a poor player

Dunkirk NY – So the strike is on, right as the Christmas rush is about to happen. I really have no clue as to how this is going to play out, but this morning I have been cruising the internet looking for background and information. I am not sure which side is in the right, and no doubt like all such disputes I am sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle. One thing I am sure of, however; the mainstream media will not give the striking union members anything like a fair shake. More than likely the cameras will be focused on theatregoers who came from long distances only to find that their kids can’t get in to see Grinch. Boo-hoo.

In the course of my internet journeys, however, I did run into two blogs which I think people should be aware of. The first is The Humble Nailbanger, a blog written by an IATSE member who apparently works in a TV studio and is a third-generation stagehand. The second is One NYC Stagehand, a guy with 30 years backstage experience in Local 1. Both these blogs are relatively new, and I think over the course of the strike will probably provide some interesting feedback (h/t Theatreforte).

I am generally favorable to the concept of unionization, but I am also painfully aware that, like every human activity on the planet, they are as subject to corruption, stubbornness and self-centeredness as any other organization. Local 1, for example, is notorious for being a “family business” – it’s next to impossible to get in that local unless you have a family connection. So I don’t think there’s any purity to this strike: each side is out to get its cut. After all, Broadway is, in this context, nothing more than a business, no different from watching the UAW strike against Ford, Chrysler or GM. There’s no art at stake here, people – only money and profit for each side. -twl

Dunkirk NY -

(Mailer) recalled something he had said at the National Book Award ceremony in 2005, when he was given a lifetime achievement award: that he felt like an old coachmaker who looks with horror at the turn of the 20th century, watching automobiles roar by with their fumes.

“I think the novel is on the way out,” he said. “I also believe, because it’s natural to take one’s own occupation more seriously than others, that the world may be the less for that.” -NY Times obituary of Norman Mailer

I remember when Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin ran as a team for Mayor of New York City back in 1969. The more I think about it today, the more I’m convinced that their secessionist platform for the city of New York was a correct one. Make NYC the 51st state in the union. Then perhaps the city would not be bleeding upstate NY so dry. I’d couple that to add Long Island, Westchester, Rockland and Orange County to the mix.

His quote seems so right to me now as I think about theatre as an art form. Even a literary mind as great as Mailer’s understood he was a dinosaur. Simply substitute the word “theatre” for “novel” in the second paragraph and you have pretty much the same situation. It’s not that it’s unusual for styles to disappear, but whole forms like theatre, the novel, poetry and the like; this is something new to current culture. I doubt we’ll see another Norman Mailer. Who reads, anyway? -twl