Friday, September 03, 2004

 

The Fall Season

What does all this upcoming scholarly activity mean for Venal Scene? I've tried to keep the site busy, with four or more new posts a week. A humble output, but I doubt I'll be able to sustain even that, at least if I continue the way I've been working.

It would be foolish to dump Venal Scene, though. I've met a lot of great people through it. It's been good for my mind and my art.

But a change needs to happen. I need less flexibility, strange as that sounds. I need to know what's going to be needed for it, when. That way, I can collect bits and pieces during the week.

Therefore, I'm instituting a programming schedule. The major will remain theatre, with minors in other subjects. There will be less thinking, and more linking, but hopefully you'll still find the visit worthwhile.

Let's begin:

MONDAY: Review Roundup
We kid the critics, but they're worth a look, especially if they get you good and riled. I took a lot out of A Terry Teachout Reader, even if I didn't always agree. I'll be offering some of what's available in copious amounts on the web. Since I'll be seeing more shows this fall, as my little purple card gets me discounts, you'll occasionally get my stroke-addled rhesus monkey opinions as well.

TUESDAY: Guest Star Day
If there's one thing that The Mickey Mouse Club taught me, it's that Tuesday is Guest Star Day. And if there's one thing that Isaac Butler taught me, it's that, when you're overwhelmed by projects, pass the writing on to some other folks. So, on Tuesdays, you'll be treated to a guest column! Who knows who it'll be?! Who knows what they'll write?! One thing I can guarantee: words will be involved.

WEDNESDAY: Hump Day Help
So called because I will provide a link or links to one of the amusing corners of the internet. Also so called because I like to write and say the word "hump." Hump hump hump.

THURSDAY: The Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Plugging
Since this lovely couple subsidized my school and my education, I think they deserve their own day here.

There's going to be a lot of projects at NYU, some mine, some not, and you'll hear about them here. I urge urge urge you to take a look at what's coming, not only from me, but for my classmates as well. You'll also see a short list of attractions updated on the left. If anything gets your juices flowing sweetly, come down. It's open to the public, and if it's not free, I'm sure it's cheap. Easy date material, people.

FRIDAY: IS FAT
It can't be Fat Tuesday, because Tuesday -- as I stated -- is Guest Star Day. Therefore it must be Fat Friday. Here will be what you've come to expect from Venal Scene: me yapping away. Humor, theatre, culture, continental breakfast...and a smidge ofmy very own self-importance. Who could want more?

So there you have. We'll see if my discipline holds, or collapses like a junior high class with a sub.

One more thing: Because of Labor Day, Tuesday will feature Monday's schedule. Confusing enough? Good.

posted by Dan 1:47 PM
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Better Tomorrow

The graduate mixer had free wine. I have often complained about the high tuition for NYU, but if they're going to provide pork-barrel subsidies of booze, it's hard to complain. I know people stay stick with white at a party, because red makes your teeth purple; but when faced with wine of questionable origin, the wise drinker always goes red. Nothing brings a headache quicker than a bad white does.

As it turns out, I'm not the oldest one in the class. I'm definitely in the uppermost age bracket, but a couple of guys have me beat. In addition, another student has a kid. So I don't feel like quite the freak. Yet.

My classmates seem like good eggs. I've had coffee or a walk with a few of them. All are -- like me -- thrilled to be there, freaked out, eager to learn. Not much cynicism among us so far, more blind camaraderie. At one point, we smelled fire. We decided that this was the best group of strangers with which to die. It was a good wine.

Fear not, this site won't become a web diary of my grad school experiences: that garbage is not for me. Besides, part of the pleasure and purpose of educations like this is the safety of the cocoon. Public disclosures spoil that.

And as a side-note to that: they're shooting a new reality show in the film department. It follows four students as they make their thesis films. That sounds use...lessly insane. During the Dean's welcome, our dean said that our lives at NYU would be as interesting as a reality show...so our lives will be as interesting as a show where people pretend to live real life. Um...at that point, the "Vertigo" spiral appeared behind me, and I fell screaming into it. The dean was otherwise very well-spoken and supportive, so I will chalk up that statement to a lapse while searching for a tying thematic metaphor.

But nothing can spoil my good mood, which I had to share. You know how you think about your past, and you say to yourself, "If only I knew then what I know now?" Well, I feel like it's then again, and I know what I know now. I feel optimistic and thankful. I feel like those first mornings of a show tour: it's just getting light, the bus idles on the curb, I'm stepping on...

posted by Dan 10:43 AM
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Scoring On My Own Goal

I'm going to give Laura a leg up on one of the questions I put to her yesterday, not that she needs it.

According to John Lippman in this morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd):

Hollywood again will boast how it scored another "record" box-office take this summer. But most industry executives don't want to talk about the truth behind the figure: Fewer people are going to the movies. The dollar volume of ticket sales is expected to total $3.98 billion, estimates box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co., up 3% from last summer. But the number of tickets purchased dipped about 1% this summer from the same period last year, on the heels of a 2% decline in summer 2003 from 2002. (emphasis mine)

So it seems, at least short-term, that the movies are also experiencing a decline in audience. Is it doing so for the same reasons theatre is? I don't think so, but it's worth considering. Certainly, movies haven't achieved the widespread cultural animosity that theatre has.

posted by Dan 8:59 AM
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Thursday, September 02, 2004

 

Final Round For Me

Laura's posted a new salvo in our ongoing debate over "Why No One Cares About Theatre." Mac and George have added their thoughts, and they're well worth considering.

I've been arguing from a negative here, essentially confining myself to negating Laura's points without my promised alternative. That's no way to debate. Unfortunately, my platform paper will have to wait, possibly for a long time. I just had orientation for NYU yesterday, and I have the feeling I won't have time to write anything but schoolwork until January. So this will probably be my last entry into this debate.

I'll answer one of Laura's points, and then shift gears, so we can at least keep our discussion going, in spite of my absence.

Laura says:

My essay was referring not only to the New York theater scene, but also attitudes and perspectives that the New York theater scene respects and agrees with.

Later, she says:

Unless I’m misunderstanding Dan… He doesn’t see the New York liberal perspective’s effect on what gets produced and how it affects which audiences go to see New York theatre.

I don't, because I don't think it's the "New York liberal" perspective that she's really talking about, I think it's the plain old national "boomer-liberal" perspective. If New York's theaters all suddenly shut down, I don't think that this would change things at all in San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago or Seattle.

My argument for NY's acquittal doesn't shatter Laura's central thesis; it only alters it. As I said, several segments of theatre could be beholden to a political and social dogma without New York coming into the equation. Given that I have encountered the exact same attitudes that Laura derides in places throughout the country, I don't understand why Laura insists on calling it "New York liberal perspective." As she says, she's speaking of not only the New York theatre scene (in general), but the attitudes it agrees with (again, in general). I am saying that I might correlate these attitudes, but -- say it with me now -- correlation does not imply causation.

Let's say that Kevin Heckman, Artistic Director of Chicago's Stage Left, gets his hypothetical play with a "really good, well-reasoned, well-argued conservative viewpoint" to production, with huge success. I don't think that this supposed Iron Fist of New York Theatre would able -- or willing -- to crush it in its infancy, keeping it from further productions. I don't think that it would be able or willing to prevent a major production in New York City within the next two years. So why does Laura ascribe a stifling power to it?

I think this is because Laura sees the development of trends in the theatre as "New York --> the rest of the world." I see trends come from all over, into, out of, and through the Big Apple, a "spinning door," as George Hunka called it.

Let me assume Laura's argument, that New York's dominance controls the political bias of the theatre scene nationally because of its economic dominance. Playwrights must bring their plays to New York in order to take their career to that next level. What's the next level after New York? Financially, it's Hollywood. Most playwrights -- not all, but certainly most -- try to turn their success in theatre into success in the more lucrative world of movies and television. So it seems that the real culprit of the pervasive liberal perspective could be pinned on the other coast, according to this logic.

I don't think that's the case, but it's instructive to consider this as we seek the culprit for apathy toward theatre. If we continue to chase a chilling conspiracy that is actually a phantom, it will continue to appear everywhere, so long as we believe in it, in spite of evidence to the contrary. A more inclusive dialogue in the theatre may be welcome to those of us who wish one, but I don't think that will reverse the decline in attendance.

All right, that's enough of that. I'm going to finish this up with a series of questions for Laura, based on the last three sections of the outline of her argument. I hope she will address them in her ongoing series, when she gets a free moment to write it.

Picking it up at number three, where she (correctly) cites liberal theatre politics as national rather than New Yorkerly, and a segment as opposed to a whole:

3. The lack of honest, insightful dialogue in American theater greatly influences the lack of audience. The segmentation of audiences hinders discourse and is a result of the liberal PC politics of American Theater.

Given that Americans perceive TV and film as additional bastions of liberalism, why has there not been such a sharp decline in their audiences? If segmentation is a hornet's nest -- a, messier, larger issue -- how can we hope to eliminate the hindrances of segmentation as it relates to theatre without addressing those messier, larger issues? If a school of thought in theatre were to appear, one that -- a la Fox News -- provided an alternative political/social perspective, would that create more or less problems with segmentation? Could it drive away current theatre-goers, the same way that you say a lack of representation has driven away others?

4. There was also a discussion of story and traditional narrative. It seems like ages ago when we talked about how people wanted a meaningful, vital and urgent experience in theater. This didn’t mean, however, that the story had to be told in a realistic, linear way.

Please explain what constitutes a story, to you. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say, "...meaningful, vital and urgent"? How are current practitioners of theatre failing to do that, even as they claim to be trying?

5. The elitism and isolation of theater professionals was cited as a cause for why audiences don’t care about theater. We either talk down to them or are so involved with impressing our colleagues that we forget to communicate to our audience.

It's difficult to find anyone who says that talking down to your audience is a good thing. What -- specifically -- would you urge people in the theatre to do that they aren't doing? What attitudes would you ask them to take on? Please also describe -- again, specifically -- the makeup of the audience from which the theatre has isolated itself. What are their values, their dreams, their longed-for perspectives?

Gotta go now. Next: a game-plan for the coming months, and a new style for Venal Scene.

posted by Dan 2:08 PM
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004

 

Dan Trujillo is a Hot Psychic

Somewhere in NYC there is a playwright penning a play about a lefty New York twenty-something whose parents -- GOP delegates -- have to stay in his or her squat during the Republican convention.

I, Dan Trujillo, Hot Psychic, have spoken.

posted by Dan 4:22 PM
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Monday, August 30, 2004

 

GASP! indeed! (Masturbatory)

Whoa! Looks like I struck an artery!

I thought I might irritate Laura with the previous post, though Lord knows I tried not to. This is why you'll never see me on Crossfire; no taste for blood.

But let's look at the response. Laura seems to think that I'm contradicting myself, by stating that I think she's focusing on issues related to her own aesthetic, and then saying that she's still looking for her aesthetic. Let me clear that up: I think we're always searching for our aesthetic. Beckett was still searching at the end of his life. To me, it's a process and an end. But I can see that I did imply that she didn't know her own. Fair enough. However, I did say, "I haven't read or seen enough of her writing to judge; she may know what her theatre is, on an unconscious but palpable level." So, I think I left the door open there. And by the way, I'm still searching for my aesthetic.

She continues:

there will be people who will simply say that I should just shut up and write

I never said shut up, I only said that her work is the most valuable tool toward building her theatre.

I’m very aware of the regional theater movement. I am also aware of the inherent bias that New York theaters have towards work that doesn’t celebrate the same values and judgments they do. Plays may get their first performance elsewhere – that’s the usual method of operation. Most producers want to know that they have a winner before moving the play into the city. While having a production in Chicago is wonderful, it isn’t the same as having it in a Broadway theater in New York. Getting a transfer like that is what most people are looking towards. It’s called a “ladder” I believe, and if you read theater history, you’ll understand.

No, nothing is the same as having a Broadway production in New York. It's so prestigious that some award-winning plays get there only after they've gone gray. True West, the show that put Steppenwolf on the map and launched the careers of Gary Sinese and John Malkovich, didn't get to Broadway until a couple of years ago. "Wit," the Pulitzer Prize winner, never saw Times Square. But Broadway isn't the entirety of the New York theatre scene (some would say it's barely peripheral). But even when you take into account off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway, you still find examples of playwrights with successful careers that do well without New York. This is due to the strength and dominance of the various regional theatres, as well as the proliferation of the smaller venues. Octavio Solis has had a remarkable career that only touched down in New York four years ago, thanks to these people. I think the best way to pick a fight with a Chicago theatre person is to say that New York is the place to go for new plays.

The history of the ladder is just that: history. Out-of-town tryouts are basically over. Broadway only does a handful of straight plays each season. Most of the ones that go only go because of wild success at an off-Broadway or regional venue. The only reason anyone brings a show from out-of-town to Broadway anymore is because of A) the posh that New York's past glory evokes and B) the same reason anyone brings their play to another city: because there might be a buck to be made. And many producers are realizing that the economics of Broadway preclude profit.

Onward:

Dan may say that people aren’t looking for material that challenges their values, but then he has to admit that most people who go to theater are liberal and possess the same values that the average New Yorker has.

Actually, that was Laura's assertion, not mine. I was using her idea to point out the logic: if audiences are exclusively made up of left-leaners, and their theatre leans left, then they must not want challenging theatre. If a conservative play hit the boards, then conservatives would come to see it because they agree with it, as Laura suggests. But according to the logic, they don't seek a challenge. They seek affirmation.

It's possible that people do want challenging theatre, but since the above logic precludes it, I assumed for the sake of my response that they don't. I think that's a separate discussion.

Isn’t it funny how theater has to segment itself like that anyway? Women to the right, Gays up ahead, Christians over there… Not exactly promoting the ol’ dialogue, now is it?

It is unfortunate. But it also points out how fragmented NYC theatre is, since the crowd that hits the Mint (old plays rediscovered) isn't the same as the crows that hits WOW café ("women's" theatre) isn't the same that hits Wings ("gay" theatre), and you can repeat this pattern all across the U.S.A. Yes, it is segmented, in New York and around the country. Who is to blame for this? I don't know. But since the whole country feels like this in nearly every aspect (from theatre to movies to bars to schools to neighborhoods), I'm loathe to pin the guilt on anyone involved in the theatre.

My essay was about the isolation of the New York Theater and the claustrophobic similarity of viewpoints that result. The goal of the piece was to express the notion that there is a whole other world out there where theater isn’t reaching – a world of other ideas, other political views, and frames of references.

I understand that. What I was driving at was that the world of theater is indeed fragmented, but that there is other theatre communities out there -- non-New-York, non-liberal communities -- and they're suffering from the same diminishing audience that the theatre is in NYC. Therefore, I don't think we can pin the murder on New York, or Texas, or liberals, or conservatives. I think the problem has nothing to do with aesthetics or subject matter or political outlook.

Toward the end, Laura defends her essay with this:

The point of the essay was to introduce the problem, not to provide solutions, which will come in future essays. It was not intended to be a manifesto.

As I also said, I didn't think it was. Though you seem to be promising one, and I can't wait to read it.

Meanwhile Dan, if you want to travel 600 miles to knock me in the jaw, feel free.

Why in the world would I want to do that? It's all good.

CORRECTION: I was wrong -- dead, dead wrong -- about the lack of David Mamet's "big three" (American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, & Sexual Perversity in Chicago) making their debut on Broadway this year. Buffalo and Glengarry have received two productions on Broadway. If I'd bothered to read the production history more carefully, I would've seen that. Go here to get the full story. Thanks to George Hunka for pointing it out. I've corrected my response. My apologies to those who thought I was smarter than I am.

posted by Dan 9:21 PM
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Who Broke Theatre?

I'm not going to indulge my anxieties about school anymore (today). Instead, theatre-weenieness ahead. For those who don't roll like that, here's a picture of the car of tomorrow:


image courtesy PistonHeads.com

Laura Axelrod has a few recent posts exploring the issue of "Why People Don't Go To Theater." I think, on the whole, her essay misses the cause in favor of issues related to her own aesthetic.

First, though, let me mark the points where I think she hits home. Her central thesis is that theatre's practitioners cloister themselves and their art from the rest of the nation:

Somewhere in recent history, theater professionals ceased communicating with their audiences. It became Us versus Them. We (playwrights, directors, actors and designers) felt that we were far too intellectual for the general public. We were too sensitive to honestly discuss the political turns that the great unwashed masses took some time ago. We could only correct them – talk down to them in a politically correct fashion. This is something akin to clubbing our audience over the head with a 2x4 plank.

“It is YOU who is racist!” A prominent playwright declared by bluntly holding a mirror and having the spotlight on the audience during one production.

I'm not sure if the italicized section is supposed to refer to something that happened to her, or a quote from another article, but the experience rings true. We've all had the espresso-stained finger pointed at us as we sit in our $15 seats, its owner crying j'accuse! Moreover, I've sat through the great -- though not complete -- disdain for the Flyover States on the coasts, and for the NASCAR audience among theatre-folk. Laura says that part of the reason why such behavior is encouraged is that theatre artists are playing not for an audience, but a coterie.

We write, direct, and act in an effort to impress our colleagues. Because we’re preaching to the choir, we email our theater friends about our latest shows. We call this “supporting each other”. In reality, we’re the only ones we can get to attend our plays.

Don't forget our relatives, Laura! There's a rich mine there!

Again, no argument from me. Only two of my New York productions have caught fire beyond the circles of those involved. And one of those was technically a sketch comedy show. Still, it was live actors doing live things, so it falls under the heading of theatre.

I've heard variations on Laura's tune before, notably from Qui. He's tried to respond to these grievances through his productions. You can read Qui's Vampire Cowboy manifesto to see how he's applied it.

Skipping ahead, she tries to tie her assertion to the concentration of artists in The Big Apple:

A long time ago, New Yorkers set the artistic trends and beliefs. With the explosive growth of technology, this is no longer the case. Americans now look to other regions of the country to reflect back or challenge their values and ideas.

Whether or not most people look for material that challenges their values and ideas is a thesis up for debate, and Laura undercuts it with her own assertion that those working in the theatre present work that does not challenge their own values and ideas. A more gaping logical flaw comes a little later in the essay:

With the growing threat of terrorism, most believe that this country’s artistic community will leave New York City and take hold in different regions throughout the country. (emphasis mine)

I'm not sure who "most" are, but I would argue that the decentralization of American theatre had already happened pre-9/11. It has been on since at least the 70s, with the ascendancy of the regional theatre movement to dominance in the field of shepherding new plays. For every Circle in the Square or Playwrights Horizons or Manhattan Theatre Club, you have a Steppenwolf or a Mark Taper Forum or a Guthrie. Even musty grandfathers like The Huntington Theatre Company play host to August Wilson before he sets foot in NYC. It's difficult to prove that New York-centric theatre world when well over fifty percent of the successful American playwrights of the last twenty years have spawned outside of it. Yes, eventually all of their work comes to the Big Apple. It also goes to Seattle, Austin, San Francisco, or wherever there's a market.

If theatre is suffering because of the arrogance of its practitioners, as Laura asserts, but those practitioners don't centralize in New York, where does that leave her argument? Is it possible that this cloistered priesthood of gatekeepers that Laura warns us against is a national, rather than a regional, power? Possibly. Venues throughout the U.S. repeat weekly every bad-theatre anecdote that Laura relates. I have seen plenty of two-dimensional intolerant conservative characters on the boards in my home town of Portland, OR. (In fact, I played one twenty years ago, for a high-school show. To anyone who was in the audience of Jefferson High School's production of Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, I'm sorry.)

I think Laura is mixing up two kinds of elitism here: the elitism of theatre and the elitism of New York. The two correlate, but one doesn't cause the other. Let's proceed with her assertion, without the "New York done it" portion of the argument. She describes the theatre community's destructive behavior in terms of its political/social perspective and a generally-held disdain for story.

She finds theatre tilting way to the Left, and to the urban:

The deck is always stacked against the opposition...We’ve created stock characters for the people who have wronged us – whether they are parents, those who hold different political perspectives, stereotypical “non-urban” hicks and whatnot. It becomes a literal rendition of a resentment - very little is learned and no ideas are explored.

Psychological analyses aside -- since I don't accept her framing of the issue in terms of those who move to New York -- is it possible that political and social bias is one of the root causes of theatre's popular collapse? A disrespect for an "opposition" made up of non-urban, non-leftists?

Theatre has always been the habitat of ne'er-do-wells, social outcasts and political hacks. It's only recently that we identify it as serving their exclusive interests. Movements which split off from the mainstream of popular theatre -- Sturm-und-Drang, Dada, agitprop -- are the forbearers of the theatre I think Laura resents. These theatres did not seek a synthesis of opposing arguments, presented fairly. They were one side of the argument, the antithesis, with mainstream culture being the rival thesis. They sought to shatter the commonly held-notions, political, social and/or aesthetic. They didn't want to give a handshake to the opposition, they wanted to slap it in the face.

Has theatre become all antithesis? Maybe downtown theatre has, but you can't walk down Broadway and see an art-form that wants to slap the mainstream. The regional behemoths like Playwrights Horizons are economically motivated to look for plays that will succeed on a wide regional level, because they collect up to 10% of a play's revenue after its debut. Scores of new-play competitions across the United States give very specific prerequisites for the entrants, and for every WOW Café Theatre ("women and trans artists only") there's an Henrico Theatre Company One Act Contest ("No controversial themes or excessive language"). It seems that both the incentive for theatre geared toward this "opposition" market exists. As Laura herself has discovered, the demand for Bible-related material for church group performance is large enough to support playwrights that do that exclusively. If the market is this diverse, should we blame the drop in attendance nationwide on the political and social biases of a single segment?

Laura drops the other half of the blame in the lap of those who eschew story:

I’ve taken an informal poll since leaving New York City and most people tell me that the reason they go to theater is for the ability to experience a compelling story. A story. That’s the reason why the general public cares about theater. How we tell the story is up to us, but we must communicate something vital, meaningful and urgent.

George Hunka takes on this assertion, and he argues against "story" as the healing balm:

Our potential audiences don't go to theater for a number of reasons, but our inability as playwrights and directors to present a compelling narrative (or, as Laura posits, our disinterest in doing so) isn't one of them. One thing nearly all 200 shows presented at the recent New York Fringe festival shared was story: narrative stuffed to overflowing with incident, enthusiastically (if not always artfully) performed and staged.

Laura parries in a later entry:

There's a difference between the words “story” and “narrative”. To me, everything has a story - a painting, a dance, a butoh performance. Even Richard Foreman’s work contains some form of story, just not a traditional one. Narrative, on the other hand, implies structure. When I refer to narrative, it is usually stated as “traditional narrative” to avoid confusion with people who will likely think the words are interchangeable.

So, let me assume the word "story" means, in Laura's usage, an event, or an experience. Something that we pass through, transmitted from performers to an audience through words and movement. It's a little tough to nail down because I think she's still defining her terms. I think it's safe to recast her statement as: "...people tell me that the reason they go to theater is for the ability to experience a compelling event."

So in other words, people go to the theater to experience...good theatre.

Seriously, this is a little vague. If we're going to include paintings (including Mondrian?!) and freaky Foreman under the heading "story," then swing the barn doors wide, ma, and let the whole damn county in.

When she isn't defining good theatre in the widest possible terms, she's defining it by what it isn't: it isn't elitist, it isn't preaching, it isn't centered around New York, it isn't Shakespearean devices or traditional narrative but it contains a story of some kind...when pressing herself on the issue, she returns only this positive definition:

"...there’s a grey area between the latest Disney Broadway production and Foreman. This grey area is where great theater exists."

A grey area is not much to build on, unless said grey area is a slab of industrial concrete. This reminds me of when I conducted an interview with the lead singer of a rap group. He spoke of creating an economic system that was neither capitalism nor communism. He offered no more details, and it sounded like a poor platform for convincing others. Yet he was dead set on its existence. People insist on the literal existence of Atlantis as well, but until I see the stone marked, "Welcome to Atlantis," I'm not booking my vacation there.

I'm not saying that Laura's theatre doesn't exist. Like many of us, I think she's still searching for her own aesthetic homeland; but in the process, I think she's throwing stones at phantoms. Tossed stones won't build her homeland, though; only her work will. It might help her if she made a few specific decisions about what theatre -- to her -- must be. Admittedly, I haven't read or seen enough of her writing to judge; she may know what her theatre is, on an unconscious but palpable level. Since her essay isn't a manifesto, I can't examine it in those terms. Yet it's a little difficult to lambaste the theatre community for failing to participate in an aesthetic that she can't define.

Laura is an excellent writer, and I've had the pleasure of producing her work, but I think she's describing symptoms of the disease. Perhaps her promised further essays will elaborate (on both the causes of theatres failings and in the painting of her wished-for landcape). Still, I don't think that New York is really the problem. I don't think that the cloistered priesthood of theatre-weenies is the problem (though they certainly don't help). The problem -- as I see it -- is one of economics and technology.

That's for another entry. Right now, my brain hurts.

UPDATE: Laura responds, with a vengeance. Laura, I promise I will put the word "masturbatory" in the next entry header.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I said, regarding theatre and New York's pervasive liberal attitude, "the two overlap but don't correlate." That's incorrect. They do correlate, but the relationship isn't causal.

posted by Dan 5:43 PM
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Something Welling Within

I woke up in the middle of the night screaming. I wonder if my wife finds this as funny as I do.

posted by Dan 11:30 AM
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