Mike, I was talking generally about your comments at all the “10 Questions” interviews done here at Praxis, not your particular comment to Scott. I haven’t read all the interviews, but you seem to be in most of the comment sections. You are in fact, as you have noted, at least half critical in this comment/post. This is atypical when compared to your comments at the other interviews.

Has there been a counter-manifesto to an interviewee before? Not that this is a bad thing. I’m with Ian that emotive debate can add to the vitality of theatre. Just haven’t seen it at this venue before.

i usually go easy on the interviewees

emotive debate in the comments section would be more interesting and thought provoking

it is not a quality that occurs regularly on the praxis blog, yet

the thing is, as co-artistic director of the company, if i was to start hating on many of the the blog interviews, it would be a lot like asking someone to play catch, and then only whipping it at their head.

having graduated from the theatre school stanislavsky invented (with ND who never gets any props) i felt a bit of responsibility to represent on this one, but i don’t see any way I can get up in people’s grills on a regular basis.on this blog, i have to leave the fireworks to guys and girls like you. it’s much appreciated. debate is a good indication that people at the very least are paying attention and give a fuck.

And maybe it’s because I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of Cote’s acid-tongued retorts, but I find the way he writes about theatre invigorating. (I’m agnostic, but let’s not get into that.) Diplomacy for its own sake is paralysis. It’s empowering to read someone talking about theatre who’s not toeing the line of traditional polite discourse.

Walters, on the other hand, reminds me of the Classical Rhetoricians. He seems to be concerned with the art of persuasion – be it in theatre’s ability to influence its community, or in his writing’s ability to influence its reader. The writing is academic but with a clear and seductive populist streak – a voice that seems in line with some of his stated ideas about theatre. I love it.

I’m offended by a lot of things – factory farming, for example – but rigorous and sometimes-emotional debate about theatre just doesn’t offend me. It’s vital.

Ian

In his comment here, David doth protest too much, methinks. He knows that there is no “civil” way to piss on Scott’s 10 Questions parade. In the recent debate David pretty much got his rat’s ass handed to himself on a platter over his incivility, in large part by Scott. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

David reminds of Adam Sandler in the promo poster for his movie Big Daddy, teaching the kid how to piss against the wall with his back to the audience. “I’m commenting on Scott’s remarks strictly as a New Yorker.”

First, I would like to make a list of the top 5 “bon mots” that make this interview awesome:

5 Schiavo-ization of theatre as an art form

4 Training? Dogs are trained, not artists.

3 For some reason, artists see themselves as spiritual, emotional, and intellectual Gullivers tied down by millions of low-brow Lilliputians.

2 There’s got to be a progressive way to speak to conservatives. (Hint: it doesn’t involve dehumanizing them.)

1 class is, to appropriate Pinter, the weasel under the cocktail cabinet. Nobody wants to talk about the fact that 80% of the theatre audience is drawn from the top 15% of America’s economic class. Thus, government support of the arts looks like another handout for the rich.

Touche. We should talk about this weasel. Despite our effort to ignore him, he is making a lot of noise.

So well done, except, wait a second, that quote about Stanislavsky is ridiculous. Trying to teach acting without referencing or acknowledging Stanislavsky would be the equivalent of trying to be a painter without acknowledging the existence of the colour white. Any theory or approach to making acting or directing A CRAFT either appropriates his techniques or exists in relation to how it rejects them, but they are always in the picture.

Incidentally, Stanislavsky would probably throw those 3 books out also. The Stalinist regime pretty much forced him to write the 2nd and 3rd and he later rejected much of the first in conversations with Michael Chekov, never mind the fact that it is written in an implausibly pedantic style. But come on, lets try to direct or act in a play without talking considering given circumstances….

Ian

“Teach students to value, above all things, innovation, creativity, thinking outside the box, questioning the status quo, taking big risks, failure.”

This seems like an argument in favour of the avant-garde, so I do quite seen how David gets to this:

“It’s a noble cause, and I wish him and his students luck, but I’m not entirely convinced that theater artists, eschewing esoterica and avant-gardism, thinking positively and bending over backward to accommodate the common man is going to do it.”

It seems to me that the disagreement is not about the value of the avant-garde generally, but about where all that avant-garde-ness needs to happen.

Does it happen in the basement of an abandoned factory in Brooklyn, by way of a Cheerio-box-wearing performance artist? Or does it happen at a community centre in middle America where a straight-up staging of the Matthew Shepard Story might have a profound effect on the community.

So avant-gardism has its degrees, like everything else. But ultimately, if avant garde theatre is local, it’s questioning the status quo of the community it’s being performed in. It is thereby somewhat bound by the language that community responds to.

I guess I’m just not sure I see the conflict on this matter.