Last night I spent the evening eating Dirty Franks and hanging out with a couple of buddies, and we decided to go see Woody Allen’s new flick, Whatever Works, which stars perennial grump Larry David.

After the movie, Brant pointed out that it would be possible to walk away from it thinking that the lesson to be learned was that traditional, conservative, southern Christians would be a lot happier if they’d all just move to Manhattan and get over their sexual repressions. Larry David is a notorious lefty, and Woody has never given conservatives anything even vaguely resembling a break in his movies. So, looking at the personnel and the plot together, it’s not a stretch to label this as a very “liberal” movie. Certainly, if there ever was one, this was it.

This led us to talking about a debate that surfaces occasionally on the theatre blogs about whether or not the theatre needs more “conservative” or “right-wing” plays. Playwright Sean Lewis and I have sometimes talked theoretically about how one could go about writing a “right-wing” play, and we always come up short. Perhaps in large part because we’re so steeped in leftist theology. How would Whatever Works end if it was a right-wing movie? I suppose the family would all get back together, reject the empty morals of NYC and move back south.

So then we tried to come up with a list of existing conservative plays and we did rather poorly. Luckily, the internet has come to our rescue and I’ve been reading through some old blog posts.

Continue reading "Wherefore Art Thou Conservative Art?" »

Okay, this post’s title is a little disingenuous. I don’t think the actors should just suck it up. I do think people should turn off their cell-phones.

Nevertheless, apparently things have been getting out of hand in Vancouver, as Simon Ogden fill us in right here.

In the space of that one week, I personally witnessed or heard reported a ridiculous amount of incidents involving artists vs. audience members here that just knocked the wind out of me. Offhand and flippant derogatory comments on social media sites. Actors onstage yelling insults at audience members who were talking back to them in a play constructed to have planted actors in the audience talk back to them. One actor called an audience member who was struggling to turn off an errant cell phone ringer a ‘bitch’ from the stage. And no, he didn’t do it ‘in character’. I’ve read the play, and that line isn’t in it, for his or anybody else’s character.

Whoa. Folks need to settle down.

Continue reading "Hey Actors, It’s a Cell Phone, Deal With It" »

99 Seats posted something called Shouting Myself Hoarse the other day, in which the author laments the perception that bloggers have no effect in the industry and that the theatrenet is just a bunch of no-nothing idealists digitally complaining to each other.

Well, don’t that just beat all?

That makes me just mad as hell. I gotta tell you, if not for this big group of no-nothings, I don’t know what I’d be up to these days. I don’t think I’d be running a successful theatre company anymore, I can tell you that.

Continue reading "The Theatrenet is Important, Fool!" »

This ain’t me. This is Jay Smooth (LINK) and he explains it better than most.