one entire modern American mystery is investigated over the course of weeks.

It would have been hard to top Serial’s first season, and it was. The 1999 murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee had much going for it to create a pop culture phenomenon; teen sex, interracial relationships, Islamophobia, drugs, an attractive anti-hero in the convicted boyfriend, Adnan Syed, and even late 90s nostalgia (pinging cell towers, anyone?)

Episode Six mural art by Martinez E-B
Photo by Moth Studio

And then there is the producer-host, Sarah Koenig, who has no qualms about crossing journalistic boundaries and becoming part of the story. She breaks the cardinal rule of impartiality, developing something of a crush on Syed, and openly expressing confusion and concern about what the truth actually is, which is fine for me because 1) she’s entirely up-front and transparent about it and 2) who the fuck is impartial anymore?

Season two was something of a let-down. The Bowe Bergdahl case, a story of American involvement in Afghanistan, was compelling, fascinating even. But as a central character Bergdahl is, excuse me for saying so, boring. Worse, I don’t like him. Worse, I don’t care about him.

Season three left me emotionally startled at the jump, and kept me there, and for very personal reasons. They broke the mold of the first two seasons by changing focus from a single mystery to be plumbed (a murder, a disappearance) to a larger social ill to be remedied -- namely, the American criminal justice system. And the main character was not a person, but a city. Cleveland.

For nine weeks, Koenig and reporter-producer Emmanuel Dzotsi set up shop in the Justice Center downtown, and followed the stories they found there, drawing a complex web of tales depicting a dysfunctional system through which we meet a engaging collection of characters (people) in places a little too close for comfort.

In episode six (You In the Red Shirt) a citizen is harassed by East Cleveland officers in “the park.” It’s not just any park, though. They say its proper name just once, Forest Hill Park. I take a run in that park every day. There is a world within my world of which I remain blithely ignorant.

I am not going to describe the stories, these citizens, you need to listen to the podcast yourself. Perhaps you already have. But I was startled by how Koenig chose to conclude, with a litany of suggestions. And it’s a long list.

“Don't pile six charges onto a single crime when one charge will do. Don't overcharge to force a guilty plea. Don't lock anyone up, unless they're demonstrably violent. Admit that police officers lie under oath. Get out of the punishment business and turn toward the urgent problem of fairness.”

She goes on for four paragraphs. In this holiday season, she even quotes Dickens: “Don't be insensibly tempted ... into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course.”

Her final word is, “Let's all accept that something's gone wrong. Let's make that our premise.”

And so, they say that art isn’t supposed to answer questions, it’s supposed to ask them. But these days, it is as though even journalism -- tasked with reporting the truth -- doesn’t even ask the questions. Koenig and her team do ask questions, some very difficult questions.

And they dare to provide some answers. Because for God’s sake someone has to.

Behind the Scenes of Serial Season Three, featuring Sarah Koenig and Emamanuel Dzotsi, comes to Playhouse Square on Saturday, December 15, 2018.

Related:
SeriaLand, a blog by Cleveland attorney Rebecca Maurer, providing greater historical context to Serial Season Three.

Cleveland Talks Serial, a podcast produced by IdeaStream. A round table discussion on the series.

Sources:
Serial (podcast)

"Bringing To Kill a Mockingbird to Broadway was nearly impossible" by Aaron Sorkin, New York Magazine 11/26/2018

Monticello

This is Monticello.

Eighteen years ago, my wife and I took a second honeymoon. We’d only been married a year, but through the five years we’d been together we had already taken several road trips. One of the great joys of my life was finding a partner who was as delighted by roadside attractions as I was.

For the year 2000 we would take the longest excursion we ever had, perhaps we ever will. Three weeks on the road, traveling south through Memphis and Asheville, taking a week with friends in a roundhouse on the Outer Banks before heading north again through the two Virginias.

Approaching Nashville, we spotted signs for Belle Meade Plantation and decided yes, we have time for this. This was before we had teenage children, whose vote would most likely be “no,” not for any unpleasant reason, but usually out of a desire to “get there,” meaning either our final destination or a hotel with a pool.

Like many stately homes of the old South that were not burned to the ground during the war, Belle Meade has been preserved as a museum, a celebration of antebellum gentility and prosperity. Owner John Harding bred horses, which is a fine thing to do.

The building remains, complete with bullet holes in the stone columns from a “skirmish” between Union and Confederate soldiers. What no longer remained was any evidence of where the 136 enslaved people who worked the plantation and kept it successful for the white family in the big house lived, and raised their families.

Thomas Jefferson
Statue by Alexander Galt, UVA Rotunda (detail)

At the turn of the 21st century, however, things were finally beginning to change. They acknowledged these enslaved men, women, and children -- with particular emphasis on the seventy-two who remained after the war to work as employees, as though that suggested slavery on this plantation was the “good” kind, and not that other kind.

The year before, in 1999, there was a screening of Gone With the Wind at the Cedar-Lee, celebrating the film’s sixtieth anniversary. That was the first and last time I will ever see that movie. AFI still rates it as one of the top ten films ever made, and for sheer craft and artistry, perhaps it is. I fucking hate that movie, one which minimizes the entire American slave trade with the phrase, “they weren’t miserable.”

At the tail end of our journey, we spent a night in Charlottesville and the day at Monticello. It was a lazy day for us, touring the house, yes but also strolling leisurely through the gardens. Our children are good travelers, but it has been a long time since my wife and I have taken a journey on our own, dined at our own speed, made appointments at our own speed, and were able to silently take in a garden, a view, a work of architecture or art without distraction or comment.

One feature she very much liked was the Garden Pavilion, a small room, made of brick, perched on the “little mountain” with a grand view of the valley, the land beyond. She fancied what a marvelous room that would be to sit in and think or write, for hours.

Now remember, this first visit was in 2000, only two years since DNA testing made scientifically evident that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least five children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved person who lived at Monticello. The white descendants of Jefferson were still not prepared to accept the results, many surely never will be. But already the message was being shared from the docents at the site that slavery was to be acknowledged, though that message was not yet very loud.

Garden Pavilion, 2000

We learned about Jefferson the statesman, the scientist, the scholar, the philosopher, the farmer -- though he never really got his hands dirty. We also saw that peculiar bed that opened to his changing room and his study, which used to seem cool but now all I can think is, well, that’s a difficult bed to make.

Of course, he never made it.

It was easier just to tell his story, because it is most evident. Not merely because he was the third President of the United States, but because all of his stuff is still right there, to look at. Following emancipation the housing for the enslaved people was destroyed, what little possessions they owned, lost.

This July 4th weekend, NPR rebroadcast a Studio 360 episode about Monticello, and having recently visited it seemed a bit tone deaf. When an historian described the many debts Jefferson left when he died, he mentions in passing the “contents” that were sold off to raise funds.

Historian Hugh Howard says, “They have an auction, and they sell much of the contents of the house, which don’t go for a lot of money. They sell the slaves, which do go for a certain amount of money. And they begin to think about selling the house.”

He just glosses over the slaves. They get sold. That’s over six hundred people with lives and families who were auctioned off to pay the debts of one man. This episode was a rebroadcast, actually recorded in 2012. Even as late as six years ago a white man can casually reference an obscene act of human cruelty as casually as he was reading a ledger.

The good news is that the tenor of the conversation at Monticello has evolved mightily over the past eighteen years. Today you can expect to hear the stories of many others who lived and worked at Monticello, people whose stories might otherwise have been lost to history.

Hemings Family cabin (reconstruction)

It was a hot day, a not atypical summer day in Virginia, when we visited late last month. Waiting for the house tour we took the “Slavery Tour,” a walk-and-talk along Mulberry Row, which was once a bustling engine of toil and industry, made of homes for those who worked there, as well as workshops and storehouses for the various trades that kept the plantation alive.

Some small buildings have been recreated during the past generation. But our guide mostly led us from one shaded area to another (where we were able to enjoy staggeringly beautiful vistas overlooking the valley) and told true stories of those who lived and worked the row.

Joseph Fossett, a member of the Hemings extended family, was one of the very few enslaved people granted freedom in Jefferson’s will. We heard of the arrangements Fossett made with individual whites to purchase his family members at auction, to be bought by Fossett (with interest) as he made his living in Ohio as a blacksmith. For his youngest, Peter, it was an additional 25 years in bondage before Fossett was able to bring him north to freedom. Joseph Fossett worked every day to pay for his own children’s freedom.

"They sell the slaves, which do go for a certain amount of money." Which. Indeed.

But our tour wasn’t some matter-of-fact description of a bygone era. Our tour guide had an agenda, comparing slavery to the modern prison system, reminding us that the scars of race-based slavery are with us today and are nowhere near invisible.

Because our tour guide, this young man, is from Charlottesville, raised in Charlottesville, this is his home. And he was present during the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in August 2017, and Heather Heyer, who was murdered by a Nazi-sympathizer during the rally, was a friend of his.

Taking the new house tour, we heard once again about Jefferson’s many great achievements, but also the names and the stories of those who worked below floors, exhibits which have also recently been developed to illustrate slave life at Monticello.

Garden Pavilion, 2018

Why so much emphasis on slavery? Isn’t that past? Isn’t it time to move on? That is an argument, but it’s a useless one. It is an argument of exclusion. Thomas Jefferson did a great many things, including lead a country, establish a university, write the Declaration of Independence, the foundation of our democracy. He would never have had the time, the wherewithal to accomplish any of these things without the toil of the six hundred and seven people whose work gave him the time to sit and write and think.

And so we returned to the Garden Pavilion, from which Jefferson would have sat and thought and wrote, overlooking Charlottesville, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Rivanna River beyond. And in his day, he would also be keeping his eye on the hundreds of men and women downhill, harvesting all of his valuable tobacco.

Telling the story of Monticello requires telling the story of the people who literally built Monticello.

See also: Monticello Is Done Avoiding Jefferson’s Relationship With Sally Hemings by Farah Stockman, New York Times, 6/16/2018

UPDATES:

Man Who Killed Heather Heyer at Charlottesville Sentenced to Life In Prison, Plus 419 Years by E.J. Dickson, Rolling Stone, 7/15/2019

Plantations are talking more about slavery — and grappling with visitors who talk back by Hannah Knowles, Washington Post, 9/8/2019

This American Life (radio)

Radio: An Illustrated Guide
(I own this comic book.)

Recently we had occasion to dig out our old copy of Trivial Pursuit: 90s Time Capsule Edition. The tagline is, “from the most trivial of decades.” Even today, that seems a most accurate description. You can get in trouble painting an entire decade (or an entire generation) with so broad a brush. But historically speaking, we were complacent.

In 1995, when I was creating theater pieces about Gen X nostalgia and long-form improv-inspired by nascent reality TV, NPR reporter and producer Ira Glass introduced This American Life.

Its mission, ostensibly, was to report on life in these United States. Not the famous, or the necessarily newsworthy, but life as it is lived in the corners and in the fringes. I loved it almost immediately, if only because these brief radio diaries were about things I was interested in. Conventions, summer camp, 24-hour diners, Canadians, and terrible sex.

Glass quickly developed a stable of reliable writers he would turn to with some regularity, whose work I greatly enjoyed; David Rakoff, Scott Carrier, Tobias Wolff, Dan Savage, Sarah Vowell, and David Sedaris. You notice that even in this sampling, which I thought up off the top of my head, almost all are men. All were white.

By the late 1990s I was consuming episodes voraciously, even using primitive methods of “downloading.” Due to issues of copyright, TAL came to the podcast game rather late, but early on you could stream the program with players like RealAudio, and I hooked a cassette machine to my computer to record episodes in real time for playback anywhere in house or car at my convenience.

The most compelling to me were the truly moving ones, most notably Last Words, an extended rumination on death. This episode sends chills down my spine through the music alone, prompting me to buy CDs from Bill Frisell, Philip Glass, and to put Brian Eno’s Music For Airports back into personal rotation. It was here I first heard the quote attributed to Yahuda HaLevi, “It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.”

A moving sentiment, it has what the kids today refer to as “all the feels.” I did not yet comprehend what that phrase means, though. These weekly journeys into dark corners America were, shall we say, an in vitro experience. I was thirty. I was a slacker. I didn't know much.

On one episode in the mid-2000s, Ira related the moment he was watching The O.C. when two of the characters name-check his show. They’re on the phone and one says he’s listening to This American Life, and the other says, “Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? Ecch. God.”

However, by that point, things had already begun to evolve for the program. The events of 9/11 was a challenge the team met with surprising speed, depth, and clarity. The last program in August, 2001 was about basketball tricks and professional gambling. By September 14, they had assembled a collection of stories they already had in the can on personal loss; co-writing your father’s obituary with your not-yet-deceased father, and David Sedaris writing about his mother’s death.

By the following week they were able to break open tales of how communities experience and cope with (or do not) monumental tragedy and grief with the brilliant episode Before and After. David Rakoff recounts the historic destruction of the steamship General Slocum, which devastated nearly every family in an entire New York neighborhood, and Haruki Murakami reporting first-person accounts of the 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

In telling smaller stories around a subject, and not necessarily about the big story at hand, the producers of This American Life have been able to effectively, and in recent years with more urgency, comment upon recent events. The war years (which have not actually ended) pushed the program out of its comfort zone, and TAL’s definition of what constituted a story about “American life” broadened considerably. We were taken to Afghanistan and Iraq and Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay.

Your host.

I mentioned the prominence of male writers and voices on the program, though even from the beginning there were women producers, writers and reporters like Nancy Updike, Alix Spiegel, Julie Snyder, and later Sarah Koenig (of Serial fame, a TAL spin-off) have played a prominent role. But if you tried to articulate any bias, or particular point of view for the program, it would be that squishy, liberal, can’t-we-all-get-along vibe. Homosexuality was always presented as matter-of-fact (though predominantly male-centric homosexuality) and racism, for example, is presumed to be a bad thing.

For example, in Be Careful Who You Pretend To Be we hear the story of Ron Copeland, who plays a “slave owner” as part of an interactive, historical reenactment. He thinks of himself as a good person, certainly not racist, and it begins to tear at his soul when he has to behave as one for the purposes of education and entertainment. It is an affecting piece. You feel bad for him, the white guy.

In light of recent national events, however, the show has started to lean with greater strength into uncomfortable modern issues … and Ira Glass, the omnipotent, white, cis-male narrator has noticeably begun to lean back. Two remarkable episodes from the past twelve months illustrate issues in American society which have deep roots, but have been brought into sharp relief during the time of the Trump Administration. And in each case, Glass has taken the once rare and now more frequent opportunity to hand over responsibility to another, one more familiar with and a true representative of the subject matter.

Last summer We Are in the Future, hosted by TAL producer Neil Drumming, who is African-American, delved into the subject of Afrofuturism. For the uninitiated, one of the most powerful recent examples of Afrofuturism is the movie Black Panther, and particularly the fictional nation of Wakanda. What would the present be like if white colonials had not ravaged the continent of Africa in the past? But that is merely one way to describe the aesthetic.

FTL, Y'all!:
Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive
Cover art by Paul Davey

One of the stories reflects that episode from almost twenty years ago, about the white historical reenactor who played a slave-owner. In this case, however, it is comedian and actor Azie Dungey recounting her time playing the part of an enslaved person at Mount Vernon. Playing the part of one of those whom our first President claimed to own as property, she was exposed to the mental and emotional abuse of white visitors and co-workers who unintentionally or not saw her as what she was performing -- a servant, an object, an other -- which begs the question; is that not already what happens every day in America?

This past spring, the episode Five Women, hosted by producer Chana Joffe-Walt (a female-American) told a story about one empowered man -- a so-called progressive, liberal man, by the way -- and the manipulative effect he had on five women he worked with, was romantically involved with, or in several of these cases, both. The President of the United States is an unapologetic serial harasser, who only this week mocked the #MeToo movement, but the outrageousness of his sins have served to created not merely a conversation, but a revolution is the way we consider inappropriate and/or inexcusable behavior across the society.

The past year and a half we have seen historically marginalized people’s rights and liberties threatened, at the same time witnessed as they have used their voices in new, exciting, insightful, and powerful ways. And while This American Life was never meant to be at the forefront of fierce social debate, I am glad that this program, which originally focused on stories most trivial, has evolved to reflect the current moment in a manner most relevant.