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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 06:32 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 06:30 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Chazwaza 05:53 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| There are a lot of argument threads to ponder here, and until we know more about why Encores! made the changes they made and how they reached that decision, the only one I can speak to is the thread of dramaturgs from diverse communities: In a nutshell, yes. When we bring people into our stories that are from different communities or lived experiences than our own, we should also be bringing in collaborators who can speak to and from how those cultures are being put on stage. Each process will determine for itself how it implements those perspectives and what role the dramaturgs and consultants ultimately play in the final product. But it is becoming standard practice to do this, and it helps when we get into situations like the hypothetical that has been forwarded here, that the production changed a character to be skinny because they were afraid that the language or representation was problematic. Rather than try to solve that, in this hypothetical, they simply erased it, which is its own problematic behavior. In the ideal situation, the goal isn’t “not to offend anyone”, it’s to create an authentic, multi-layered character who isn’t the butt of a joke or whose identity isn’t being used as a signifier. Hopefully this work would actually prevent the scenario you propose, where the character is an ideal, not a person. If producers and creative use those dramaturgs and consultants to hide behind after they disregard their inputs, that’s on them. But the more likely scenario is that everyone on the team learns more about what people and stories they’re bringing to life. It may sound radical now, but the idea of intimacy consultants was radical only a few years ago, and we’ve seen what happens when a show doesn’t do this dramaturgical work: case in point, the “jagged little pill” debacle, where that show positioned itself with the very audience it was making the show for. 🤦🏻♂️ |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 07:28 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 07:21 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Singapore/Fling 06:30 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| Well, by this logic or new rule, we should throw out just about every novel or play (or movie or tv show even) that's be written prior to... well, even today. Enjoy that. Unless you have written a play about your own "lived experience" exclusively, from the clear point of view of you (because your lived experience is only true for you, the other characters written in the portrayal of that life are seen through the lived experience of the author, not the person the author is writing, so there's an inherent problem in writing anything but an auto-biographical one-person play), then you have to bring on consultants who are able, somehow, to represent, and give notes, with deference, on the things you didn't live? Including a mounting of a play from the past? I'm sorry, I don't agree. It is becoming a standard because of fear, not because it is the agreed upon best way to do things. Encores mission is not to only produce musicals that are 100% authentic, with exclusively multi-layered characters with nuance and seen always and only in the light today's audiences want to see them in. And it's not true that the only scores worth celebrating and presenting in the Encores style are only the musicals that fit this standard coming in. Nor should it be. I don't think a lack of dramaturgical consulting was the issue at play with Jagged Little Pill. And yes, if you're writing about characters or places that could be/have been negatively impacted by how they're written about/portrayed, it's worth having someone from that community take a look and give feedback. That is not at all the same as "bringing in collaborators", nor is it the same as doing it whenever you bring people into the story "that are from different lived experiences than our own". It's quite different to consult on how something might reflect on or impact the current community than a dramaturg being hired to "help" reflect their own lived experience or their perception and opinion of what the characters experience would be and also what of that needs to be included in the play. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 08:04 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 08:00 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Chazwaza 07:21 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| Nothing in what I wrote in any way suggests that we need to toss out everything that’s been written before today. And look, writers and creatives regularly do research into areas that they don’t know as much about, in order to render them authentically. This is nothing new, and it’s nothing unusual. Your hostility is misplaced. Likewise, I didn’t write that writers are limited to writing auto-biography; that’s your overreaction. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 08:27 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:15 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Singapore/Fling 08:00 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| I'm not claiming you said those things, and you've missed my point, I suspect willfully. I'm am following your logic to another level. If we applied the standard of "needing" to bring on collaborators to consult and guide writers writing any character or story that is outside that writers lived experience to just about every novel or play (etc), they would not have been written as they are, or not have been published or performed because there was no "authenticity of presumed relevant lived experienced" to consult and approve before it was released. The point is that there are many great and celebrated works written by people, currently and throughout the history of the written word, that do not meet this standard. And my point with the one-person auto-biographical play is that if you are writing something that is not specifically that, you are writing people and stories outside your own actual lived experience, period. So therefor, now, would need to hire a collaborator who can guide and consult your writing through the filter of their own lived experience which is closer to (or deemed the same as, even though that's not possible) the characters'. I am also fully in support of writers doing research and being sensitive to the approach/context/portrayal and impact of their writing. I am not hostile to that idea. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 09:57 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Chazwaza 08:15 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| I did miss your point, but not willfully. Sorry to tell you, but you made a leap from one idea to the next as if that was what I was proposing, rather than stating this was your extension into speculative fiction. A dramaturg might be able to help you state yourself more clearly - you might want to hire a consultant before you publish your next post (tongue in cheek, of course). I think most reasonable people are able to recognize the past and separate it from the present, but I also think that we can look back on many plays or novels and see how they didn't handle certain characters or communities with the delicacy or intelligence that they might have. And we can also look back at plays or novels and if we did some digging, we'd likely discover that those writers did work with people from these communities, in some fashion, in order to expand their knowledge. We're just talking about making that a more codified part of the process. Do you object when someone writing about a Roman gladiator hires an expert on Roman history? Do you object if someone producing a Moliere play brings in someone with knowledge of French humor and etiquette in the 17th Century? I would guess not, and so I would challenge you to consider how this is fundamentally different. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Posted by: ChattaMatta 06:34 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Singapore/Fling 06:30 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| "In the ideal situation, the goal isn’t “not to offend anyone”, it’s to create an authentic, multi-layered character who isn’t the butt of a joke or whose identity isn’t being used as a signifier." A critical point, very nicely stated. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 07:30 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 07:25 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - ChattaMatta 06:34 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| And you think the production would only know if the fat character was the butt of a joke if they hired a "body positivity consultant"? And you think all characters who aren't white, cis male, straight, thin and young, need to be authentic multilayered characters? And if they aren't then a consultant from that community who is also a quality dramaturg worth hiring should be brought on to help re-write and guided the writer to re-writing it so they are? Interesting. (also, i must say, i know several dramaturgs and trust me when i say many dramaturgs are not worth hiring) These are very different things... consulting on whether or not the community the character belongs to would be negatively impacted by the way its written ... and making sure the character in question (and all characters who are minority of any kind) is "multi-layered", and should not be confused as the same thing. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 08:03 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Chazwaza 07:25 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| I don’t know why you’re presuming this is only about “minorities”. There are plenty of rooms that could benefit from a consultant on how to portray or engage with White, cis, straight men. You know dramaturgs who are not worth hiring… well we all know plenty of people in all professions who are not worth hiring, and we know some who are. The lousy ones don’t discredit the position. |
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| re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 08:31 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:25 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: So, Encores erased the fat character in Tap Dance Kid. Have other major productions? Has Encores done this before? - Singapore/Fling 08:03 pm EST 02/07/22 | |
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| I happen to think the majority of people claiming to be a dramaturg do discredit the position. And I'm not presuming this is only about minorities. And no need to put that in quotes, there are many many minorities, I don't mean the word dismissively. It is, I think, only about minorities, because no one is concerned about misrepresenting or doing harm in the perception of characters who are in major majority communities. They are not at risk of something negative being created in the audiences mind about them, and they don't suffer from limited representation (or limited authentic representation, acknowledging that no minority group or minority group is monolithic, and my experience as a gay person is different than yours, and their experience as het/white is different than someone elses) in media or entertainment. There are also very few rooms, as you say, that have no white cis straight male representation or oversight which are also attempting to tell stories involving white/male/cis/het characters -- except as antagonists or villains or minor characters not worthy of focus, in which case the people in non-cis/white/het/male room are not typically concerned with that majority group feeling that their representation in that project was potentially harmful or inauthentic to their lived experience. It's not a bad thing that this is prioritizing and exclusively considering "minorities", my point was more that almost all musicals, plays, movies and tv shows have characters, in a majority or minority community, who are not multi-layered nuanced characters or even having enough material to use to be verify whether or not they're "authentic"... and that's ok. It is not the responsibility of every piece of art or entertainment to not only include a diverse group of characters but also to give them all enough detail and layering that they can be looked to as an notable and positive representation of the group they would be counted as belonging to. But I'm very much reacting to the wording you used originally and the mixing of impact of the writing vs the writing itself, and of a specific and limited consultant vs a collaborator. I think they are different, I don't think either or both are necessary in all situations of a writer "writing outside their own lived experience" (again, almost all writers, writing almost anything). |
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