tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post1710877813563685154..comments2024-03-28T00:18:42.009-04:00Comments on The Wicked Stage: Daisey and His Critics, Round IIRob Weinert-Kendthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015688507553252146noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-38539396097124736082011-10-21T12:52:20.938-04:002011-10-21T12:52:20.938-04:00Thanks for responding. First, I want to point out ...Thanks for responding. First, I want to point out that I am, in fact, now going to go see the show, because the least I can do for Daisey is actually go see the work in good faith and experience what he's trying to do.<br /><br />Beyond that, though, I want to clarify my points.<br /><br />"There's an assumption on the part of Barker and Brown that the transaction involved in seeing a piece of politically engaged theater is something like: Liberal audience feels good about itself for seeing a show about its own complicity in the misery of the world's less fortunate, then immediately walks out of the theater, calls cabs, and checks their iPhones. It's a variation of the piety-ends-at-the-church-door critique, which, being a churchgoer myself, I'm familiar with from both sides."<br /><br />That's a bit of a simplification. Sure, I think there are some guilty liberals who go to the theater for that reason, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way artists engage their audiences in political discussion, and how theater artists use their medium to try to communicate with an audience.<br /><br />So when you continue and write: "That theater does nothing to change attitudes or behavior outside its walls, that it's all literally nothing more than after-dinner entertainment for rich people..."<br /><br />Well, my response to that is, who really thinks the theater is relevant these days? My argument is that there is potentially a link between the stories we do about how theater struggles to find an audience and how theater makers treat their audiences once they get into the theater. And I didn't accuse the patrons of being rich exclusively; that's the sort of reductive critique of theater goers I don't abide by.<br /><br />As for your second point that you doubt that "the activity of watching a politically engaged piece of theater has zero ameliorative value in itself," well, I'm not arguing that it doesn't. That's what I'm critiquing by referring to it as "false reassurance of theatrical catharsis."<br /><br />I try not to be too sweeping in my broader arguments because experience has taught me there's always a good counter-example, but what I'm touching on here is my sense that Daisey has done a show that (a) expresses his disappointment in Steve Jobs, and (b) seeks to educate his audience about something they likely already know, in order to emotionally manipulate them back into engagement. Nevermind that Jobs doesn't owe Daisey or anyone anything other than delightful gadgets that he did in fact deliver, or that it seems more interesting to me to ask why people are so ready to ignore human suffering in the first place. So what's to be gained from the performance if that's what it's guilty of? (Which I won't have a better sense of until Sunday.)Jeremy M. Barkerhttp://culturebot.orgnoreply@blogger.com