a poor player

Fredonia NY – I am not, and never have been, a fan of award ceremonies for art. Between the Golden Globes, the Oscars, and the Tonys, the profession of acting is riddled with them. They have done more harm to the professional theatre and the training of actors than just about any other force on this planet. My all-time highlight of the Oscar ceremonies was the night Marlon Brando refused his award for Best Actor in The Godfather in 1973 and sent up Sasheen Littlefeather to refuse it.

The Slumdog Millionaire situation has been interesting to study, and I am sure there are strong feelings on either side of the artistic merits of the film. I have not seen the film and probably will not, as I am not much of a moviegoer to begin with, but of all the items I read on the issues surrounding the film, I found this particular post the most illuminating. In particular, this paragraph caught my attention:

Let’s say I made a movie about the US where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by KKK clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win “Beauty and The Geek”.

Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the “American experience” and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn’t be on 94% on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favorite.

Movies prey on Americans today because most of the movie-going public cannot separate illusion from reality. This inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality haunts this country in many ways. No matter what the subject matter, the only purpose Hollywood has in mind when it makes a movie is to make money. Anyone viewing Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, or any movie coming out of Hollywood should first and foremost remember that the primary item which must be sacrificed for the success of  any movie is the truth.  -twl

Fredonia NY – This post by the inimitable Isaac Butler, a blogger of considerable skill, insight and passion, is one I read at an opportune moment. In essence, it’s a post about the critical mind. I found it timely because I have been concerned lately about my students’ inability to think critically about their artistic process as well as the products that they see. I would like to teach them how to be critical of their work and the work of their peers, but I am not exactly sure about how to go about it. I think it may be the case that Isaac’s lament is due in some measure to the fact that we, as teachers, do not teach our students very well about how to be constructive critics, and this lack of skill simply carries over into the professional arena.

The incident which caused me to wonder about this issue was a staged reading of a student play held here recently. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – It isn’t often that I wrote two posts in a day – heck, sometimes I cannot even manage one post in a week. But this evening I began trying to catch up on the blogs I like to read, and I came upon some posts by Mike Daisey concerning the value of an MFA. Mr. Daisey was very generous to me in regards to my posts on why and what I teach, and for that I thank him. He’s clearly becoming more and more of a force for change in how theatre is created in this country, and from my point of view, it’s great just to have a performer and writer of his stature even think the debate on the state of educational theatre is one worth his time and his passion. As an educator, I sorely wish more theatre performers and designers would speak out on these education issues with a voice as strong as his, even if the voice is one of disagreement. All too often in my experience, educational theatre is dismissed as unimportant by the working artistic community; it’s something one gets over, like the flu. Thank you, Mr. Daisey, for lending your voice to this issue.

Let me say that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Daisey’s point of view. Taken as a whole, MFA programs are by and large selling a false product. But rather than seeing this situation as deliberately fraudulent, I would prefer to cast this more in the light of understanding it as an “emperor’s new clothes” situation. It is not that universities are out there deliberately trying to defraud students of money (the “ponzi scheme” reference), but rather that they are simply refusing to acknowledge what’s right before their very eyes – that the system is stark naked of value or meaning. Mr. Daisey is merely the young child in the crowd pointing that fact out.

I have an MFA in Acting. I received it in 1982. As in my previous posts detailing why I teach and what I teach, I want to tell you why I got my MFA. The short version is that I studied for my MFA for one reason only – it is considered in academia a terminal degree and thus a major qualification for obtaining and retaining a teaching position at the college level. You cannot gain tenure without it or a PhD. Period. The long version follows after the break. Continue Reading »

Fredonia NY – Is it really Feb. 11 already? Oftentimes I get the urge to write something, and before I know it, time has flown by and moments pass. I have started a new regimen to my mornings: getting up earlier, finally getting back on that treadmill for 30 minutes, eating breakfast, and doing a bit less on-line reading. My hope had been to use the evenings in a more profitable manner, but it seems the morning regimen leaves me a tad more fatigued, so I tend to veg out more in the evenings of late. This will be the next area to be fixed.

In the meantime, just the other day I was listening to my local NPR station and heard an interview with Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress concerning his new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. I have not read the book, but I was struck by the title. The book looks at certain ideas and themes from American culture, such as “children will always make more than their parents” or “employers should be responsible for health care,” and attempts to show how, in the light of current information, these ideas are no longer true or even viable as ideas. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – So in the last post, I tried to give people some ideas about why I teach and why I think teaching is important, both to me and to the theatre. Now let me try to articulate, if I can, some idea of what I teach. I think this is going to be a combination of some of the philosophical principles I adhere to when in the classroom, as well as some mention of general content.

1. The old cliché is “those who can’t do, teach.” I’d like to be able to say this is insulting, but because it’s such a generally ignorant statement I find it hard to believe that anyone who’d utter it would have the intelligence to know how to properly insult someone. At every level of every profession in this country there are those who are incompetent at their profession. But in the teaching profession, because the work done is so public and affects everyone who ever went to school, incompetence becomes magnified, while competence and excellence gets little recognition or reward. Continue Reading »