It’s A Suggestion, Not A Review: Taking Offense at Taking Offense

Dave Sikula, actually thinking there is a single person on the earth who wonders why he didn’t like CATS.

Two news stories jumped out at me this week. They’re similar in theme, but point toward a bigger issue, I think.

The first was the story that the Raleigh Little Theatre cancelled its production of the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson because of fears that Native American groups in the area would be offended by the content. The show, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is an emo-rock musical by Michael Friedman, and Alex Timbers that tells the story of our seventh president, who came to power on a platform that was equal parts uncontrolled mob populism and Native American genocide, something the show not only presents, but revels in.

That depiction isn’t enough for the Raleigh Little Theatre, though. Apparently, the show was chosen without reading it, seeing or, or even listening to the cast album because the producers seem to be laboring under the impression that it glorifies both Jackson and his actions. I saw the show in New York and loved it, and have to say (as I said on my Facebook page) that anyone who was at all familiar with the show and didn’t come away thinking that Jackson was a genocidal yahoo either wasn’t paying attention or was too stupid to have an informed opinion. There was a bit of a debate in the thread, with some claiming that it was a responsible action by the theatre, in that it’s stupid and insensitive to deliberately offend portions of your audience. That stance reminds me of a quote from 1776, one of my favorite musicals: “This is a revolution, dammit! We’ve got to offend somebody!”

Now, two disclaimers here. One is, I’m not calling for setting out to deliberately offend people (though there’s something to be said for that – in some cases), and two, I’m an old white guy, so I’m speaking from a position of some sort of privilege; it’s easy for me to say. Okay. That’s out of the way.

The other night, I was listening to a 1967 interview with Dame Gladys Cooper. Cooper was born in 1888, and had a long and distinguished career as an actress and producer (something that I can’t imagine was easy for a woman in the 1920s and ’30s). At one point, she’s asked what she thinks of the then-current theatre; whether she likes plays that are in-your-face, more or less. She answers “no;” that she thinks the theatre should provide a nice story and not deal with social issues. Have I got a theatre for her! (Hint: It’s in North Carolina …)

Gladys Cooper in her youth.

While I don’t mind seeing “a nice story” myself, I also think that, if you’re not taking the chance of offending someone, you’re not doing it right. What has happened to us that we’re so terrified of – or even offended by – having our preconceptions and beliefs challenged? I read a rant on Facebook that took on the thugs who murdered the Charlie Hebdo staffers by saying that if their god was so weak that he would be offended by some stupid cartoons that he wasn’t worth worshipping – and certainly not killing for. In a much, much lesser sense, if your opinions and tenets are too weak to stand up to challenges, perhaps they, ironically, need radical rethinking and reexamination.

Quoted in the story was an op-ed by playwright Rhiana Yazzie of the New Native Theater, who wrote “The truth is that Andrew Jackson was not a rockstar and his campaign against tribal people … is not a farcical backdrop to some emotive, brooding celebrity. Can you imagine a show wherein Hitler was portrayed as a justified, sexy rockstar?”

Actually, I can. Not only theatrically (The Producers), but in real life. Hitler was despicable and deserves to rot in hell, but anyone who denies that he was charismatic isn’t worth talking to. Anyone who, in less than ten years, is able to rise from failed artist to former corporal to jailbird to absolute ruler of one of history’s most powerful military machines is a “rockstar,” or, at least, the 1920s equivalent thereof. And why shouldn’t we be exposed to that viewpoint? Is any sane person going to be converted to Nazism by seeing it? I’d much rather get angry at a show and have it spark an extreme emotional reaction to it than have it wash over me and leave me feeling “meh.” I hate hate hated Cats more than I’ve ever hated anything in the theatre, but have to admit that it provoked me into analyzing that emotion and gauging why I was so provoked.

You wonder why I hated it?

Now, speaking of being provoked, the other story of the week was the Academy Award nominations. Let me state my disinterest in the Oscars. Oh, I’ll watch them and liveblog them and disparage them, but don’t really care who wins or loses. (It took me a good 15 seconds to remember what movie won last year, and I’ll be damned if I remember what won in 2013.) It’s like any list of “the best” movies or plays or books – or anything, really. They’re all well and good, and if they coincide with my current feelings, that’s fine. But there’s no way that I’ll ever agree with Sight and Sound’s naming of Vertigo as the Greatest Movie Ever, especially when I don’t even think it’s even Alfred Hitchcock’s best film. (For the record, I think that’s North by Northwest – and that’s not even my favorite; that’s Shadow of a Doubt. Or maybe Foreign Correspondent … )

But there are plenty of people who think that the lack of nominees for the World’s Most Expensive Bowling Trophy who are either female or of color is a crime equivalent to anything Hitler ever committed. Another disclaimer. I, too, think the Academy should do all it can to encourage promotion and recognition of underrepresented groups. I just don’t think that it’s worth getting upset about.

My friend Steve Stoliar (whose memoir of his years as Groucho Marx’s secretary, Raised Eyebrows, is must reading for anyone even remotely interested in the Marx Brothers) summed up his own reaction on Facebook. I reprint his post with his kind permission:

If the members of the MP Academy got together and, amongst themselves, said, “Who DON’T we want to be nominated?” and then discussed it in a big room and then decided – in unison – who to keep OUT of the nominations – especially for some petty reason – THAT is a snub. But when each member marks a ballot in secrecy, based on his/her opinion – informed, intelligent, or otherwise – of who deserves a vote – always a subjective thing; there’s no such thing as a film, actor, song, book, painting that everybody loves or everybody hates – THAT is not a snub. It is – wait for it – democracy in action, like it or not. When there are more Best Picture nominees allowed than for any other category, it is statistically impossible to have each Best Picture director also nominated in the Best Director category. The lack of inclusion does not mean that director did a shitty job or “the movie must’ve directed itself” (that tired, meaningless cliche), or that the Academy conspired to keep their names off the list. It means the others got more votes than they did, so they didn’t make the cut. You can rail about not enough women, not enough blacks, not enough black women, etc. etc. etc. and you can see it as some shameful snubbing conspiracy that must stop THIS VERY MINUTE, but that is the simple truth. Whether you choose to extrapolate something more sinister from it is your choice.

Steve’s book. Free plug!

We all have choices about what to be offended by or where to see conspiracies. But I think it behooves us to remember that our tastes are not definitive; they work for us, and that’s that. For everything we find offensive or repulsive or delightful or mediocre, there is someone whose reaction is exactly the opposite.

Art is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship (it might be a plutocracy, but that’s another matter … ). Art is art, and we need to be exposed to all of it, the pleasant and the unpleasant, in order to grow, even in directions we might never have expected. I dislike few plays more than Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, but because I exposed myself to it. I found David Cromer’s production of it touching. I never would have thought an indie-rock approach to a section of Tolstoi’s War and Peace would be anything but intolerable, but Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 remains one of the great experiences of my theatergoing life. I hated every minute of The Lily’s Revenge, but forced myself to stay in order to make sure I was giving it a fair shake, as well as wanting to determine what it was about it that made me hate it so much. (Short answer: everything.) Similarly, I think it would benefit the protestors to actually see Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson as much as it would benefit the stodgy and self-important members of the motion picture academy to expand beyond their usual suspects. The worst that could happen would be that their artistic outlooks expand.

It’s A Suggestion, Not A Review: The Farnsworth “Controversy”

Dave Sikula, center of controversy.

Ever since I was a wee small child, I wanted to direct a controversial show.

I don’t mean just a show that some people might like and others would feel non-committal about. (“Yeah, it was okay, I guess …”)

I wanted fistfights. I wanted riots. I wanted a production that was interrupted by shouts and blood and police being called.

Now, I didn’t want extreme bloodshed or extended mayhem; I wanted something like the opening night of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” where the shouting of the two rival factions in the audience drowned out the orchestra, or the opening of Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World,” which caused actual riots and which was dismissed by the head of Sinn Féin – not exactly the most sensitive of groups — as “a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform.” (And who wouldn’t want to seethat show?).

Booooooooo!

While I’d prefer not to go to the extent of the Astor Place riot of 1849 (where at least 25 people died because of groups arguing over which of two actors playing “Macbeth” was better), I’d still have settled for the nightly police raid that greeted Cal State Fullerton’s production of “The Beard” in the 70s (mentioned earlier on my own blog).

This was apparently supposed to make people not want to see it.

The problem is, given the nature of the plays I’ve directed at the companies I’ve worked for, that kind of reception is unlikely. Is anyone really going to get that upset over “Run for Your Wife” or “Copenhagen” or “Long Day’s Journey?” People may leave if the show isn’t to their tastes, but they rarely rise to the point of fisticuffs.

Okay, the wigs aren’t that good, but we didn’t use them in the show, and they’re not worth rioting over.

I always thought it would be hopeless. Until last week.

It finally happened, and who knew it would be Aaron Sorkin’s “The Farnsworth Invention,” of all shows?

There are a lot of bad theatre publicity photos out there (see above). This isn’t one of them.

When I was approached to do the show a year ago, I thought it might be problematic for artistic reasons. The script started life as a screenplay, and, as anyone who’s read my Facebook comments about “The Newsroom,” “The West Wing,” or – especially – “Sports Night” knows, I’m not Sorkin’s biggest fan. In fact, I downright loathe his television work. It’s been demonstrated how he repeats dialogue and phrases from show to show and how he has trouble writing for character; everyone on his shows sounds like everyone else. His biggest sin (in my opinion) is how he can’t end things; but lets them drag out long past the point at which they should have been resolved. Long-form is not his forte.

His stage- and screenplays are different animals, though; they’re much tighter and taut, and the character differentiation is clear. I think it’s, like the prospect of hanging, the prospect of knowing he needs to get an audience out in a couple of hours focuses his mind wonderfully.

The plot of “The Farnsworth Invention” deals with Philo T. Farnsworth, a farm kid from Utah and Idaho, who devised the first practical electronic television system. There had been previous successes with mechanical television – which involved a spinning disc that gave a blurry picture at best – but Philo’s system scanned an image electronically, a method that’s still used today, even with high-definition equipment. Philo’s arch-enemy (in the play and in life) was David Sarnoff, the head of both RCA and NBC, who had an obsession with controlling broadcast media, especially television. He wanted control over all the patents involved, and if he didn’t employ the scientists who invented the necessary equipment, he’d either buy out the original inventor, take that inventor to court and either break them financially or wait out the patent’s exclusivity period of 17 years, or just outright steal the invention.

Mechanical television. Yeah, it didn’t work well.

When Farnsworth wouldn’t sell his patents, Sarnoff flat out stole the technology. Philo took him to court, and was eventually declared the inventor of television. The problem with the play is that Sorkin has the judge in the case declare Philo the loser.

It took me forever to figure out why Sorkin did this. It’s a clear break from the historical record, and makes little sense in the overall context of the play. When I finally did understand his motivations, I got it, but still questioned his methods. Regardless, even if I were allowed to, I wouldn’t have changed the text. I’d have had to rewrite the last fifteen minutes, which would be illegal, impractical, and (frankly) inept. I can write, but not as well as Sorkin. We actually approached Sorkin and his representatives to try to get an explanation (not a correction, mind you; just his reasons) and were met with silence.

What we (meaning myself and Palo Alto Players, who are producing the play – at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto – tickets still available here …) didn’t realize until just before the play opened was that there’s a group that is dedicated not only to making sure that Philo Farnsworth has wider recognition as the inventor of television, but that theatres don’t do “The Farnsworth Invention” at all – or, at the very least, that they don’t do it without warning the audience as to its historical inaccuracies. (It may seem contradictory that they’d want to suppress the play, given that it gives so much credit to the unfortunately-mostly-unknown Farnsworth, but as near as I can tell, they find the whole thing too fatally flawed.)

I’ll continue this saga of suppression next time — when there’ll actually be new details.