Threaded Order Chronological Order
| Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Posted by: TheHarveyBoy 06:06 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| He make some good points, and skirts around others. | |
| Link | Air Mail: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Last Edit: mamaleh 11:58 am EST 01/17/22 | |
| Posted by: mamaleh 11:57 am EST 01/17/22 | |
| In reply to: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - TheHarveyBoy 06:06 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| So staff are being brought on to eliminate offensive language and portrayals? Some seem to be selective in their editing. While I loved the revival of THE MUSIC MAN and appreciated the new lyrics to “Shipoopi,” I cringed and bristled on hearing the old antisemitic “Jew’s harp” lyric in the “Rock Island” opening number. They could easily have substituted the synonymous “jaw harp” or “mouth harp” but chose not to. I even wrote to the new lead producer about this, to no avail. Must the language refer only to persons of color or the gender fluid to be rethought? | |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Posted by: dbdbdb 12:00 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - TheHarveyBoy 06:06 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| It's an interesting piece as far as it goes. Some of his statements are little bit questionable. The only controversial thing about that production of The Winter's Tale was that John Simon had a hissy fit about the casting of Alfre Woodard and compared her to Topsy in his review. Joe Papp was, quite rightly, outraged and pushed back, and a week of shouting and hand-wringing followed. The controversy, such as it was, was ginned up entirely by one person. I can't remember anyone else thinking it was odd that Woodard played Paulina. | |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Last Edit: whereismikeyfl 02:50 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| Posted by: whereismikeyfl 02:42 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - dbdbdb 12:00 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| Riedel knows damn well that there was nothing "controversial" about the production.The diversity of the cast was not controversial and was not debated. The controversy was about one review by John Simon. What was controversial were Simom's anti-semitic and racist comments in the review. By that point Papp had been casting diversely for nearly 3 decades, so any casting controversy about his productions was long gone. Why even bring up that 12th Night? This laziness is all over this article. Reidel finds examples that do not quite fit, and then twists them to fit his agenda. Rather than examining current divisions and issues, actually articulating the differing points of view, he moves to safely burred conflicts from yesteryear without finding any significance they would have for todays situations. |
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| Link | Simon's review of Winter's Tale |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 04:28 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - whereismikeyfl 02:42 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| I haven't read Riedel's books, but, based on his columns, this does, I agree, feel like sloppy, sloppy writing. I did not see Slave Play, but I did see The Inheritance, which I loved. I tried reading Slave Play when it was published, but grew impatient and bored after the third scene and gave up. Granted, there are many plays that just don't live all that well on the page, but are great when staged, but, in terms of the better-written play, I certainly would have chosen The Inheritance (I know, I make myself vulnerable by admitting I didn't finish Harris' play--guilty as charged). But as someone who also loves Howards End and Forster in general, I was struck by how generally successfully I thought Lopez was in "diversifying" the Forster in his own dramatic expansion/variation on it. And I think somehow charging a committee that gives Best Play to a script by a Latinx gay man is a head-scratcher and may reveal how narrowly some people (not all, not even the majority) are willing to define "diversity." I don't mean that as a racist dog whistle--but simply to indicate it's not a competition between underrepresented groups to see which group represents "diversity" more. Diversity certainly is powerfully centered around race and ethnicity these days, as it should be, but it also embraces gender, sexuality, class (think of "Sweat," for example, by an African American female playwright that wrestles with socioeconomic class), and disability. John Simon, though one of the most culturally "literate" critics of his day, always seemed to me to be someone who had learned very little about being human from all his citation of the humanities. I think his racism, homophobia, and "looksism" seemed to be driven by his finding the easiest category on which to project his bile. Not that far from Riedel's reductiveness in the column. |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Posted by: Ncassidine 10:47 am EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - TheHarveyBoy 06:06 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| This is an interesting article. Thanks for posting it. That being said, this quote struck me as funny: "So George and Martha should be George and Arthur?" Because I think most theatre historians fully believe that Virginia Woolf is really about four gay men. |
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| re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. | |
| Last Edit: TheOtherOne 12:00 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| Posted by: TheOtherOne 11:49 am EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - Ncassidine 10:47 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| There may be people who believe that, but I don't think many of them are theatre historians. Edward Albee denied it whenever asked. His work collectively reveals an effort to make sense of the puzzle that was his own life, which involved understanding how and why he was wired as he was. His mother, his aunt and many women played a role in this. His characters, beginning with Martha, would not have had the appeal to actresses they have had for the past sixty years had they not been rooted in this search. He was not a compromiser. He would have written about four gay men if he'd wanted to. |
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| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: icecadet 01:20 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Michael Riedel on Diversity Etc. - TheOtherOne 11:49 am EST 01/15/22 | |
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| 8/2/84: Albee tells UPI entertainment editor Victoria R. Bowles why he demanded the closure of an all-male production of "Woolf" at a community theater in Arlington, Texas. “Whenever I hear about a production of that sort I have it closed. If I'd wanted to (write a homosexual play) I would have. All the copies of my plays...have a number of clauses which say they must be performed without any changes or deletions or additions and must be performed by actors of the sex as written.” |
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| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 04:18 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - icecadet 01:20 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| I will confess I performed ALL four roles for my final performance assignment in Lilla Heston's Interpretation of Drama class at Northwestern in Fall 1976. (I did the final scene--Miss Heston said Honey was my best character--which says something about me and about Miss H.) Should I contact the Albee estate? ;) (Of course, I realize a classroom assignment is something entirely different from even a staged public reading would be. For the record, I've always taken Albee at his word--even if the times would not have allowed him to depict gay couples in a Broadway show, and his depiction of married life may be inflected by his perspective as a gay man, though not, as William Goldman would have it, "distorted" by it--God knows, LGBT folk have so much contact with heterosexual couples that we certainly don't view their social interactions as "alien" to our observations--I think, even if his original idea was to show gay coupledom (and nothing he ever said leads me to believe it was), the play simply became something different--about two heterosexual/dysfunctional marriages. To read it otherwise seems to me to make leaps the script doesn't support--Honey's hysterical pregnancy would make no sense, there would be no "revelation" that George and Martha's son was imaginary (Sorry: SPOILER!!!)--it would have been the rare gay male couple that could pass off having a son (even if adopted or the product of the previous heterosexual marriage of one of the pair) in a small 1960s college town where one of the "men" (i.e. Martha) was the openly gay son of the college president. That college president would have done everything possible to cover up such a son's sexuality and would certainly not invite "him" to be hostess at a party. The entire premise and structure of the play would be unrealistic. Given Albee, if he had wanted to write a play involving two gay male "marriages," he would either have done so later or would have talked openly about the constraints on "artists who happened to be gay" (as he probably would have preferred to be known) later. Whenever I heard him him interviewed, candor seemed like a consistent trait. |
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| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: ryhog 06:12 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - BruceinIthaca 04:18 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| About the first, how much do you wish the smart phone had come into existence a few decades earlier? LOL About the second, I basically agree with your points. I think it is pretty clear, and he did not shy away from saying so, he was motivated to tell the stories that were of interest to him and I just don't think telling stories from a gay prism was very interesting to him. I heard him say substantially that once (albeit a lot more pithily). It is well to remember that very few people (now but certainly during his era) had gay parents so to suggest that someone with a large plateful of "parent issues" (some but certainly not all of which had anything to do with anyone being gay) to deal with in a literary way would want to do so by making straight people gay, etc., strikes me as kinda silly. One other observation: it is also well to remember that Edward did not really write "for Broadway." To be sure, there were times in his life that his work would have an easy time getting there, but I don't think he was disappointed when plays he "needed" to write didn't. (The Play About the Baby comes to mind, but there are many others.) Had he had a "gay play" floating around in the back of his head, he certainly had plenty of opportunities - long after he was "established" - to write it. |
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| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:51 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - ryhog 06:12 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| I agree that he wrote what he wanted and probably didn't spend much time when composing "tailoring" it for the bigger commercial arena of Broadway. And yes, I think some of his best work never made it to Broadway--the one-acts (especially The Zoo Story, whether in its original production or in the pairing with "Homelife," the original production of "Three Tall Women," and, as you note, "The Play About the Baby." | |
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| re: Albee on Woolf | |
| Posted by: FleetStreetBarber 11:17 am EST 01/17/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Albee on Woolf - BruceinIthaca 07:51 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| Technically speaking, "The Zoo Story" did make it to Broadway, in revival. In the fall of 1968, it was paired with "Krapp's Last Tape" for a brief run at the Billy Rose (now the Nederlander). "The Death of Bessie Smith," "The American Dream"and "Box" and "Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung" were also part of the same repertory season at the Billy Rose. | |
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