Is the Voice in My Mouth Bothering You?
Today’s accidental blog (your Miss
O’ had really meant to take the weekend off and accomplish physical tasks, and
then all this stuff started coming up and all these articles and videos and TED
talks and Facebook posts, and all of Miss O’s spidey senses got engaged and
goddammit if the only thing for it wasn't to sling some verbal webs! And she’s
off!) is about the power of one. Rather than set up a thesis, let me jump to
the story that was my brainchild’s catalyst:
Actress the theater director
Christy McIntosh, a gorgeous human with whom Miss O’ has had the pleasure of
sharing a stage, shared this theater story on Facebook. I asked Christy if I might
use her post in full as part of today's blog, and she was delighted (and we hope she continues to feel that way once it's published). Here it is.
I had the
great misfortune of sitting next to two clueless tourists at tonight's
performance of “The Nance”, Nathan Lane's new Broadway play about a gay man in
a burlesque show in 1937 when homosexuality was illegal. I knew I was in
trouble when, during the first scene, they kept whispering back and forth,
"I think he's gay. I think that guy is too." I say
"whisper" generously. It was like a comedically exaggerated stage
aside. In the second scene, the beautiful young man Nathan Lane is courting
gets out of the bath tub and shows his completely naked body. They
"whisper," "Oh, I like this play" and giggle. A few minutes
later, the beautiful man kisses Nathan Lane. "Oh, I don't like this
play." No giggling anymore. They literally said that. The woman then
sighed loudly and said, "Oh Jesus Christ" anytime there was too
"real" a moment or gay a scene. Then she graduated to snapping her
program in frustration. I leaned over to Eli and said, "I'm going to cut a
bitch." He said, "After the show, honey." During one riotously
funny moment, I guffawed loudly and she looked at me and giggled. I said to
her, "Wow, even YOU liked that line!" She looked confused. After the
show, I asked her, "If you hated the show so much, why didn't you just
leave?" She said, "I tried" and stormed away.
Dear
homophobes,
Next time you go to TKTS, find out about the play you're going
to see. Chances are, most options will be too gay for you. Might I suggest
"The Perfect Crime”? And stay the fuck away from Broadway.
In her comments, Christy added this P.S.
My favorite part happened after the culprits left. The whole row
of gays in front of us turned around and we all had a gab session about how
badly we all wanted to cut her. And yet- none of us said anything during the
show out of respect for the actors. But it's the gay men who behave
disgustingly according to this dolt.
Christy’s Friend Tom commented: There is waaaay too much
of this in NY theaters. Literally talking out loud about the play going on 20 ft
in front of them. Well done for saying something. Hey boonie-dwellers - if you
can't cope with plays that might challenge you a little bit, then go see
Spider-Man. That's why it's there. New decree: From this day forth, any of us
who witness this kind of bullshit during a play/movie/whatever have a social
responsibility to swiftly tell the guilty parties to shut the fuck up. We'll
call it Christy's Law.
Oh, Christy and Tom, Mama hears you. Miss O’ has a story, too, this one about
the asshole family sitting behind her during the delightful musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, who as
tourists were doubtless lured by Broadway’s newest low-brow bait, the
Concession Stand, and said folks chatted as they opened wrappers and passed a
drink, conversing in regular voices as if they were in their own living room
watching a video. No amount of turning around to glare at them, no gesture of
“Shhh” would shush them. They’d paid good
money, one could imagine them thinking, and
they would have their own experience. Oh, And fuck you. Because Miss O’ and all the rest of the audience got in for free? And the actors are holograms? Fuck YOU.
It's not new behavior, but it's no less baffling and maddening for that. During the last few years of a 15-year
teaching career that began in 1987, I noticed that in the paper programs handed out at the band,
orchestra, and choir concerts, the Music Department used the back to write a
list of etiquette rules for concert attendance. The poor kids couldn't hear themselves perform. It was around that same time that I had a
superb actor, Irwin Appel, visit my classroom for two days to teach my English and drama students about acting Shakespeare. He began by performing a monologue—Bottom
from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—and
when he concluded, and in each of my five classes of diverse kids, he
would smile and begin pointing as he spoke (with humor and kindness, but
directly), “You got into your backpack just as I entered. You took out gum. You
whispered to that guy, and he whispered back. You cleared your throat,” etc. He
paused, surveying the room. “This is LIVE, folks. It’s live. I’m a living
person, performing in a live space.” (You are not in your living room. This is
not a video.) And my kids were genuinely astonished to be called out, amazed
they’d been seen, even as Irwin was in the act of playing a character, and brilliantly,
too.
When did we think we wouldn't be noticed? With the advent of cell phones, too
many ring tones began going off right and left and balcony throughout live
performances, driving actors to distraction, and in NYC it's now a $50 fine. During one performance at, I
think, The Studio Theater in D.C., an audience member in the front row took the call, and began talking in full
voice. The actors stopped, and looked at her. The woman said firmly, “I have to
take this, it’s business.” When an usher led her out to wild applause, the
woman protested, genuinely stunned that she’d been ejected. The actors backed
up to the beginning of the scene, and started again.
So why has this sort of rudeness
become a new norm? Because I don’t think it’s only about a loud person at a
theater performance, which is in itself be-yond. What I mean is this: Why
can a tiny, tiny minority of people with money, or people who love guns, or
people who fear science, DICTATE PUBLIC POLICY to an ENTIRE NATION? Because
I have fucking had it with the ONE VOICE coalition. So WHY?
Easy answer: $$$$$ in the machines
Truer answer: Apathetic, distracted, self-involved citizens
I read that 65% of our nation’s
citizens are online. Okay, Internet Citizens: When is the last time you read
about public policy in depth? When is the last time you checked the voting
record of your state and congressional
representatives? and wrote to praise or
complain? When is the last time you signed a petition to your senators?
When is the last time you wrote a letter to President Obama? (Miss O’ is, no
doubt, on an FBI watch list by now.) When have you joined a march? Sent money
for a major election? Let’s go smaller: When is the last time you attended a PTA
meeting? a school board meeting? When is the last time you had a hard
conversation about local, state, or national politics of any kind to the point of discomfort and rage? Miss O’
invites you to take stock. Are you as involved as you really could be? (When a
fellow parent said to my brother (also a husband and father), “I don’t have time for
all this voting stuff,” my brother replied, “That’s okay, buddy. I got your
rights.”)
Benjamin Franklin sacrificed his
entire (and potentially very comfy) old age to form a new Democratic Republic.
What have you been up to? (Nearly all my “Pro-Life” friends on FB have been
busy sharing “Pro-Gun” posters with compare and contrast “statistics” on them,
while making fun of the folks like me who support the Newtown parents whose
children were killed in a mass shooting. They are very noisy about it, these "life-loving" assholes. They all identify as “Christian.” Whom Would Jesus Shoot? Discuss.)
Use Your Inside Voice
I’ll take my voice down a tone.
Let’s go to work: When I think about how much work it is to make one good lesson
for an English class (several hours of
reading, planning, typing, photocopying, checking out books, preparing a
PowerPoint, creating transitions to the next lessons), or to create a terrific
theater experience with my drama club of yore (weeks of reading scripts to choose the right one for the group; hours
booking the rehearsal spaces, making audition materials, holding auditions,
casting, designing sets and costumes; ten weeks of rehearsals and building; Saturdays
spent at fleas markets; program creation, publicity, technical rehearsals;
make-up application (foundation! all that Knox gelatin! nose shadows!);
cue-calling in performance; talking to all the parents; set strike and theater
clean-up), or to, say, create a new government in 1776 (read your history, for the love of god)—and
how very quickly ONE PERSON’S ACTION can utterly destroy, or threaten to
destroy, all that work: one kid refusing to shut up in class; one audience member
refusing to shut up during a performance; one member of the Continental
Congress refusing to vote on independence—I have to step back and stand in
frank AWE of the power of one person’s voice.
One voice has tremendous power, but how do we choose to use that
voice? That is the point.
Every time there is a mass shooting
in the United States, I read recently, and with each higher death toll, gun sales reach new
all-time highs. On the whole, the gun manufacturers of this country are
overjoyed by these killings, and the killings of the children at Newtown most
of all: record profits! It’s been a heady time. These manufacturers funnel huge
money to an organization called the NRA, whose spokesman, Wayne “Certifiable”
LaPierre, has called for a gun in the
hand of every teacher, and more than that, in the hand of every man, woman, and child, in
America.
So take a moment to think about my
long, hard lesson plan up there, and about the one student who would not shut
the fuck up long enough for me to enact it for the benefit of my class of 30
students. Now think of me WITH A GUN. Exactly how long do you honestly think
any teacher in that situation would last in a classroom before she USED IT?
One voice should not have that much
power. One person’s voice is so small, so...well, nothing. Right? "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Right?
Just like when your boyfriend says,
“God, you’re not going to eat another piece of cake, are you?” Or your mom says,
“Honey, you look like a tramp in that skirt.” Or your best friend says, “You
know, maybe red isn’t your best color. Try black, and people won’t notice, you
know, your hips so much.” And inside the heart of any woman who hears even one
of these remarks from even one of these people, something happens that will scar
for life, almost, because what occurs is, as Stephen Sondheim wrote, “a little
death.” Every day, a little death: from one
voice. Negative voices win. The negative always wins. Just ask Lucifer.
But. But. But. For anything
positive to occur on this Earth, all it takes is one voice, too: YOUR SINGLE
GODDAMNED VOICE.
Where is YOUR VOICE? How are you
using YOUR ONE VOICE?
What,
if anything—and there must be SOMETHING—what fucking MEANS something to YOU? What
drives you, energizes you, blows your fucking head off of your goddamned
shoulders and into another galaxy?
Sure, I have questions about our sometimes stultifying fear of spontaneous responses in live circumstances, the sometimes strangling restrictions of the
concert hall and theater, the inhibiting parts of being in a space with loads of other people and having to, you know, behave ourselves. That said, as adult
citizens, we have to know when to use our voices for the RIGHT REASONS—speaking up for
injustice, or laughing at the genuinely funny, rather than talking out
inappropriately just because we are
thoughtless assholes.
My Theme Song: A Moment for Stream of Consciousness
My two great drivers: education and
theater—how they inform each other, talk to each other—I keep thinking how my
transcendent experiences have always involved storytelling—the NPR story I
heard about a recent find of dinosaur bones, being reminded that dinosaurs have been extinct for around 65 million years, and for one
second, the tiniest, I felt the distance of that, and I reeled, I wanted to dance; or when my 7th grade language arts/social studies teacher, Miss
Covington, asked us, “What is beyond the universe?” and we said, “Nothing,” and
she said, “Well, nothing is something,” and my head exploded. Thrilling. Or reading Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” one summer in preparing my
first Humanities class, and being blown away by its conclusion, which only
means something because you’ve read the whole thing, so read it; or the moment when I read
Stephen Hawking’s explanation of the Theory of Relativity and I GOT IT, and
then, as quickly as revelation came, it vanished. I need stories, I need history, science, language, music,
art—I need possibility and kindness and love. And now, yes, bourbon. We tell ourselves, each other, the story of the human condition. If we are sentient and sane, we want to improve the human condition, peacefully, joyfully. I mean, we want to set an example for the children. Right?
 |
| "One child is holding something that's been banned in America to protect them. Guess which one." |
Because “Little Red-Riding Hood” is
so fucking scary. As my Grandma Kirlin would say, "And Jesus wept."
Today on Facebook, MORE Ignorance in Abundance!
FB FRIEND’S POST: The summer droughts were not caused by global warming, after all scientists say. [link to Yahoo article] See? The jury is out!
MISS O', in comment: The earth is still losing summer Arctic sea
ice at record levels (the ice that used to help deflect light and heat away from
the Northern Hemisphere in summer); Australia has had all-time highs during its
summer, forcing meteorologists to add a new color (purple) the map temperature
ranges; the CO2 levels in the atmosphere stand at 390 parts per million when a
clement Earth can only sustain life over time comfortably at 350 parts per
million. The earth is still heating up, the Northern Hemisphere worst of all,
and we need to end the use of fossil fuels if we are to do our part to reverse
course. We just do.
FB FRIEND’S SISTER, in
comment: And they say scientist are smart compared to
those of us who believe in creation?
Query: Um, so if scientists would seem to
support your politics on the environment, the science is okay? And because just one catastrophe cannot be linked to global warming, there is no global warming? (I can’t even address his sister’s comment. It just hurts too much.)
Goddamned IDIOTS. I wouldn't care except they fucking VOTE. (Somewhere I hear the poet Byron speaking through one of his narrators, remarking on the engraved words below my dusty, trunkless legs of sand a few years hence:
“My name is Miss O’! Look upon my judgments, o, ye Mighty, and despair!” It’s
why I drink.)
The Past as
Prologue
Fairy tales. Rudeness. Apathy. Arrogance.
Distraction. So many ills. I run up and down the stories of my life in my mind:
I’m looking for the inspiration to do a thing that will matter. Something of
use. Expressive. Outer directed. Performed in front of a rude, ignorant, live audience. Even my horoscope from Freewill
Astrology agrees I have to get back to the garden of my inspiration.
And so it was that last week, while riding the subway to yet another day
of work, I decided to start my own theater company. Now the last thing New York
City needs is another theater company, but all of them are, essentially, closed doors, and
I’m getting not in them. It’s tentatively titled, this company of mine, SOTS: Sick of This Shit, dedicated to Demolition of the Stupid. I’m meeting
with my friends Ryan, Greg, and David on Tuesday evening to see what future there
might be for such a company. I’ll let you know: As David remarked, "Well, you will never run out of material."
I say all this—write plays, share
progressive items on Facebook, write this goddamned blog, and milk the shit out
of it—knowing full well that what theater director Joseph Chaikin (1935-2003, of
The Open Theater) said of his own explorations in the arts, is the true thing.
He said in effect, “Change will not happen en masse, but one by one by one by
one.”
One voice: Use your one voice to effect positive, good things.
Use your one voice.
One voice.
And, over time, it will become OUR VOICE. And I hope it's on pitch.
I leave you today with links to
experiences and talks that show you just how powerful and expressive and vital one single voice can be on issues
of real importance. If you want to have real impact, to make these kinds of
changes happen, first you have to listen. Then you have to learn. Then you have
to talk about it. Use your voice.
1. A TED Talk by Lawrence Lessig on
Citizenry and how to reclaim it:
2. I fucking love science on Facebook:
“Like” her page, change your newsfeed, change your life.
3. Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller
in rare footage, posted today on Facebook by a professor of mine. And it is what
you see in this film that gives me hope for all of humanity, for all of Earth.
Much love as always, even to the idiots,
Miss O’
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