How to do everything
You're on the internet. You page through Pinterest. You watch instructional videos on YouTube. You even delve into Instructables from time to time (you naughty boy). You're a hip, modern, can-do kind of person who's looking for ways to make a difference in the world on your own terms. Or at least to make a cake on your own terms.
I can try to help you with that first thing. As for the cake, you'll just have to learn how to cream butter and sugar together in your own way. For the rest of it, here's your How-To guide for the week.
How to get involved
Hypothetical theater people that I make up for illustrative purposes are always asking me, "Hey, Derek, how do I get more involved advocating for theater?" (Real theater people, on the other hand, are always asking me, "Are you ready to order, or do you need more time?"). Luckily for you, there are plenty of opportunities to step out of the hypothetical and really get things done.
For starters, you can make sure to mark your calendars for March 17. That's the day Minnesota Citizens for the Arts has set aside for Arts Advocacy Day. For those of you not in the know, it's the day we all descend on the state capital and try to strong-arm our elected officials into supporting the arts. As you may know, I'm a vocal proponent of all of you getting off your asses and participating in the political process, so I'll be there. You should, too, because this year is when the state government will be hashing out the budget for the next two years, and it's usually the time when politicians try to find sneaky ways to siphon off some of those Legacy Amendment dollars.
By the way, MCA's fearless leader, Sheila Smith, was just awarded the Sidney R. Yates Award for Outstanding Advocacy on Behalf of the Performing Arts by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. You'll have a chance to congratulate her when you show up at the capital building in St. Paul on March 17.
Once you're done advocating, you can do some mingling and collaborating with theater types from across the state by attending the Minnesota Theater Alliance's very first Statewide Theater Conference, July 9-11. The schedule of events hasn't yet been finalized, because there is currently an open call for submissions for you all to get in there and make your own presentations.
How to punch winter in the face
If you have lived in Minnesota long enough, you know all about the cold and the snow. Everyone here has their story about that one blizzard or the other, ya know, when the snow was about yay high and everyone had their snowsuits on cause the temperature musta been about thirty below and the gosh darn car wouldn't start, wouldn'tya know it? In other parts of the country, though, they invented hyperbolic terms like "snowpocalypse" to describe what we might call "Tuesday".
This winter has been pretty light for us, but our friends on the east coast have been getting pounded by it this year. I was hoping they would develop a similar fortitude and trudge on stoically the we've all had to in years past, but, unfortunately, Broadway wussed out and closed up shop during this latest blizzard.
But, some hearty fools did not. The first annual BroadwayCon, a ComicCon-style gathering of musical theater nuts, forged ahead in spite of the snow. And this wasn't just a case of a few diehards stupidly risking their lives to buy overpriced merch and goggle awkwardly at actors. Over 6,000 people showed up, stupidly risking their lives to buy overpriced merch and goggle awkwardly at actors. It just goes to show, if you're crazy enough over something, every one of you can find that hidden Minnesotan inside.
How to fix the Oscars
Last week on News and Notes we talked about the Academy Award nominations and the fact that for the second year in a row, the Academy has nominated a slate of 20 people for the acting awards that is whiter than a polar bear swimming in a vat of bleach.
Since then, there have been calls to boycott the award ceremony, and there have been plenty of opportunities for white celebrities to say stupid things, like, for example, Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling saying that all the fuss is actually racist against white people. Whoopi Goldberg also chimed in saying that the Oscars can't be racist, because she got one once.
The obsessive number crunchers at the Economist took some time out of their busy schedule of crushing political hopes and dreams with statistics to bring some scientific analysis to the table. In their statistical breakdown of diversity in the Oscars and the film industry they determined that, in the current century at least, black actors have actually been represented in nominations and wins roughly concurrent with their representation in the overall population (10% of nominations and 15% of wins, with current American population of about 12%). In pure numbers analysis, the 21st century Oscars so far have really been lousy for anyone who's not white or black: only 3% of nominations have gone to Latino actors and only 1% to people of Asian descent. (And if you're anything else, well you're pretty much screwed; but you knew that already, didn't you?)
It's easy to say that the lack of diversity in nominations and wins comes down to the fact that the members of the Academy who actually select the nominations and winners are 94% white and predominantly older than the rest of America. That's probably a problem, and the Academy did recently announce a long-term plan to change that disparity; but, according to those numbers from the Economist article above, the Academy actually does a pretty good job of nominating and awarding people of various cultural and ethnic groups at the same rates that they are actually featured in the types of big films that get considered for Oscars. You could argue that it's not so much the Oscars that have a diversity problem, but Hollywood itself. Come to think of it, that's probably what Whoopi was getting at before, but those of us in the media chose to glom on to the "I got mine" aspect of her comments instead of listening to her whole argument, because, let's face it, that's just easier to make into a flippant headline. We're actually quite lazy here in the news biz.
That's why, as Marlow Stern wrote in The Daily Beast recently, to fix the Oscars, you actually have to fix the Hollywood system. You'd think that would be easy now, what with the newest Star Wars movie closing in on $2 billion with a black man in a lead role (despite the received wisdom in Hollywood) and a very diverse series like the Fast and Furious movies continually hoovering up dollars each time it comes back. Hey, Hollywood producers: you like making money, right? It seems like you'll be all over this once you talk to your accountants.
But, then again, just a few years ago, a movie featuring two female leads became one of the best-selling films of all time, and the Hollywood system still routinely fails the Bechdel test. So, I guess there's still some work to be done.
How to wave a giant phallus around
Ok, that's, uh… a very specific how-to… oh, I see where this is going: Saint Mary's University in Minnesota recently fired an adjunct professor who had was working with its theater department on a new, more accurate translation of Medea. The professor (whose classes were very popular and who also cleaned toilets at the University, because his regular pay was so low) claims that he was fired because the historically-accurate translation also included the old Greek custom of waving big phalluses around at the audience. (Yes, that is a thing that used to happen, and yes, your theater history textbooks skipped over it because it doesn't conform to "grand, dignified history of theater" narrative) The University claims that there were sexual harassment complaints filed against the professor over the show, but the director of the show disputes them.
Is this a case of religious intolerance? Sexual discomfort? Colleges squashing free speech in order to protect students' precious feelings? I wish I knew more. But I don't. All I can say is that this professor should have taken the advice of the Walker Sculpture Garden. People will apparently celebrate you putting a giant cock out in public as long as it's really big and really blue.
How to actually fight sexual harassment in the theater
If you've been keeping up on the ongoing sex abuse lawsuits directed at Children's Theatre Company, you probably know about the call for boycott against Jason McLean's businesses. McLean, who is named in three of the five pending suits, also happens to be the owner of two much-loved establishments in Minneapolis, so it was only a matter time before someone penned an opinion piece compartmentalize their anger at McLean away from his establishments. And, after that, it was only a matter of time before readers got mad at that, too. What really stuck out to me in Olive Allen's defense of McLean was this bit at the end:
"I do know this: “Here and now” is different from “then and there.” Tempting as it is to apply revisionist morality to another era, we can never be in that moment again, can never feel the influence of that particular zeitgeist."
This can easily be read as "Hey, it was a different time. This sort of thing was normal back then." But it wasn't normal, and it shouldn't ever be treated like it was.
The past is a strange place, full of strange customs that we can never understand in our modern morality. (For example, the practice of waving giant dicks around on stage.) We can hand wave some of them away, but others are more troubling (for example the rampant anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice). If we gloss over them and say, "That's just how it was," then we run the risk of enshrining the bad behavior of the past inside of "tradition". That's why we have to work hard to recontextualize Shakespeare's mysogyny for today's audience if we want to justify continuing to do Shakespeare.
It's also why an organization like Not In Our House has sprung up to fight back against entrenched systems of harassment in the theater world. Sexual harassment isn't just a theater professor who puts historically-accurate dongs in a show. Harassment (and, yes, abuse as well) occurs when a class of people is systemically put into a position of no power. If we can get together and fix that, then we won't have to worry about trying to craft an opinion piece to separate someone's art from their actions.
How to be a better actor
Actors are constantly searching for ways to "improve their craft". I put that in quotation marks, because that's literally how actors keep asking that question, and it's literally how people keep giving unsolicited advice.
For my part, though, I would rather listen to Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Tracy Letts, who recently shared his ten suggestions for "how to live a creative life". These include, among other things, lying, stealing and masturbating; and, as a bonus, he didn't use the word "craft" once.
But, if you insist on learning only how to be a better actor, then I need to direct you over to the blog, The Big Jewel, which recently published the very helpful Tips For Becoming A Better Actor. It includes, among other things, this sage advice:
"Sometimes, becoming a better actor is as easy as observing older, more experienced actors and seeing how they work. Kill them with a moon dagger and suck their manna from the open wound in order to gain both their abilities and their memories."
