Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 10 - Where To Now?

 Where To Now?

The BIPOC community has always known that the American Dream represented a false promise for them. It was never built for them in the first place. Policing itself was invented to stop black people from attaining equal status in society, and it still serves this function today. It has taken us ghosties a couple hundred years to start feeling the same pain that our more pigmented sisters and brothers have always been navigating, and it took the state failing to do it. In other words, we’re all in the same boat now. Now that the economy has finally failed for white people, these issues of race inequality, non-binary performers’ rights, inclusive casting principles, selection of material that expands beyond Neil Simon, a voice for the marginalized in leadership… all these issues are now front and center because white people are on the same page. Our eyes are open.

Here’s the rub: White people are of mixed race too. None of us is white. None of us is black. We’re all just people with complicated genetic paths that made us, and we make it more complicated with every generation that slides down the tube. (What are you?) So, truly, moving past color is going to be the ultimate success for us all. Evolution takes time, and we’re working on it. I’d like to caution again against the sinner narrative. All it will accomplish is more division.

So: What are we going to do about it? Are we going to yell at each other over some platform that relishes in our cultural demise? Or are we going to walk the walk, finally? 

My advice to all of us, is this. Focus on listening more. Try to prove yourself less (you’re already valid. You’re in the room. Your insecurities aren’t helpful). Take notes and feedback with an open ear and a grain of salt. Take nothing personally. Take control of your mental health. Don’t let others control your mood. Fight for substantive justice. Learn to ask questions that will help you find out what people’s intent is. Find a reason to be curious. Refrain from buying into a punishment ethos. Look for common ground. Stop engaging in social media witch hunts. Be aware when you’re the product. And adhere to the Golden Rule, as my Grandfather, the Prespyterian minister Harry Preston Walrond taught us: 

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Then do it! Actually do that that’s in that sentence you just read. Just do that and things will be at least a little better for us all.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 9 - A Little Story

 A LIttle Story:

My father (a Baby Boomer) is a distinguished and extremely well-regarded (retired) investigative journalist. I’ll refrain from outing him by name. He worked at a number of newspapers around the country during his career. He broke some huge stories and his focus was always on protecting those who could not protect themselves. One of the stories he broke in the 1980’s was how asbestos in insulation was making people get lung cancer when it broke loose of plumbing pipes or as it aged out in walls. He broke the story of cigarette manufacturers who used asbestos in their filters, killing hundreds if not thousands of their factory workers who made these cigarettes in the fifties and sixties. He broke the story of ATV safety and how the major ATV manufacturers are largely immune to safety regulations that car manufacturers are required to adhere to, thereby allowing them to build vehicles that were top-heavy and would roll over and cut your arm off.

Enough said, right? He is in many ways a juggernaut force for good in making people safer and better taken care of by our society. 

Well, when my dad retired from newspaper work, he wasn’t ready to call it quits. He’s a bulldog and needs to be helping as long as he’s able. He started a news site that engaged in original reporting around consumer affairs. He operated this tiny outfit with the help of a few younger, engaging journalists who were passionate about the mission of protecting the public from corporate malfeasance. It was a struggle from day one. In the media landscape of infotainment, fake news and the death of the newspaper, finding money to run a news operation of 500k a year or something was incredibly difficult. But guess what? He did it anyway. He went to everyone he knew with a little money and got them to contribute to the cause. And it worked. Well, fast forward to nearly ten years later, and he’s ready to retire. His organization has a set mission of consumer affairs reporting, which intertwines but doesn’t focus directly on issues regarding equity for marginalized people. He interviews a younger reporter for an editing job. After not being offered the position, this younger reporter posts to his 30k followers on Twitter that this man, who has worked tirelessly over forty years to protect those who need protection from big business, is racist and non-inclusive in his organization for not agreeing to change the organization’s mission statement to suit this privileged, white, bitter tweetstar.

POOF. Whole enterprise gone in a tweet. Now, think about this for a second, and if you really want to know the details you can probably find the information without me giving it away. Does this seem right to you? At whatever age or generation you are. Does this seem like the right and proper way to go about changing our society? To throw an ally under the bus to virtue signal your fan base? End of Story

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 8 - A Word to Our Younger Generations

 A Word to Our Younger Generations

A Context

When I talk about the “younger generations”, I’m referring to Millennials, Gen Z and all the subsequent lemmings who fall in love with a life in the theatre. I’m from Generation X, which is largely ignored these days, or called “Boomer”. Boomers are actually our parents’ generation. They’re the generation who were the children of the “Greatest Generation”, of the Great Depression era just post-WWII. When the soldiers came home from World War Two in the late 1940’s, they missed their wives somethin’ fierce. And from that reunification came a whole lot of babies. That’s why it’s called the Baby Boom. That is my parents’ generation. Thus, I’m Gen X. Some of you will already know this, but a lot of people don’t have a context for where the generations came from in time, and it's an important context to have. 

When I was a kid in the late ‘70’s into the ‘80’s, we were just past the Vietnam War era. TV shows were Taxi, Barney Miller, Mash, All in the Family… shows that tackled hard issues of family, sexism, racism, and more. These shows largely focused on domestic issues and left world politics to the politicians (with the notable exception of Mash). But they were great about how they discussed these issues. They were honest, direct, and they didn’t pretend to know all the answers. They asked questions of their audiences that were difficult and with a bent toward progress. This was the TV of that day. I highly suggest getting on some nostalgia tv network and watching Barney Miller and Taxi. It will blow your mind what these shows were tackling with such alacrity (brisk and cheery enthusiasm). 

Because cable TV was in its infancy during my childhood, I got the best of all worlds. I got to see the shows of my youth at the time they were airing: A-Team, Knight Rider, McGiver, Magnum PI, Family Ties, The Facts of Life, Growing Pains, Three’s Company, etc... and all the shows that came before me, in the first rounds of reruns. The shows of my youth were already veering away from substantive justice toward straight entertainment products. Some were still looking at issues of family health, but now they began to take on a kind of fluffiness that would protect all sponsors equally. It wasn’t as bad as it is now, but as the Ronald Reagan years took hold, a distinct change in our cultural willingness to look at ourselves was pivoting us away from self-awareness and toward a culture of consumption. Needless to say, this hurt our arts communities deeply. This is when advertising truly took over our airwaves and we as audience members became the product. The shows were now simply vehicles to deliver us to the companies selling laundry soap. 

For a little more mind-blowing context, I didn’t have my first cell phone until after I was out of college. When I was in college in the 1990’s there was no internet. My junior year I was given an “email” address for the intranet which was the university web server. It ended in .exe.

The younger generations have been born and raised with this consumption culture from day one. I can see that it would be very challenging for them to know what to talk about when it’s time to activate and make change. You work with what you know, and the incredibly important progress of the MeToo, LGBTQ+ and BLM movements has created a momentum for our younger generations to grab onto. I love this so much. At the same time, there is a lack of nuts-and-bolts awareness of things past, movements that came before, the reasons for these movements, and how effective change can be made without reinventing the wheel. And so we who identify as liberal or progressive are stuck in the Rhetorical Justice model that I outlined above. It may be hard to wrap our minds around getting away from a lexical dogma as the way to institute change, but it’s really important that we learn the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. 

I notice a lot of Gen X’ers like myself, and Boomers, talking trash about our young people these days. I’ve been guilty of it, too. I admit that. I’ve seen a lot of what I refer to as a lack of interest in hard work. It’s called “work ethic”, and I’ve bitched about Millennials and Gen Z’ers having none of it. I’ve noticed a willingness to bail on booked commitments, and a seeming lack of concern for the wasting of other people’s time or money. 

But I think I get it, too. I think our younger citizens are seeing our society implode and they understand something that we don’t yet: The US is on its way out. Why waste 40 hours a week for a crappy wage at a stuntingly dull occupation? They’d rather live at home until 30, start a tik tok empire, or couch surf than kill their soul in an office with a half-hour lunch break. (I feel the same way, and always have. I became a Realtor as my backup occupation and it works great for me because I don’t have office hours or a desk I’m mandated to sit at for constant hours.)

When my parents’ generation was out in the streets protesting the Vietnam War, they knew that when they were done with that exercise in what we’ve now jadedly come to realize as a futile one, there would be a steady, 9-5 job waiting for them back home. They could be anything: an accountant, an engineer, an artist, a teacher… When I came of age in the early 1990’s, that possibility had all but dried up. I saw, sarcastically, the opportunity to work somewhere twenty years just to be laid off or fired right before I could collect benefits. It was already a different landscape. 

Imagine how seniors must be feeling right now about all of this wokeness. It must be hard to have been raised in a world where if you had a job, you could have a car and a house (if you were white). It must be hard to have a certain way of talking about things, and all of a sudden you’re told you are wrong, that’s the wrong word or the wrong way to think. It must be very difficult to be an ally of marginalized communities, having been on the streets with your brothers and sisters protesting the most evil war in the history of our country (as of then), or in the civil rights struggles of the late sixties, only to have the younger generations tell you that you’re the problem; that you need to instantly fix all of the cultural problems that exist in our society. That your age, your color, your economic status are all proof that you are endemically a sinner in need of repent (Wait a minute! Am I in church again?). That you need to shut up and take the firehose of complaints from everyone who has ever been wronged in our society, and commit social hara kiri this instant.

That’s what our current cultural landscape looks like to the older generations. We need more listening and compassion across the board.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 7 - Social Media

 Facebook and The Rest

Get the fuck off of it. 

It’s entirely unproductive. That platform should have become a central online meeting place for people to gather and share in-depth conversations about issues that are near and dear, invite people to your house for parties, share wedding photos and support people who are in need. Instead it’s the Jerry Springer of the internet. Here’s the slugline: Your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend is coming for you. Right here, right now, in front of everyone. And she’s looking for blood, “bike racks three o’clock” style. You’re about to lose some hair, bitch.

Seriously: social media is a place for people who are afraid of real life, are socially awkward, loathe actual interaction, and want to lash out at phantoms, continuing their trauma cycles. Not that everyone on there is this way; it’s just that those people own the public discourse with their bullshit. Don’t play that game. 

I’ll relay a little story to you about the trigger event that caused me to abandon that platform. 

I’m a Louis CK fan. There. I said it. Did that trigger you? That I said I’m a Louis CK fan? It’s my opinion. I maintain my right to have that opinion. 

Last year, I posted something on my facebook feed about Louis CK’s show, “Better Things”, a series that he co-wrote and produced with his friend and colleague Rebecca Adlon. She’s incredibly talented and was also in the “Louis” show as a woman that Louis is infatuated with and who won’t give him the time of day. “Better Things” is a show about a working actor (Adlon) who is also a single mother, living in LA and trying to work in the Hollywood industry while raising her three precocious, woke teenagers. The show is excellent. I highly recommend you watch it. 

Okay, that’s the background. Now, against the backdrop of the cancellation of Louis CK for masturbating in front of young comediennes who later took umbrage, and for masturbating on the other side of the phone on a business call (highly inappropriate activities but not rape and not illegal), I posted this to my facebook page:

“Fuck the Haters. Louis CK is great, and Better Things is a feminist show.”

I own that. That’s what I said. It was late at night, I’d had a few glasses of wine, and I’d been bingeing Better Things. I was jazzed on that show! And I wanted to open a dialogue about cancel culture. Boy, did I get what I asked for. 

Now, there’s a couple of ways to look at this.

One way you could look at this statement is pretty uncontroversial: people are hating on LCK and this dude likes him. He has an opinion that the comedian is a good one, and that the show he made has a feminist bent. Dude is stating his opinion on his own page on facebook. A conversation can ensue with anyone who wants to about the quality of the man’s work, whether the show actually is feministic in its bent, and if you want to get into the weeds, whether we as a society should/can choose to separate a person from their work. All kinds of weird people do great work in their field. Pete Rose comes to mind. Myriad jazz giants. Pablo Picaso. This list is a mile long. 

A second way to look at it goes something like this: Wow, what an asshole. This guy is kicking the people who LCK abused while they’re down. He’s supporting a member of the white elite ruling class who act with impunity. He’s supporting white patriarchy and believes rape and sex trafficking are okay. 

And the third: You triggered me! I’ve been abused and you are abusing me now too. You are the devil. 

Those, as far as I can tell, are the three ways you could interpret what I posted. Bear in mind that I’m not defending my choice of wording. It was controversial, there is no doubt. I said Fuck the Haters. If I was to post it now, I might word it differently. But I didn’t. I said what I said and that’s that. 

The Screaming Woke of facebook chose a hybrid between the second and third interpretations. Note that in our current cultural climate, intent is decided by the interpreter, who has zero curiosity about the author or his actual intent. This is the Consequential model for justice, which Jordan Peterson talks about. No questions are asked for clarification of said intent. No interest in understanding why the commentator likes this publicly masturbating comedic giant or his show about professional women’s issues. People came out of the woodwork to attempt to assassinate my character. My “commitment to Sparkle Motion” was questioned (Donny Darko film reference). I was called before a tribunal of local theatre community leaders to discuss whether I should be stricken from participating in leadership activities henceforth. I was likened to the comedian himself for saying that I like him publicly. I was now a rapist sympathizer, which might as well make me a rapist myself--despite the fact that the person in question isn’t even a rapist. 

This isn’t at all a “woe is me” kind of story. I own what I wrote and I fully recognize that the wording was controversial. And I’m not telling you this story to somehow vindicate myself. If you thought I was an asshole then, you still think I’m an asshole now. 

Here’s the takeaway: The content of my post was completely ignored, and my words were used by a handful of rabid anti socialites to force a popular narrative forward that I didn’t conform to. That’s a perfect example of Newspeakianism in action. Brow-beat people who don’t fall in line until they go silent or conform. That’s fascism. 

You’ve had something very similar happen to you, I’m certain of it. Everyone has put something on that platform that some swarm of piranha ate you alive for and it’s into the history of that website; it’s on display for everyone to see forever. You can never redeem yourself from it. All that can happen now is some fresh meat will show up and your faux pas will be forgotten in the frantic effort to obliterate someone else’s social standing. And so it goes: we move from bike rack to bike rack, just like Jerry Springer. 

Now. To The actual meaning of my words: People are railing against LCK and lumping him into the same category as Jeffrey Epstein (a convicted child sex trafficker and pedophile), Harvey Weinstein (a convicted rapist) and Kevin Spacey (a child rapist). LCK is none of those things. He’s a weirdo. He masturbates in front of people. That’s a fetish. He is a famous comedian, arguably the Michael Jordan of comedy. He has access to mates everywhere he goes. It’s not like it’s hard for him to find a woman to sleep with. Yet he chooses to do this weird activity instead. It’s his kink. That ain’t rape. It’s not child sex trafficking. And it’s not illegal. It’s just weird, and maybe, it could be interpreted as an abuse of power, and only by those involved. Secondly, he made a show with a long-time collaborator who happens to be a strong female actor in Hollywood. Their show is feminist in its nature, and it’s really good. 

Agree or don’t. Argue with me about whether it is feminist, or if he’s a good comedian. Tell me you think what I said was crass and I should not have used the f bomb on the f page. But don’t use my words to advance your conform-or-die social bullying platform. You’ll always, every time, turn your allies into enemies engaging in that behavior. 

Social media is good for one thing and one thing only, in my estimation: publicity. Use it to post events that you are hosting from your professional page. That’s it. And try your hardest not to get swept up into some smackdown. Go to rehearsal instead.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 6 - A Tidbit and an Anecdote

 A Personal Tidbit

When I do a production, I assume that everyone is whole when we start working. I don’t even want to be the director. I want everything collective, natural, organic. Best laid plans… Inevitably, one or two people break down at some point because they’re not whole (they don’t know they’re whole, that is), and the lack of a parental figure makes them feel unsafe. They not only lack someone to follow, they lack someone to blame. Convenient, isn’t it? 

When I see this breakdown start to occur, I smile kindly and wait for them to answer their own question. We all have the right answer inside us. Sometimes a problem needs a companion to work with to find a solution. Ask for one instead of pouting or breaking down. That’s called adulting. If you do have to pout for a minute, or even throw a temper tantrum, do it and get past it fast. Be embarrassed by it, and stop it next time before you embarrass yourself again and make yourself look unhinged. Take control of your emotional state. It’s not only more effective for getting things done: it’s empowering to know that you can solve it. You can self-soothe. And once you can self-soothe, you’re now capable of helping others learn to do it, too. 

Anecdote

I built a guest house in my backyard. I ordered a shed kit online and it showed up in a bunch of pieces on a pallet and now I had to figure out how to build the damned thing. I’d never built a building before. My father in-law, a very talented builder, was gracious enough to help me get the structure up. Then he flew back to Pennsylvania and I had to figure out the rest. I’d never done plumbing. I’d never done electric. I’d never put a sink in a dresser all shabby chic style before. I did it anyway. I made a bunch of mistakes. I asked my experienced friends for help which they generously provided. I looked at videos of how to do things myself. Well, a year and change later, I had a fully finished guest house with a bathroom in it that worked. I still have repairs on the thing that I don’t know how I’m going to fix when they break. I’m not some genius carpenter, I’m not all that handy. And I’m not all that spiritually enlightened, either. I freak out a little, I flail about in my head wondering if I’m screwed, and then… I just figure it out. That’s adulting, as far as I can tell.

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 5 - Trauma

 Trauma

A lot of people who have experienced trauma in their lives are drawn to the theatre. This is largely because the theatre is a welcoming and warm home for marginalized people. Trauma causes us to feel marginalized, regardless of our pedigree, race, gender, etc…

Trauma is a cycle. Your parent or older relative, your sibling or best friend growing up did something to you many years ago that hurt you deeply. You carry that hurt around with you like a saddlebag, shifting it from shoulder to shoulder as you walk through life. The theatre gives you a little respite from its weight. You can display it in a character for people to watch, and they take the weight on for two acts or a show run. That makes you feel better, temporarily. And that’s lovely. Then the show ends and it’s back in the saddle again for you. You wonder why you need to string shows together back to back and keep playing roles that let you flirt with that trauma of yours. 

Now I’m going to say something that is going to offend some of you. Enjoy it. Relish in it. Use it. Embrace it. It’s good for you. 

Your trauma is just that: Yours. You have made the choice (not the same thing as a decision. A decision is a move against, whereas a choice is a direct action toward) to carry that trauma through your life. It sits there, in the cue, waiting for triggers to flare it up so that you can continue your story of oppression; a story that you are somehow less capable, less valuable, less viable as a human being in this life than others. A story that you need a parent, some outside force, to discipline the world who is bullying you because you are incapable of defending yourself. 

I call bullshit. 

So on social media, as is an aspect of the current epidemic we face, someone posts something that is an opinion of theirs (maybe even from a trauma they chose to carry), it may even be racist or sexist, it may be classist, even just crass, and we use their words to pull the trigger on our cued-up trauma so that we can keep our narrative going. For the record: That’s not their fault. Your trauma doesn’t equal someone else’s abuse of you. We need to learn to tell the difference between the outside world and our own psyche. We need to learn not to take personally what others say or do. Further, we must stop expecting an apology from our abusers. It’s never going to come. 

Now I’m going to say something else that’s going to offend some of you. If you need to pause for a moment before proceeding, you might want to do so here. 

Your traumatizers have forgotten about you long ago. What they did to you doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to you. 

Take your time with that. Does that make you feel silly at all? It should. Not because we are silly intrinsically, but because we acted silly in carrying around someone else’s trauma for years, decades, or most of our lives, and the person who abused us is often long dead, or doesn’t remember us or the event anymore! (If you are currently being traumatized by someone, get the hell away from them! What are you doing?) 

For whose benefit are we dragging along that saddlebag? Is it for us? It would have to be, wouldn’t it? Because it certainly ain’t for anyone else’s benefit. Trauma begets itself. It’s a cycle. Our traumatizers are victims whose trauma was so heavy that they couldn’t stand to hold onto it another second, and they thrust it upon us; and we graciously took it from them. That was really nice of us.

It’s not your fault. But you made a choice, conscious or un, to accept their offer of trauma to you. Metaphorically, they said, “Hey! My trauma is too heavy! I need you to take some of it for me!” and you replied, “Okay, sure. Gimme some.” 

Why’d you do that? Well, it depends on the circumstances, but there are many reasons why we’ve taken on the bullshit of other people and carried it for years and years for no useful purpose at all. One is that we were a child and children accept everything that is given to us. We are completely open vessels, angels who carry the burden of a life we’ve not yet lived. Our parents abuse us and we say, “that must be the way of the world. Give me more.” Another is in relationships. Our spouse browbeats us with their trauma and because of our own upbringing, we are accustomed to taking on trauma from our loved ones; it’s a natural carryover into relationships to accept trauma from our husbands or wives. We have children ourselves, and we pass the trauma torch to them like a medieval relay race to light the villages downstream: a sacred badge that must be coddled and cared for at all costs. 

Nonsense! Your trauma is yours and yours alone. You purchased it with your story of woe. That is an ego game. Play it if you want, but don’t blame others because you want to play the game. 

So, when someone triggers us by saying something that is offensive or hurtful or just plain stupid, and we light up our trigger response, what is actually happening is that we are continuing the cycle of trauma by blaming them for our abuse. We are abusing them and ourselves. 

This can be a hard concept to grasp, I know. Some of you will stop reading this essay now and call it a waste of time. That’s sad, but that’s your decision. And that’s okay. All decisions and choices are okay. There are no good or bad selections in this choose-your-own adventure. It’s all a matter of your comfortability in this life. 

All of this information is to help us move forward in making a theatre that is truly, substantively just and equitable. A Gonzo theatre, not unlike the journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, who so famously used his own character flaws to relay critical cultural information to his readership, calls us to expose ourselves in full view of the audience in order that community healing may take place. A Gonzo Theatre is absolutely impossible if members of our community shut the art form down to force us all to carry their trauma. We’re all guilty of it at one point or another. 

Deal with your trauma. Let it go. Release it to the ethers. The ethers are conscious, too, and they are happy and able to process your trauma. Give it to them; none of us wants it. We’re all busy working on our own bullshit. Start to understand the difference between decisions and choices, and your life will improve vastly overnight.

A final note on trauma and acting: Once we release that trauma, we realize that nothing anyone else says or does has control over us. Oh, it may affect us in a moment. But it never has control over us. And once we realize that it’s us and us alone who are responsible, that it’s us who holds the power over our own mental health, we are going to make great theatre. Until then, we will always be fakers, because we don’t know ourselves well enough to portray someone else. And our audiences will always know. 

Don’t give your power away to others. That is inappropriate and it’s abusive to those you are putting in the position of power over you. That’s called topping from the bottom. You can’t have it both ways: you can’t be a victim and control how your victimizers abuse you. That’s a weakness of character and it’s anathema to the practice of theatre. 

Trauma and Bullying

Some traumatized people turn to bullying to prop up their self-narrative of how the world should have gone. Bullying is simply the act of attempting to maintain a trauma narrative by forcing others to conform to the fictional universals that one has set up around their trauma. 

One way that we bully others is to use “triggers” and passive aggression to make others feel badly for not buying into our trauma narrative. 

A trigger is not a thing. A trigger is simply us using others’ words or actions (other than violence) to offend ourselves. That’s not bullying in and of itself. Someone who is triggered, and takes the time to move through and past it, is behaving in a healthy manner. It only becomes bullying once we involve someone else in our drama. Bullying occurs when we choose to tell others how to speak in a certain way, or to apologize for a statement, or to change their behavior for our triggered trauma. That’s bullying. Don’t do that. 

Bullying is to be guarded against, and we must defend ourselves against this behavior. If we don’t nip it in the bud, we will all continue to be nudged all over the place in a wild goose chase that will never yield us a bird. Those who trigger will fall all over ourselves apologizing for others’ trauma and they’ll never be happy, and we’ll drag ourselves through the mud for their bullshit. Don’t do that either. 

Likewise, the triggered among us will never be happy because we’re not dealing with our trauma, but instead are just trying to shove it at the people around us until they get the shits of it and leave us to our personal hells. Don’t do that either either. 

Simply stated: 

1. Don’t ask others to change their behavior for you (unless they’re actively abusing you). That’s being a child

2. Don’t let others brow-beat you into apologies or a dampening of your character

3. Stay away from a victim mindset (self-identified victims attract abusers. It’s bad for everyone to engage the victim/abuser dynamic. That’s a remnant of our animalistic minds which we no longer need) 

4. Don’t deliberately be an asshole. If you’re an asshole, apologize. Learn to know the difference between triggers and actual offenses

Toward a Gonzo Theatre: Part 4 - A Psychology for the New Theatre Overview

 A Psychology for the New Theatre

Now, this issue of safety is a sticky one. This is important. If you skimmed the rest of is blog, don’t miss this: Sometimes, under the cover of safety, we will ask others not to express themselves because it may trigger, hurt our feelings, or offend us. It must be understood that you will be offended. Sometimes. You will be triggered. Guess what? That’s okay. Sit with this for a second. It’s okay for you to be offended sometimes. You’ll live. That’s what being human is. Use it! Take that energy and funnel it into your work. You may even learn something about yourself by being offended. It could even be an epiphone for you!

And don’t take it personally.

Everything is personal. But it’s never about you. Everyone is too busy judging themselves to care about judging you. If they do judge you, they’re actually judging themselves through you. 

Judge yourself and let others do the same. 

Get out of yourself for a second and try to learn their intent. Get curious about something outside yourself. Ask questions. Feel free to express yourself and tell the person in a calm manner that they triggered you. Tell them what they said made you feel unsafe. 99% of the time, they were not trying to make you feel unsafe or offend you. They were simply expressing themselves and you used their words to trigger yourself. That’s your responsibility. It’s nobody else’s responsibility to protect your mental health. That responsibility is yours and yours alone. That’s called being an adult in a world with other people. You’ve offended people in your life and you have hurt others. Did you intend to hurt them? No! You were simply expressing your point of view and someone used your point of view to offend themselves. You understood that then… understand it now. 

You must allow yourself to go through the emotions of grappling with your triggers and your offenses. You must work through the traumas that you have acquired over your lifetime. This is the maturation process. You must learn to live with the things that have been done to you by others, and separate the actions of those who have hurt you in the past from the actions of those in your life today. More on this later.

Start doing things to yourself that move you in a healing direction. You must allow yourself the tough job of working through that discomfort so that you can grow the muscles of self-awareness and internal core strength, without which you will fail at accomplishing anything meaningful in your life, especially the building of a good theatrical production. 

While the rehearsal room is a safe space for all, it is not the place to protect your ego or your delicacies. That is anathema to the practice of theatre. 

A Word on Honesty...

A critical element of taking responsibility for yourself and your own mental health as a theatre maker is the practice of being brutally honest. True honesty is the most loving path anyone can take. It’s not that easy. 

What is easy is to blame others for how you’re feeling. It’s easy to say that someone triggered you or made you feel badly. But have you ever considered who the center of those activities is? You Felt. You were Triggered. You’re angry. It’s all about you. It is you!

Think about that for a second. Did you ask any questions when you felt like someone offended you, or did you simply get offended and walk away? Did you yell a beautiful, improvised monologue in your car that made you feel vindicated and look silly to other drivers? Did you prod your insides to learn about your triggers, one of which was tripped when So and So said such and such? Or did you just get triggered and cancel lunch next week? 

The theatre requires of its participants a brutal honesty that kills your dead puppies at the door (from a very talented director friend of mine, Ryan Parham). Your puppies died an hour before rehearsal and you brought them into the rehearsal room with you; you projected them onto your castmates and anyone who would listen. They were sympathetic at first but then, when you insisted on making them look at all your dead puppy pics on your phone, they were put off. And so you blamed them for being insensitive. You. You. You. It’s all about what’s going on in your head and heart. A brutally honest actor notices when she does this and uses athletic silence and his super-power listening abilities to recalibrate their psyche. 

A regenerative theatre requires this brutal self-reflection that questions everything, including our triggers and trauma, and even our smug wokeness. 

Honesty doesn’t just mean setting our boundaries or making sure people know where we stand on an issue that’s dear to our hearts. Honesty is actual, blunt awareness of what is vs. what you wish was. Being honest with yourself is the act of accepting what is the reality of a situation or the world or an issue, and releasing your attachment to how you think it should have gone. We’re always going to be disappointed and angry if we try to make the world around us conform to our own very esoteric, unique snowflake universal rule set. There are no universals. I am not the arbiter of good taste, nor the gatekeeper of some universal truth that everyone is just waiting with bated breath for me to tell them about. 

The universe has no opinion. There is no judging sentience that requires us to conform to its will. Leave that to the religions. Without this realization, we will always be fighting with people, failing to make deep connections with co-workers, battling the circumstances of everyday life, and making shitty theatre. An honest and regenerative theatre requires the release of anything that is outside our purview, in order that we may find concert with the greater energy that we are inextricably a part of. It’s that simple and difficult at the same time. This is what a regenerative theatre demands of us. This is indeed what survival on this planet demands of us.

In the context of the rehearsal room and just as importantly performance, honesty takes the form of an open, gentle quietude that asks for input rather than demanding to express itself outwardly and loudly. An honest theatrical reaction can only come from listening, and it will never come through a pent-up response to past trauma. Honesty requires at its core the understanding that there is no subjective truth, but that as an individual, I must and have no choice but to take my own shape, of my own design, chosen entirely by me as I do it in the moment, in a dance with whomever is there with me now. Isn’t that beautiful? Let’s embrace that!