Injecting Race into the Well Made Play

My friend Sam wrote a fantastically thought-provoking piece about MTC's production of Othello, and our tendency to both inject and ignore our current race relations into a very old work of art.  Some juicy tidbits:

In dealing with the Marin Theatre Company’s recent production of Othello I feel that I have to contend with the injection of ideology into the banal world of the well made play...

But we look into this “period” production of Othello from a world where a black man is president of the United States and an unarmed black teen has been gunned down by his local neighborhood watch and we understand that this is not escapism.

That issues of race are a perennial concern in the American social and political landscapes it stands to reason that theater companies should produce Shakespeare’s Othello. For this reason the current Marin Theatre Company production of the play should be commended. It is of no small importance that the American theatre-going public is overwhelmingly white and that the demographics of Marin County are similarly inclined. So, if raising these issue in these locations is awkward it is also important.

Later:

Another story that should be mentioned in relationship to “Othello” is the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin. Othello is a tragedy in part because a vigilante justice is carried out on the presumption of guilt before innocence. A woman is guilty of adultery just because she appears flirtatious. A victim’s clothing should not be held accountable for rape and a victim’s clothing should not be held accountable for murder. These narratives play in our heads while the theater we are consuming seems to be trying its best to distance itself from these kinds of thoughts.

This piece brings up so much of what has been bouncing around in my conversations about Othello this past week or so since seeing it.  I enjoyed myself during the play; it was a beautiful piece of theatre.  I respect the production team:  many of them are my friends.  But I left the play feeling like it barely scratched the surface of what we could feel as a mostly white audience watching a horrible tragedy unfold.  I found myself wondering about other iterations of Othello:  is there a way to take us away from the black vs. white shorthand that is so hard-wired in our culture that we don't even have to explore it except on a superficial level?

Read all of Sam's essay here.

Familiarity is Key?

A brainstorming session a few weeks ago fostered this hot mess:

When I went to Clay Lord's Intrinsic Impact talk a few days after that, I felt like my head would fall off from all the nodding I was doing.  I'm reading the book, Counting New Beans, now.  The book has much bigger ideas than my silly brainstorming cluster, and I can't wait to really dive deep into it.

The gist of my brainstorming all those weeks ago was to think about why people go to the theatre, especially those who aren't "theatre people."  (Which I'll argue that all audiences are "theatre people" of some sort, they ARE in a dang theatre - but that's a tangent.)

People go to theatre for all sorts of reasons, and - to me - the gateway seems to be familiarity.  If they know someone involved in the production, if they know the story, if they have a tradition built around going to see it, or if they have a certain interest in the history or the aesthetic of the piece, then they have some familiarity with the work and it becomes more accessible.  This is the cornerstone to my love of dramaturgy and key to getting people to show up to see and become a part of the work we pour our hearts and souls into.

MUCH more later, over the course of many entries, I'm sure.

Avant-garde?

This past weekend, I sat in the audience of Othello at Marin Theatre Company, and a couple behind me (matching the description of most of the audience members there:  These Fine Folks were a heterosexual upper middle class white couple in their seventies) were discussing cancelling their subscription to Berkeley Repertory Theatre.  Apparently Berkeley Rep has become “too avant-garde.”  They then discussed the possibility of going to Aurora Theatre Company instead, but the wife quickly discounted that idea, saying that Aurora is even more avant-garde than Berkeley Rep.

Now, I know I’m one of these damn young kids that sits in front of a screen all day...but Berkeley Rep?  Aurora?  Avant-garde?  I mean, they keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.  


By “avant-garde” what do they mean?  
Too many solo shows?  (Palomino, Rita Moreno, Let Me Down Easy)  
Too many people of color on stage?  (Arabian Nights, Ruined, Trouble in Mind)  
Too much puppetry?  (Compulsion, The Composer is Dead, The Soldier’s Tale) 
Too much multi-disciplinarianism?  (Soldier’s Tale, The Wild Bride)
Too much activism?  (The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Let Me Down Easy)  
Too many gay characters?  (Ghost Light, Body Awareness) 
...What?

Of course These Fine Folks are entitled to their opinion, and should subscribe to whatever theatre floats their boat!  But what does this mean, if the shows that Berkeley Rep and Aurora are programming for their seasons is too...whatever...for couples like These Fine Folks, who make up a good portion of the subscription population that these companies are trying to please? And what does it mean when some of the members of these audiences might find a lot of the "avant-garde" shows offered by professional theatres in town not at all avant-garde, but firmly within their boundaries?  Those same audiences that find all of those elements listed above not only aesthetically exciting, but sometimes even normal in their theatre going experience: those same audiences may actually WANT to see people of color, multidisciplinary art, masks and puppets, gay characters, and activists, and to see them as a matter of fact, and not as something "other".  


In fact, these "avant-garde"-loving audience members might find it stretches their comfort level to watch what These Fine Folks behind me at Othello would call normal. Stuff that Berkeley Rep and Aurora still program with as much frequency as the rest of it: shows about what These Fine Folks seem to want to see, shows that feature people that look like they do and grew up in similar circumstances and whose sexual orientation is neutral or closeted or straight, just like their own. Shows like A Delicate Balance, Red, Metamorphosis, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, How To Write a Book for the Bible, Anatol, A Doctor in Spite of Himself...well, frankly, more than half of each theatre's season.

Surely there’s a middle ground here.  In fact, I think the middle ground IS the ground.

First Pass

Welcome!  Here on this blah-dee-blog I will offer yet another shout to the crowd and a place to heckle with my cohorts.  The hope will always be to contribute something constructive to the ongoing conversations about art, theatre, dramaturgy, and the dramas therein.  Stay tuned!

(Image source)