| To argue with Riedel’s rant: | |
| Posted by: ShowGoer 06:54 am EDT 09/27/21 | |
| In reply to: Riedel’s rant. - kieran 03:00 am EDT 09/27/21 | |
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| Diesel’s rant makes 1 or 2 good points, as usual for him, but seems particularly tone-deaf, not because it is racist (I’ll leave that for others to judge), but because based on conversations I’ve had with voters, people just didn’t love “Slave Play” – not because they found it challenging, or off-putting, or disturbing, or confrontational, but just didn’t think it was as solid a piece of writing as “The Inheritance”. I believe if the pandemic shutdown and protests hadn’t happened (and if Lehman Trilogy hadn’t opened somehow), “The Inheritance” would have been seen as the frontrunner - for its ambition, for its production, and for its powerful, if messy and maybe overlong, emotion. It’s in some ways an easier play to grasp than “Slave Play” – not because it isn’t about racism specifically, but rather because it’s less daring. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t also dramaturgically also more solid. As so many winners said, Broadway needs to do better. But on a night when 2 of the 8 acting winners were Black, we had our first Latin winner of Best Play, when (in Sonya Tayeh’s words) “a brown queer Arab-American woman” won Choreography, and Samuel Fuller’s Pulitzer-winning (and powerfully Black-centered) A Soldier’s Play won several major awards, including Best Revival, I know Broadway’s done far worse in the past. The problem is that since our racial reckoning, and since it got 12 nominations, a bunch of pundits decided this was the prohibitive play to beat. But voters just didn’t care for it as much as other nominees in those categories. (The sweep of all 5 awards “A Christmas Carol” was nominated for, including all design categories, none of which went to The Inheritance either, would seem to prove that.) To best argue Riedel’s premise, I would point out that the movie that had the most Oscar nominations this year (10) was Mank. It was also the only one of the eight films nominated for Best Picture not to win a single award. But that’s because there were other nominees in those categories which voters liked better… not because they were trying to send a message, or because Hollywood absolutely hated the movie, let alone because they resented the subject matter (Hollywood). |
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| Previous: | re: Riedel’s rant. - ryhog 10:46 am EDT 09/27/21 |
| Next: | Mank didn't win a single award? - royscho 05:16 pm EDT 09/27/21 |
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