Obama "Clarifies" Abortion Stance: As noted here, the law governing late-term abortions, which has been upheld by the US Supreme Court, includes an exception for women who would suffer emotional or psychological harm if they were required to bring a pregnancy to term. Only Justices Scalia and Thomas opposed the exemption. Obama’s “serious clinical mental health diseases” criterion goes much further than the Supreme Court, which ruled that “[M]edical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional , psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well- being of the patient.” That allowance is intended to account not just for serious clinical diseases but for cases such as: A girl who was raped by a relative and couldn’t get to an abortion clinic or didn’t know she was pregnant; a woman whose fetus can’t possibly survive; or a girl who may commit suicide if forced to bring a child to term.
Obama could have clarified his position on abortion in a way that satisfied abortion-rights defenders. (One ardent Obama supporter outlines what she wishes he’d said here). Instead, he “clarified” by tying himself in rhetorical knots, implying that some women seek abortions because they’re “just feeling blue” in the process. I do a lot of things when I’m feeling blue—drinking, crying, and calling my mom come to mind—but I don’t think I’d hoof it to one of the two clinics in the country that still provide (extremely rare) late-term abortions just because I’m having a bad day.
Design Observer: It's been observed, correctly, that the creative output of Sterling Cooper, which is barely ever shown being developed, more or less stinks. As George Lois told the New York Times: “When I hear ‘Mad Men,’ it’s the most irritating thing in the world to me. When you think of the ’60s, you think about people like me who changed the advertising and design worlds. The creative revolution was the name of the game. This show gives you the impression it was all three-martini lunches.” But Don Draper doesn't work at DDB or Papert Koenig Lois. Sterling Cooper is an old-school agency, and in 1960 big establishment agencies ran on smooth presentations, fastidious account handling, and, actually, three-martini-lunches. (Find a used copy of Jerry Della Femina's From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor if you have any doubt.)
Theatre Ideas: Resource #6: Impossible Plays: The Cottlesloe Company was comprised mostly of hard-drinking male artists with a working class background (sometimes referred to disparagingly by outsiders as the "rugby team," and known among themselves as "The Beasts") who focused on the creation of a "popular theatre" using folk music and what they called "promenade" staging, in which the action moved in and around the often-standing audience. If you ever get an opportunity to see the video of The Mysteries, the power of this approach is evident even in recorded form. What comes through the anecdotes most powerfully is a sense of vision and commitment, a purpose to what they were doing, and the faith and funding of Peter Hall necessary to create dynamic work. Unlike our one-and-done system of play production, the ensemble was the source of inspiration, and the ongoing relationships created the means to build on experiments and discoveries. This is truly experimental theatre, in the scientific sense of experiment being the development of a hypothesis and the tesing of that hypothesis in action, then building on what is learned to further develop understanding. "To have a flow of work," Dewhurst notes, "you need control." Indeed, this is the definition of artistic vision: the vision necessary to create something new, and the control needed to see it through.
Commentary from Theatreforte--you can read the entire posting here:
Mr. Daisey makes a compelling argument, but I have to question one of his fundamental assumptions. He states:
"My piece is called HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA because I am speaking about the responsibility the institution of theater has to America, how it has failed that responsibility, and how we are all implicated in this." I'm confused because Mr. Daisey neglects to define his terms. What exactly is meant by "responsibility?" Is it an obligation to hire actors as full-time staff with an annual salary and benefits? Is it a duty to challenge, educate, and entertain American audiences? Is it a commitment to expand the formal and artistic boundaries of the medium? Is it all of the above? That isn't neglect—I'm stating why the monologue has the title that it has. To get my full response, one has to refer to the monologue itself--that's the work that covers these questions at some length, addressing them both as policy and in deeper, emotional terms.
That said, I'll take a whack at a few of these off the top of my head, in brief.
What exactly is meant by "responsibility?" Is it an obligation to hire actors as full-time staff with an annual salary and benefits? Is it a duty to challenge, educate, and entertain American audiences? Is it a commitment to expand the formal and artistic boundaries of the medium? Is it all of the above?
It is all of the above, but not necessarily as narrowly as defined as it is above. Theater has multiple responsibilities, but the two facets I am mostly engaged with in HTFA concern the responsibility of theater to create a healthy, sustainable path for its artists to live and work, and the responsibility of theater to make itself a vital, relevant voice in public discourse. In both respects I believe theater has failed its responsibilities.
Additionally, Mr. Daisey does not define what he means by "the institution of American theater." Does he mean institutional theatre, which would include individual theatre companies? Or is he talking about theatre as an institution, which is a more abstract concept that indicts TCG, LORT, the American educational system, and the entire non-profit funding model from the NEA on down? The shortest answer to this would be: yes. The slightly longer answer is that it is intimately tied into the institutionalization and corporatization of theater.
In terms of "America," this could include American cities, American performing artists, the American economy, American audiences, or all this and more. Again, the answer here would be: yes. It has failed America, by which I mean all of us in America—the country, the future of the country, take your pick.
These definitions matter because not all operating or funding models provide adequate attention or remedies to such a broad array of diverse components.
It matters little that not all models work for all situations--that's obvious. What is important is that currently all the dominant models run on the blood of the artists, and so long as they run this way we are all implicated in its failures. It's a huge enduring bias, and needs to be addressed, and it is present in every part of institutionalized American theater.
Some local actors may benefit from being hired as full-time staff in a traditional resident theatre model, but the ensemble model may be more effective in pushing the formal and artistic boundaries of the medium.
I'm not nearly as concerned with the "artistic level" of the end result--I will trust artists to work that out to the best of their abilities. I'm concerned that there is no security of any kind in the art of the theater, regardless of skill level, and that amount of cannibalism ruins good people, destroys the bond that would be created by communities who know and connect with the people they see on the stage, and generally sucks ass. That is a larger issue than any other, in my book, and its this destructiveness that
Now that the proverbial boat has been rocked, it's time for Mr. Daisey and others to get specific about a vision for American theatre and how to best achieve those goals.
In a word: no. Not for me.
I've already created a work that speaks and resonates about these issues, that engenders discussion, foments real discourse and has been lauded by many. I may CHOOSE to work on policy issues in my free time (of which I have vanishingly little) but I am certainly not CHARGED to do so. I have a calling, which I fulfill through my work. I do my part and more. I am an artist—I will nurture, hone, and refine it, and that is what I am responsible for because that is what I am.
Once I have time I'll be publishing a transcript of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA under a Creative Commons license, as well as audio. Note that this will involve giving my work away for free, even though I have no institution to fall back on—but I understand the shape of things today, and that ideas are more important than money. Ideas can be viral in a way that money never is, because money is ultimately an abstraction, while ideas...ideas are one of the highest forms of human expression. They *make* us human.
Since I am already expressing my vision, I think it's high time that ANY of the people who never write online to speak up with their visions for American theater. I want to hear from the administrators, the artistic directors, the movers and shakers...I'm busy with this work, so let them do their jobs and lead. It is, after all, what they are ostensibly paid for--show us that American theater has a backbone and prove me wrong.
This summer Mike Daisey travelled to Tadzhikistan – one of the least-known places in the world - as a guest and as a highly unusual cultural attaché at the American Embassy in that country. The story of this stranger in a strange country is told against the background of the history of geography - i.e. the system of maps and graphs used to represent the way our world is divided and charted. With in the back of his mind the notion that this very geographical division has partly determined the course of history itself...By combining true stories with invented stories in the real and an imaginary Tadzhikistan, Daisey tries to discover the ways in which stories tend to fade in time when faced with the truth. Everyone who hung on to Mike Daisey's every word for two hours last year, can indulge themselves again this year. The master storeyteller is back at Noorderzon!
Our good friends Sheila Callaghan and Sophocles Papavasilopoulos gave birth this morning at 4:15am to young Callaghan Papavasilopoulous. He's bright and healthy, and both the mother and child are doing fantastically--if you know them through the power of Facebook, send congratulations here and here.
Jesse Helms was also a homophobic piece of shit who did everything he could to torment people with AIDS during the darkest hours of the AIDS epidemic—and now he’s dead.
I realize that the death of a prominent piece of shit puts people on the radio and teevee in an awkward position. We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead… and any honest accounting of this piece of shit’s career requires us to speak very ill of the dead indeed. So perhaps simply noting the piece of shit’s passing—briefly, and just the facts—would be the prudent thing to do. It would certainly be better than inviting a few people on the radio to discuss the piece of shit’s life and accomplishments at the precise moment when decorum requires us to put the nicest possible gloss on the piece of shit. To polish the turd, as it were.
Waking up to a discussion of the highlights of Helm’s career and listening to the oh-so-polite NPR host and his oh-so-polite guests dance around the issue of race—never mind the gay or AIDS issues, which weren’t even mentioned (well, not in the section I caught; I literally woke up to this)—until the host delicately observed in admiring tones, “He used race very effectively,” and the guest chuckled and agreed, well, let’s just say that’s was a very unpleasant way to start the day.
Tomorrow we're performing at the Public, our first New York showing of IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING. We had tremendous response from the list for tickets to the event, and it's now totally sold out--in fact, we had TWICE the people ask for spots than would fit in Joe's Pub! If you got an email back from the intern handling the reservations, then you're in, otherwise we'll see you in October.
I haven't had a chance to talk about the intensity of our process in Santa Fe, and I'm not certain how to address it here--it was really powerful, one that we both felt barely in control of. The show that has emerged is in good shape, considering how much touring has been happening and the run at the Barrow Street...I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to find the center of the show, but fortunately that has not been the case. Over the three days it shrank down some, many scenes rearranged and altered contents and form, and now we're reasonably ready for the show tomorrow. A lot is still shifting and moving--it's a very fluid, early time.
It's a strange thing, to have institutional support--we've wanted it for so long, and now that we have it managing expectations is a big part of the new game. Tomorrow's showing is very intentionally an opportunity to introduce this new work to the Public, and to the people that will be working with us to make this big run happen in October, but it is also a chance to win hearts and minds. When you don't write a script, only by bringing the thing itself can you show people what you're working on, and I'm delighted that the show is in such a raw, fresh state for us to show our partners at the Public--I think it's turned out really fantastically, and I'm more excited than I can ever remember being for a show at such a ghastly hour. (Noon? Criminal!)
Thanks to all of you that are coming out to the show tomorrow--you're quick and vocal support speaks volumes, and it is greatly appreciated.
I appear in this documentary, which was covered by ALL THINGS CONSIDERED last week:
Rising Bank Fees Squeeze Consumers But this is prompting some consumer backlash. Karney Hatch, for example, recently finished shooting a documentary called Overdrawn! inspired by his own experience of using a debit card to buy $65 worth of items, then getting charged $140 in overdraft fees.
In the film — and at the urging of consumer advocate Ralph Nader — Hatch sues his bank, Wells Fargo, in small claims court and recovers the overdraft charges, as well as the legal fees associated with his suit. The movie does not yet have a distributor.
"I guess what was compelling to me was that it's yet another instance of the rise of corporate power," mostly at the expense of consumers, Hatch said in an interview. "The banker used to be the most trusted person in town, and now they're likely the most reviled person in town ... if you even know the banker."
Meet Afghanistan's Most Fearless Blogger: At his most recent blogging workshop, held at the only Internet cafe in Bamiyan, a remote outpost in the highlands of central Afghanistan, Fekrat calls for order. There's no bathroom, just a dedicated space behind the building, and no power, so they've rigged the computers to a generator. Fekrat will pay for the generator's gas with $200 he raised in PayPal donations to his Web sites. "Sign up for a Gmail account," he yells, as the journalists crowd around the computers as if they've never seen one before. Fekrat had to turn people away at the door, but they're still above capacity. He's accustomed to working with limited resources, though, and in the past he has conducted classes with a single connected computer, so he knows how to make the most of the gathering. His mission is simple—get as many people signed up and inspired to write as he can.
By participating in this exclusive program, Google implicitly sanctions an anti-user reality. This runs counter to their motto “Don’t Be Evil,” as well as the spirit of their stance on Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality issue is typically framed as an indictment of broadband providers, but let’s be real, here: search has become nearly as fundamental to the internet experience as packet exchange. Google’s Net Neutrality page describes it as “the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.”
Sure, we’re all “free” to use other engines that can’t index SWF files. And if the federal highway system creates special lanes exclusively reserved for Ford cars, we’re all still “free” to buy Hondas. Granted, Adobe is a private company, not a government, and Google has its competitive edge to think about. But given their company motto and proclaimed stance on user rights, their participation here is hypocritical.
Assessing Jeune Leune: Last Monday, a day after learning that Theatre de la Jeune Lune would shut down, singer/actress Momoko Tanno walked through the company's cavernous warehouse building in downtown Minneapolis.
Collecting memories, she eyed scenery from past shows, including a boat used in "Figaro," a reimagined Jeune Lune opera that won rave reviews.
"It's such a unique space, and it has all these ghosts," said Tanno. "How could this be lost?"
That is the question being asked after Jeune Lune's board voted last weekend to cease operations after 30 years and sell the building in the face of a $1 million-plus debt. (Theater officials did not reveal the exact amount.) Only three years ago, the company received a Tony Award as one of the nation's outstanding regional theaters.
"Retrospectively, maybe the theater should have launched a [fundraising] campaign earlier," board chair Bruce Neary said in an interview last Sunday. "We had a terrific team on board at the end. We just ran out of money."
Could the theater have been saved? Do theaters have a natural life cycle, as some in the company have suggested? Is this closing an anomaly, or a cautionary tale with implications for other arts groups?
A response to HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA, PART ONE and an open letter to AMERICAN THEATRE magazine:
I was recently made aware that American Theatre magazine had published a response to my monologue HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA in its July/August 2008 issue, written by Theresa Eyring, the Executive Director of TCG. (Full disclosure: I met Ms. Eyring briefly at the TCG Conference this June in Denver, and I performed the aforementioned monologue at that conference.) You can read that article here.
I wish I could be delighted at the exchange of ideas, but this article's publication was disappointing for three reasons.
The first is the lack of context given for the piece—it is such an important topic that I wish American Theatre would dedicate an entire issue to it, and open its doors to multiple voices on the matter. A two-page article (even in two parts, as this one is, which will give us a grand total of four pages) can't cover even the preamble to such a topic. It is far larger than my monologue, which is the reason I was inspired to develop the piece—because it touches on the heart of our shared form, and how we treat our artists and our audiences should lie at the core of our concerns.
Secondly it is disappointing because it is such a poor title. My piece is called HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA because I am speaking about the responsibility the institution of theater has to America, how it has failed that responsibility, and how we are all implicated in this.
Ms. Eyring's title takes one's breath away. If it were called HOW THEATRE WILL SAVE AMERICA it would still be defensible, if a bit sweeping—it could fantasize about a nearly unimaginable future when theater will reach out from the stage and save all of America from corporate greed, the military-industrial complex, racism, sexism, and human nature itself by reshaping America.
That's bold. But Ms. Eyring takes it a step further and uses the past tense—HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA—informing us that the work is done, the wars have been fought and that we actually live in a glorious utopia right now, one that has been created by the American theater. If one didn't know better, one might think it is an attempt at wit—a shallow attempt to play off of my title for comic effect, ignoring the actual meaning implicit in the words I’d chosen.
It is a shockingly poor idea to make such an assertion in the title, unless the essay that follows brings some serious arguments to bear, and this is the third problem with the piece. HOW THEATRE SAVED AMERICA, PART ONE chooses to accomplish this goal not by grappling with any of the arguments in my monologue, but instead displaying examples of theaters that are working within their communities as a kind of proof positive that theater has saved America. It specifically cites one example at length, describing the work of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble.
I find it reaching to claim that one company from a town of 12,000 in Pennsylvania, however wonderful they might be, contraindicates the larger story of the arts infrastructure in a country of 300 million, but I will set that aside for a moment. In the opening of Ms. Eyring's second paragraph, she mentions my work directly:
"While permanent acting ensembles are indeed a rare commodity at major U.S. theatres, typically ignored—even by the popular monologist Mike Daisey in How Theatre Failed America, which ran Off Broadway through June 22—is the array of ensemble companies working across the country. What about, for instance, the long-term acting collaborations of Minneapolis’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Brooklyn’s Irondale Ensemble Project, New York City’s Wooster Group, California’s Dell’Arte International, Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia, and Touchstone Theatre, also of Pennsylvania?"
While I am flattered to be thought "popular", I don't know if I can agree that I belong to a group that has "typically ignored" ensembles. I programmed and hosted a series of roundtables during the Off-Broadway run of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA about the state of American theater, featuring luminaries like Oskar Eustis, Richard Nelson, Rocco Landesman, James Bundy and many more in conversation with working actors, technicians, arts funders and more.
One of the symposiums, titled "ASSEMBLING ENSEMBLES", was focused on exactly this kind of artist-driven work, and featured representatives of the Civilians, Elevator Repair Service, Printer's Devil and...wait for it...Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble! The lovely Elizabeth Dowd, a 29-year veteran of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble was on hand, and an absolutely wonderful and essential voice at the roundtable.
So it is foolish to paint me as someone who has "typically ignored" these ensembles...but even if I had ignored them utterly this would not change the issues argued in HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA. The existence of a good theater in no way invalidates the arguments in my monologue—I am speaking very clearly about failures within the institution of American theater, which afflict the institutions that dominate that world. The existence of any theater company who is doing good work is always cause for celebration, but to ignore the state of the industry as a whole by cherry-picking test cases that don't represent where the vast majority of arts funding is going is disingenuous at best, and irrational blindness at worst.
Once Ms. Eyring is done extolling the virtues of this one small company (which indeed sounds quite excellent—I heard a great deal about their model from Elizabeth Dowd) she moves on to her second argument, which I will recount here:
"In larger cities, there’s another interesting dynamic at play in terms of how theatres and artists productively coexist. Many cities boast one or two major theatres that set down roots in the 1960s and ’70s, alongside a range of small and midsize companies that have sprung up within the community over time: think Chicago, Philadelphia, the Twin Cities, Washington, D.C. In many of these communities, a strong local acting, artistic and production community has also evolved. This group has in effect become a repertory company—not of a single theatre, but of an entire community. Many actors—instead of performing in several shows with a single theatre company in the same season—construct year-round employment by performing in different theatres throughout the year. Audience members get to know the actors of their community by seeing them in a number of plays at various venues. Yes, this arrangement still calls upon actors to freelance and lacks the year-after-year commitment of a seasonal contract with one institution; there can be frustrations when theatres hire too heavily from outside the community, or when there isn’t much opportunity for crossover between larger and smaller houses. But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved."
The facts of what Ms. Eyring has set forth here are correct—it's her analysis that is deeply flawed. The fact that actors can create a career cobbled together through blood and sweat in the face of the failure of the American theater to create any kind of sustainable path for its artists does not do credit to the existing system—quite the opposite, in fact.
Often artistic directors and other administrators have made this argument to me—in the New York Times recently Kurt Beattie, artistic director of ACT Theatre in Seattle said as much, claiming that the arguments of my piece are "shallow" to him because they do not apply to his theater, as the majority of the actors ACT employees are local. His argument would be that if ACT hires most people locally, piecemeal when it needs a role filled, it has served and supported the local community—what more could they possibly do?
Kurt is a friend, but he is perpetuating the same falsehood Ms. Eyring is with this analysis—if actors manage to create community and continuity IN SPITE OF the institutions, no credit for that reflects back on theaters that refuse to support artists in a meaningful fashion: with staff positions, with health insurance, with a modicum of respect and dignity earned by working craftsman anywhere. Dribs and drabs of roles given when artists can jump for them are no substitute for real institutional support, and to claim otherwise is absurd.
To steal the achievement of making a career work back from the artists who have made it happen is to heap another injustice on good people to whom almost nothing has been offered...and when they make their own luck, against all odds, institutions are ready to point and say, "See? They never needed any help...they'll figure it out on their own. Let us return to raising funds for a glorious new building--after all, artists will always find a way to get by, and if they don't, there are always more. Buildings, on the other hand, won't build themselves."
Even Ms. Eyring seems to understand this is a load of horse manure, given the number of caveats she includes in the her assertions: she mentions the lack of any level of commitment from the theaters, the absence of crossover between large and small theaters, and the fact that at any point New York actors can be flown in whenever convenient. But then she comes to a remarkable conclusion:
"But the fact remains that in these cities, the regional theatre movement’s larger goal of making it possible for theatre professionals to make a living in their own communities has in many cases been achieved."
This "fact" is worthy of Orwell—and if it is "possible" to eke out a living from year to year, without any kind of security, it owes everything to these artists, and little or nothing to the regional theatre movement, which has systematically ignored and abused the artists who work within it while profiting from them.
Ms. Eyring ends her piece saying, "And this is just the beginning of how theatre saved America." The implication is that we will see a great deal more of her argument in Part Two. I do hope that this response will make her think more judiciously about the title for the second half of this article, and I hope some of the criticisms I've raised may be addressed in its contents.
If American Theatre magazine wishes to address the issues raised in HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA, there is an abundance of informed bloggers and theatrical luminaries who would leap at the opportunity to debate within its pages. If anyone from American Theatre is reading this, I'd be happy to transcribe one of the performances of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA to create a transcript that would be publishable in the magazine, especially for such a purpose—it's a vital conversation we should be having.
I know that after six weeks of roundtables with some of the finest minds in the American theatre there was much debate over many issues, but not one voice ever argued that it had actually saved America. If Ms. Eyring, TCG and American Theatre magazine want this assertion to be taken seriously, they need to open their doors, let the light in, and engage with the artists, technicians, and administrators of the theater today. If they make this necessary step, they will find both the passion and empathy that has been missing for too long from the national conversation.
Believe Me, It's Torture: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com: You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
Bush, McCain, Torture: Is it not a rather fantastic historical irony that the torture techniques that the North Vietnamese used against McCain that forced him to offer a videotaped false confession ... are now the techniques the Bush administration is using to gain "intelligence" about terror networks.
How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques, is true? In fact, McCain at least knew somewhere that his own government knew he existed, that there were procedures to eventually release him, that he was on someone's radar. The average prisoner at Gitmo or in the other parts of the detention program believes that no one will ever save him, that he could be disappeared for ever, that there are no procedures for his eventual release and no government to remember him. If McCain uttered lies on tape to stop the torture, why would an Islamist tell the truth?
BoingBoing vs. Violet Blue: Having said that, I do believe they’ve made a bad decision, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t explain why, in hopes that my reasoning might persuade them.
By making the decision to remove Ms. Blue from their archives, Boing Boing has, intentionally or otherwise, made the following statements:
1. As bloggers, we do not have the responsibilities of a professional media outlet. 2. We do not feel the need to discuss our policies with our readers. 3. We reserve the right to hide behind our terms of service.
Dark Roasted Blend: The Weirdest Examples of Mass Hysteria: Things supposedly started innocently enough. Kashasha, near Lake Victoria in Tanzania in 1962: One girl in a boarding school there told another girl a joke. Maybe, "Have you heard the one about?" or "A Jew, an Indian, and Herbert Hoover walk into a bar …" or "Take my wife, please … " Whatever the setup, the delivery, or punch line, the result was laughter. Whether it was a giggle, a guffaw, a chortle, a snort is irrelevant. The listener found it funny.
But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.
After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent.
No one knew what to do. The school administrators were puzzled, local doctors were confused. Trying to put a lid on the phenomena, the administrators shut the school down.
But that was too little, too late: Whatever it was began to spread. It infected other schools and worked its way into the village, seemingly carried by infected students. It traveled to another village 20 miles away, and another 55 miles from Kashasha.
Judges cite nonsense poem in Guantanamo case - Yahoo! News: "The government insists that the statements made in the documents are reliable because the State and Defense Departments would not have put them in intelligence documents were that not the case," the court wrote. "This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true."
The judges compared the argument to the logic in Carroll's nonsense poem, in which a hapless crew hunts for a creature that is never quite defined. The Bellman, the ship's leader, led his men across the ocean, guided by a map that was just a blank piece of paper. He rallied and reassured his crew simply by repeating himself.
"I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true," the Bellman says in the poem.
"Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has 'said it thrice' does not make an allegation true," the court wrote.
Brand New: Less Hyphen, More Burst for Walmart: In what has to be the most under whelming unveiling yet — and a bad case of stolen thunder — for one of the largest retailers in the world, Walmart (unhyphenated as a single word from now on) just uploaded a formal, band-aid of a press release to their web site confirming the logo change that surfaced over the weekend when The Wall Street Journal reported that the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development had received documents from Walmart with the intent of opening a prototype store there.
Ruslana Korshunova, No Longer Anonymous: Over the weekend a successful young fashion model touched off a minor media circus by killing herself. Almost immediately, details of the beautiful life cut tragically short swooped in to fill blanks; the apocryphal tale of her "discovery" by benevolent industry scouts; her melancholy poems; how she'd been watching "Ghost" the night before. It was mostly bullshit. But there is something about great beauty that inoculates us to the more mundane realities of life, which was that Ruslana Korshunova was an immigrant from a desperately poor country who came to New York at a scarily young age to make money to send back to her parents. In that way she was no different from the tens of thousands of kids from former socialist states whose parents send them thousands of miles to work in restaurants and gas stations. It's generally more legal, and the living conditions a little nicer, but as our anonymous model columnist Tatiana has discussed before in this space, the people governing a model's fate are no less predatory and self-interested, and the experience is only slightly less anonymous.
You can always count on at least one Something Unlikely: The Musical! (this year's edition includes Fart Factory, Hockey and Floozy: The Musicals!), a feminist twist on Shakespeare (this year: 'Beth), a couple of plays about the jobs actors work in between gigs (The Reservation, set in a restaurant, and Silver and Stinky, about bike couriers), as well as more autobiographical solo shows than you can shake a microphone stand at.
As an example of how much of an artistic echo chamber the Fringe has become, note that the 2008 edition has not one, not two, but three shows with titles that riff on Dr. Strangelove: How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love The Mall, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Abortion and, last but not deceased, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Zombie Master. (The zombie play is another Fringe mainstay.)
Letter to the Editor of American Theatre Magazine | New York Acting & Theater Blog: I believe the title of Teresa Eyring’s article “How Theatre Saved America, Part I” is misleading. “How Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble saved Bloomsburg, PA,” would have been entirely more appropriate. I applaud Eyring for highlighting BTE, but this topic is too massive to be covered in a two-part, two page article. To highlight only one of seven listed theatre ensembles and then tell readers that the American theater is “saving America” is incredibly insufficient. If American Theatre magazine and TCG are truly concerned about this problem they should devote an entire issue to it. Interview both sides talking with everyone involved including board members, artistic directors, actors, playwrights, etc. A good place to start is the blogging community as there are many artists, practitioners and educators sharing their struggles and points of view. Also highlight more theaters outside the major metropolitan hubs showing how they are accomplishing ensemble work and providing a living wage for the artists. As well, if permission is granted, the issue should also include Mike Daisey's monologue How Theatre Failed America, which would serve as an additional source for this contentious issue.
The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a "compromise," but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: "Just following orders." The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law: Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.
To be fair, wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")
Out of the echo chamber of ignorance and self-serving political cant, a number of myths have begun to emerge. We may never know for sure everything that this new legislation entails. But here are a few things that it most certainly doesn't.
Mike Daisey’s Final Roundtable: Ideology vs. Experience | New York Acting & Theater Blog: Out of all the highly experienced panel members I was drawn most to the ideas of Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of the Public Theater. One idea mentioned was the fact that the American theater should go the way of the American public libraries. Free for all. As talked about all over the theater scene the budget to run the American theaters is a drop in the hat of the national budget. I appreciated that he made sure to say that this was not going to get any artists rich, but that it would be a healthy alternative to the capitalistic view that is running the current non-profit theater system.
Naturally he used the example of the Delacorte theater in Central Park. The current play Hamlet recieved bad reviews from the New York Times, but is still “selling out” shows because of the very fact the tickets are free and the production value is of quality. He presented to the Public’s board the idea of having free tickets for the shows in the downtown space. The board could not imagine such a thing. Which brought Eustis to the crux of his point. That ideology will always trump experience. Experience says that when tickets are free people will come to the Public’s productions, but the ideology says that theater can not be run on this model as it has to make money and there are no other options but to sell tickets. Eustis said the national ideology surrounding how theater is run in America must change. He has hope because the current administration in the big institutional theaters will soon be gone and the next generation can “take them over” and issue reform.
Here's our first interview for IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING: it's with the Santa Fe Radio Cafe, recorded at a great bakery in Santa Fe, at a table as people ate and worked around us--very neat idea for a show. The host Mary-Charlotte was really sharp--we covered a lot of ground about the new piece.
The Playgoer: My Night With Daisey: It's a deft balance he achieves in the monologue, since the connection between the two strands remains unspoken. It's up to the audience to contrast in their own minds the thrill of creating theatre "by any means necessary" and the deadness we encounter so much in our larger nonprofits. The solution of course is NOT necessarily to return to Daisey's 5-person college rep-company adventure "Theatre on the Pond". But to find some medium in between, one could say. Allow for a company to have the energy and purpose of Theatre on the Pond with just a little more budget, and audience. But one without the other just won't do it anymore.
Technology Liberation Front » Archive » FISA Capitulation: Bad Policy, Bad Politics: Barack Obama is supporting the FISA bill. That pretty much seals it: Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd may filibuster, but we already know that there are enough Democrats willing to break ranks to reach cloture, and with the party’s figurehead on board, none of them are likely to switch sides. Obama says he’s going to try to strip out the immunity provision, but this is obviously so much political theater. If he were serious about doing that he’d be saying he planned to oppose the “compromise” until the immunity provision got stripped out. The fact that he’s committing himself to support the overall bill whether or not it comes with immunity is proof that he doesn’t really care about getting rid of immunity. And why would he? A few angry liberals may decide not to give to his campaign, but he’s already got a lopsided fundraising advantage over John McCain, and in the long run he probably wants to stay on the good side of a powerful lobby that could prove useful to him once he’s in the Oval Office. Same goes for Steny Hoyer: Obama will need his support when it comes time to nationalize the health care system, so why risk alienating Hoyer just to make Glenn Greenwald happy?
We are, in other words, right back to the narrative where being “strong” on national security means trashing the constitution. Within that frame, Democrats are always going to lose because they’re never going to be as enthusiastic about Constitution-trashing as the Republicans (well, I hope so anyway. Bill Clinton did his best). So by conceding the premise and saying, in effect, “we can trash the constitution too!” the Democrats were setting themselves up for future political problems. Because if the Democrats are carbon copies of the Republicans on national security issues, why not go for the real thing?
Obama's support for the FISA "compromise" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.
Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise."
This Artist's Life: Making it work in NYC: How Did Theatre Fail America?: Saw Mike Daisey's "How Theater Failed America" last night at the Barrow Street Theatre. Brilliant. If I had seen it before its closing night, I would have probably been back several times. There was an excellent roundtable to follow the performance, which included Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of the Public Theater), Richard Nelson, Jayne Houdyshell, Gregory Mosher, Aaron Landesman, John Eisner and Garrett Eisler. I definitely look forward to applying some of the issues and suggestions to reclaim the theatre, to COTE. Mike Daisey will be back in New York in the fall with a new monologue called "If You See Something, Say Something".
Theatre de la Jeune Lune: In 1978 Barbra Berlovitz, Vincent Gracieux, and Dominique Serrand began an adventure called Theatre de la Jeune Lune. They were soon joined by Robert Rosen and eventually Steve Epp and innumerable other collaborators. Over the past 30 years we have created nearly 100 productions, performed for hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the United States and in France, but primarily and most importantly in Minneapolis. For the first 14 years we were itinerant, making the most of any venue we found ourselves in. Then in 1992, with an amazing groundswell of support, we purchased and renovated the Allied Van Lines building in the Minneapolis warehouse district. We excavated the interior of this historic building to create a stunningly innovative and award winning performance space, opening our new artistic home to the public on November 18th of that year.
Sixteen years later we are faced with an excruciating decision. With the organization burdened by mounting and unmanageable debt, the Board of Directors has voted to put Jeune Lune's home up for sale. After much soul searching and extensive fundraising and debt management efforts, we have determined it to be the only prudent and fiscally responsible choice. What has been acclaimed, as one of the most striking and unique theatre spaces in the country will go dark. It is a huge loss, a loss for us, for all of the artists who work with us, for our audience and for the community at large, both locally and nationally.
And with the building, we have decided that the time has come to bid adieu to the theatre ensemble we have all known as Jeune Lune.
George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71: George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday. He was 71.
... Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”
Tonight is the last performance of HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA at the Barrow Street.
It's been six months since we launched the show at Under The Radar in January, which seems like a lifetime ago--it's grown and refined so much, and I'm indebted by all the people who have done so much to make that possible. It's really a list that could go on and on: Mark Russell, Shanta Thanke, Oskar Eustis, AJ Epstein, Scott Morfee, Nicole Borelli Hearn, Jenny Werner, Theresa Eyring, Cris Buchner and many, many more.
We're putting this one to bed tonight--there are no dates booked for it in the future, though there is talk, and hopefully it will be back one day...but it is moving to think that this could be the last time I perform it.
My old professor Dick Sewell used to say, "Let's put this pig in the meat grinder!" before shows sometimes, and he'd laugh maniacally. No one ever understood it, but it was totally infectious--and the older I get, and the more shows I have under my belt, the more and more it makes sense to me.
Now I will go and put this pig in the meat grinder!
The Woman Who Fell in Love with the Berlin Wall: Like millions of sweethearts across the globe, Wall Winther has found true love. Her husband, in his prime, was a stalwart of immense stature, a domineering presence who was feared throughout his homeland and infamous the world over. Events haven’t been too kind to his physical state, but the couple’s love remains strong. You might think Wall Winther is lucky to be attached to such a celebrity, but it’s unlikely the couple will be gracing the cover of Hello! any time soon. That’s because Wall Winther’s other half is the Berlin Wall.
Wall Winther (whose original name was Eija-Riita Eklaf) is an Objectum-Sexual, or OS for short. Most OSes harbour their passions in private, terrified of rejection by society. But they can still form meaningful relationships, even if their partners might be considered unconventional. “It’s an orientation, like hetero or homosexuality,” explains Kiowa, a US-based OS who moderates an internet forum for like-minded souls. “We’re emotionally and physically attracted to objects. Replacing the term ‘hetero’ with ‘object’ would accurately describe OS.”
Wall Winther agrees. “We see things as living beings,” she says. “That’s a must. Otherwise you can’t fall in love with an object.” Wall Winther is attracted mostly to constructions with plenty of parallel lines – buildings, fences, bridges, gates and, in one case, a guillotine. But other OS fetishists might be turned on by the intricate workings of a turbine or television set, the delicate curves of a shiny sports car, the rigid harshness of a railtrack, or the bell end of a trumpet.
I'm delighted to announce our first national tour--we'll be performing IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING,a monologue about the secret history of the Department of Homeland Security, what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.
SANTA FE Lensic Performing Arts Center June 26th to 28th
WASHINGTON DC Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company July 11th to 20th
PORTLAND, OR Time-Based Art Festival September 11th to 14th
MAINE Colby College October 3rd
CHICAGO Museum of Contemporary Art October 10th to 12th
NEW YORK The Public Theater October 15th to November 30th
We're ecstatic to birth the monologue next week in Santa Fe, where it will be seen by many who know intimately the work of the Los Alamos weapons labs, and then travel to DC so that those who run the Department of Homeland Security can have it in their backyard. After stops in the Northwest, my alma mater, and Chicago, we'll end the tour with a full production at the Public Theater.
Details and ticketing links can be found at mikedaisey.com, and a longer description of the show follows at the end of this email.
