Sunday, January 15, 2006
Ancient disks and artistic choices...
I got an email from Alison this week saying that Ben just found some old computer disks with scripts from 3 Sisters, Pier, Rent, Winter's Tale, Toy Truck, and Video Store on them. Excellent news as it will save some costs in transcription.
The disks for the Durfee transcripts also turned up! This is great news...I am still piling through them. I think I'm going to make a set for myself at some point at Kinko's. I was thinking of making two and giving one to Michael John Garces, incoming AD. He'd find them interesting, I think. That whole "collective voice" of the founders and early fellow travelers is most instructive.
This week one of the things I was pondering is the decision to edit or change a show based on community standards. There's an interesting conflict in GOOD PERSON OF LONG CREEK that has an echo in ROMEO AND JULIET. In each case, the company responded differently...the difference is illustrative of a really critical aspect of Cornerstone's aesthetic and political policy.
In Long Creek, OR., the community was notably divided between the folks who went to church on Sunday and the folks who went to the bar on Saturday. The play includes an unwed mother, which was offensive to the church-goers...the company made adjustments and compromises to address the concerns of that side of the community.
Port Gibson, MI., hadn't seen a black man kiss a white woman onstage...when that happened in ROMEO AND JULIET rehearsals, Bill Rauch was invited to lunch by one of the ladies in the "Mint Julep Belles" and told, "They just can't kiss."
So do you censor yourself, or is that the wrong attitude? Is the question more about responding to the community and learning about their perspective?
The kiss is not incidental to the plot, so in R&J both the moral and the dramturgical arguments in favor of the kiss made it inevitable...but I guess in Oregon the moral issue was there, but the dramaturgical arguments were less important.
It seems to me that the most noted example of negotiations with a community, the inclusion of a gay muslim chatacter in LONG BRIDGE, is the latest of a hundred such. That topic in itself would be a fascinating piece for the Omnibus...when do you hold the line? When do you compromise?
Got to run down a few articles from this time...I think they're in the files...Newsweek, WSJ, People and NY Times...and a Today show appearance?
Also, there's mention of something called the "Scatter Project," where company members separated and went back to communities...first time I've heard of that.
The disks for the Durfee transcripts also turned up! This is great news...I am still piling through them. I think I'm going to make a set for myself at some point at Kinko's. I was thinking of making two and giving one to Michael John Garces, incoming AD. He'd find them interesting, I think. That whole "collective voice" of the founders and early fellow travelers is most instructive.
This week one of the things I was pondering is the decision to edit or change a show based on community standards. There's an interesting conflict in GOOD PERSON OF LONG CREEK that has an echo in ROMEO AND JULIET. In each case, the company responded differently...the difference is illustrative of a really critical aspect of Cornerstone's aesthetic and political policy.
In Long Creek, OR., the community was notably divided between the folks who went to church on Sunday and the folks who went to the bar on Saturday. The play includes an unwed mother, which was offensive to the church-goers...the company made adjustments and compromises to address the concerns of that side of the community.
Port Gibson, MI., hadn't seen a black man kiss a white woman onstage...when that happened in ROMEO AND JULIET rehearsals, Bill Rauch was invited to lunch by one of the ladies in the "Mint Julep Belles" and told, "They just can't kiss."
So do you censor yourself, or is that the wrong attitude? Is the question more about responding to the community and learning about their perspective?
The kiss is not incidental to the plot, so in R&J both the moral and the dramturgical arguments in favor of the kiss made it inevitable...but I guess in Oregon the moral issue was there, but the dramaturgical arguments were less important.
It seems to me that the most noted example of negotiations with a community, the inclusion of a gay muslim chatacter in LONG BRIDGE, is the latest of a hundred such. That topic in itself would be a fascinating piece for the Omnibus...when do you hold the line? When do you compromise?
Got to run down a few articles from this time...I think they're in the files...Newsweek, WSJ, People and NY Times...and a Today show appearance?
Also, there's mention of something called the "Scatter Project," where company members separated and went back to communities...first time I've heard of that.
# posted by John J. Flynn, Ph.D. @ 11:15 AM 
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The scatter project rings a tiny bell in my mind, but I don't think we actually did it.
One difference between the refusal to change R&J versus the willingness to change "Good Person" was that Brecht actually wrote two versions of the problem scene in Good Person, one in which the boyfriend never shows up to the wedding, and another in which he goes through with it, but disappears the next day. So, we had the option to just switch to the second version, which the religious folks could go along with, and which, practically speaking, left the character in the same dire situation.
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One difference between the refusal to change R&J versus the willingness to change "Good Person" was that Brecht actually wrote two versions of the problem scene in Good Person, one in which the boyfriend never shows up to the wedding, and another in which he goes through with it, but disappears the next day. So, we had the option to just switch to the second version, which the religious folks could go along with, and which, practically speaking, left the character in the same dire situation.
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