Shameless people never fail to amaze me. I recently re-read an email I received from an actor during the run of a show. This actor did not change into the right costume for a scene. As a result, the stage manager and other people in the booth were talking amongst themselves wondering what had happened - and whether the costume assistant was in trouble. Since nobody complained about the costume assistant we inferred that the fault was the actor's.

So this actor complains about the noise from the booth - which occurred because of her mistake. As if the audience would notice the noise in the booth much more than the fact that this actor was wearing a completely inappropriate dress.

This wasn't the only time this happened - she missed a hugely important entrance during another performance, and when I asked her about it later her response was to simply shrug it off, like no big deal.

But if the stage crew had made such a big mistake, neither I nor the stage manager would have ever. heard. the. end. of. it. Especially from one actor who was in the habit of emailing the stage manager every single day with complaints.

The shameless never blame themselves for their own mistakes but are quick to blame others. I guess shameless people must sleep better at night than the rest of us.

Probably the performing arts does not have a higher percentage of shameless people than the rest of the world, it just seems that way.

Luckily I can get a sense of perspective on this via Roy at Alicublog. At least the critical, self-satisfied, demanding, ungrateful actors I've been forced to deal with dwell in complete obscurity - and probably will always remain there - unlike Megan McArdle, who writes for The Atlantic:

As Tbogg has pointed out, Megan McArdle has previously defended her own Iraq wrongness on the grounds that her heart and methodology were in the right place and her opponents are mean, and darned if she isn't doing it again. Give her credit, though: in her follow-up, she has actually found a way to make her argument simultaneously more abstract and more viscerally offensive:

My discussion of failure in the context of the Iraq discussion is part of my broader beliefs about innovation...

To succeed quickly, he said, what you want to do is fail. A lot. Failing eliminates wrong answers faster than any possible analysis. I was reminded of the famous Thomas Edison quote: asked how it felt to have failed to invent an electric lightbulb, Edison said "I haven't failed! I've discovered 10,000 filaments that don't work."


By this point McArdle has segued to the economy, but those of us who can remember two whole paragraphs back are thinking: did she just defend the death of 4,000+ Americans and countless Iraqis on a "try try again" basis?

Why, yes she did, and I'm sure she doesn't even know what's wrong with that, except that certain mean people may insist on making a big deal of it.

I've changed my mind about the First Amendment. I want to ban Ayn Rand. Let's not lose another generation. Our dorks should be fiddling with computers, not applying their hideously deformed ethics to matters of life and death.

As always with these shameless people, whether they are actors, Atlantic writers, or the current president of the US the question presents itself - are they EVIL or STUPID?

Probably both.

I am having a hell of a time with my planned essay on off-off Broadway theatre critics. In part because they have much in common with off and Broadway theatre critics - except that the further up you go, the more male critics there are. So I'm wondering if it should be something about critics in general.

I did not expect my adaptation of JANE EYRE to receive an especially favorable reception by critics because for one thing, it's extremely girly. The original work was written by a woman, it's about a woman, and then I, a woman, adapted it.

And then there's also the issue of fans of the book never being satisfied with adaptations because something is always left out.

However, I DID expect a better response to the acting, which got fair-to-middling reviews.

But the most important thing is that the audiences LOVED my JANE. And if I could have afforded to extend the run, I think that word of mouth would have eventually been a significant factor in the show's success.

I will give the critic from NYTheatre.com thanks for her review though, for acknowledging the critic/audience split. She said:

Worth noting, also, is the fact that my companions—four in all—enjoyed the play. Where I found lack of depth and feeling they saw clarity and variety. Maybe this is what happens to someone such as myself who has loved the book and tried to see every adaptation available: there are particular sensations I look for, and the book leaves very large shoes to fill indeed.

You can read the rest of it here.

That's a great ratio - 4 people liked it for every person who did not. We would get people coming up and saying how much they liked it, or emailing, like this guy who wrote:

Dear Jane Eyre Team,
My complements to all connected with the production of Jane Eyre.
I saw the show yesterday. It was wonderful. I don't think I will ever forget it.
Thank you for presenting it.

Another critic went so far as to suggest that people should not even BOTHER to go and see adaptations and just read the book. I will have more to say about that review, and other aspects of the off-off Broadway critical environment, once I'm done brooding over them.

It is striking, this phenomenon. On online dating sites, so many men in their early-mid 40s list the MAXIMUM age of the women they are looking for as mid-30s. And mind you, most of these men are not especially attractive.

And the crazy thing is that women in their 40s usually look so much better than most men that age - they are more likely to dress well, to dye and style their hair, (and of course many men that age barely have hair) they take better care of their teeth and their health and they are more likely to work out.

These 40-something men are living in the past, when there were two different standards for male and female desirability: men had money, women had youth and beauty.

Well I guess it's understandable these men don't want to give up that male privilege. In the same way that too many women still don't understand that part of equality is paying your share of expenses.

But no mistake, that's what this phenomenon is - an expression of male privilege, plain and simple. These 40-something men TOTALLY buy into the idea that males are innately more desirable - just flat out BETTER - than women of the same age.

But judging by the age ranges desired by men in their middle-late 40s, most of them snap out of it eventually, and start considering women their own age.

The rest of them probably just rent 20-something prostitutes.

My trainer says he can help me attain the holy grail of physical fitness, washboard abs, if I obey him completely.

Has anybody under the age of 70 ever actually seen a washboard? It might be time for a new term for muscley bellies.


A washboard, in case you're under 70.

Watch it on YouTube

Nobody ever like young Al Pacino.

More about Dog Day Afternoon

More about the Attica riots

Really cute 23 year old IMs me. Things go downhill quickly...


Him
you had (age) 25 down so i figured maybe you'd bend the rules for a 23 year old ;)

Me
I surely will. But I don't like to IM

Him
do you have AOL instant messenger or Yahoo?

Me
I have to go - I have a meeting tomorrow at 8AM.

Him
don't go i wanted to tell you how hard your pictures made me ;)

Me
(.... sign off...)




Like I said, his photo was really cute. But who knows if that's really who I'm talking to? And I prefer NOT to discuss hardness on the first IM exchange.

Oy.

UPDATE: one hour later I get this email from him:

Can't believe you punked out and went to bed!

Sheesh.

I just had another depressing date with a younger guy. Depressing because this one also turned out to be a closeted homosexual - well the first one said he was bisexual, but I really doubt it.

How could I tell he was gay? Well, straight men will look at your boobs surreptitiously... but a closeted gay man makes a BIG production out of it, making sure you and everybody else sees him do it.

*siiiiigh*

AND he's a libertarian. *siiiiiiiiiiigh*

Who is in denial about global warming.

argh

Each actor who enters the profession carries with him from childhood a starvation for approbation. As he grows older, he finds that acting is a socially acceptable form of doing something in hope of getting the kind of approval that he missed in his childhood. A director understands that to an actor praise is like food. The actor cannot live without it, cannot flourish without it. A director must discipline himself to praise ceaselessly.

It is not necessary for the actor to have done something extraordinary in order to be praised. General praise, in comments such as "you're doing nicely" or "This scene is coming along" or "It's a pleasure to work with you" doesn't have to apply to any specific achievement, but it lifts the actor's spirit and causes him to flourish. He feels his flower is blooming. He feels his life is healthy. He feels as though the sun is shining if a director, who is, after all, the authority figure, is in favor of him.

more from "A Sense of Direction"

It's important for female directors to ensure that they establish themselves as authority figures first, in order for this to work. My daughter has suggested to me that I'm too open, and therefore too vulnerable in my approach to actors, and set myself up for disrespect and grief from those with an inclination to exploit any signs of "feminine" weakness.

Look at this adorable toy Mongoose. As all fans of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi know, The Mongoose is the mortal enemy of The Snake.

From time to time there might arise what might be called a battle between the director and an actor. What do you do? The director always surrenders. That is the law. The reason for this is practical. If you win a battle with an actor, you lose. There's no such thing as a director winning a battle with an actor. So, if the beginning of a battle occurs, you yield immediately. It doesn't make any difference what the issue is. "I absolutely refuse to wear these boots." "Well, let's find something else for you to wear. Would that be better?" As soon as you accept a supportive position, the next step is creative.

If the director has an ego problem, it may be impossible for him to lose a battle with an actor. Then he must go back to grade one and be a stage manager until he has learned that his ego must be subservient to the art and that he must be graceful in relation to the actor. As we've said before, the director needs the actor as an ally, and we defeat our purpose completely if we make the actor an adversary. In battles, the director always loses.

You can get it at Amazon.com

Meanwhile other producers have been calling Mr. Byrd, who, unlike Mr. Binder or Mr. Sanders, is black. They’re curious about his future projects, he said.

“Where were you when I was laboring in the vineyard?” Mr. Byrd asked. “The heavy lifting has been done.”

I totally underestand where Byrd is coming from - you struggle to get work up and seen, and nobody cares until you have a bona fide hit.

More at the NYTimes about the black-audience hit CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF.

It takes more than speeches to be a good president.

Senator Clinton, I think you owe Obama Girl and the people of this nation an enormous Obama-pology

"I will also say that there's a kind of aura around young male writers, say age 26, the hot male writer thing that never surrounds women playwrights. And there's a tremendous irony there, because the playwrights most interesting to read and see now, the ones who are really pushing the work forward aesthetically, are almost all women."
more here

You see this all. the. time. from every damn theatre group. They're all hoping to discover the next manly David Mamet while he's still in his 20s. And women can go to hell as far as the theatre establishment is concerned.

As usual, Roy at Alicublog has something pithy to say, this time in response to David Mament's rightward "conversion" - Mamet wrote in the Village Voice:

I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years.

To which Roy responds:

I'll say. He wrote American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, Homicide, and House of Cards before figuring out that people are not basically good at heart? That's a pretty amazing job of compartmentalization.

If you're gonna get your heart broke, you better do it just right,
It's gotta be raining, and you gotta move your stuff that night,
And the only friend you can reach isn't a good friend at all,
And you know when he says "Now who dumped who?" that you never should have made that call.

I had the blessings, there's nobody there, there's nobody home,
Yeah, the blessings, at the moment I was most alone
And aimless as a fulltime fool, the joke was on me,
I got all those birds flying off of that tree, and that's a blessing.

And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it's straight, black and very old,"
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold,

I had the blessings, a moment of peace even when the night ends,
Yeah, the blessings, can we meet? Can we meet again,
At the crossroads of disaster and the imperfect smile,
With the angel in the streetlamp that blinks on as I walk on amile, the blessings.

And the best ones were the ones I got to keep as I grew strong,
And the days that opened up until my whole life could belong,
And now I'm getting the answers, when I don't need them anymore,
I'm finding the pictures, and I finally know what I kept them for,
I remember, I can see them, see them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.

I was fast asleep at three in the morning when I got the payphone call,
And she said, "Did I wake you up," I said, "Hey, no, not at all."
And she said, "I got this suitcase and I don't know what to pack,"
And I said, "You can take anything you want, just wait and see,
It's not a release, not a reward, it's the blessings,
Its the gift of what you notice more,"
And I walked out and I watched her kick the big pile of the night,
And we sat down and we waited for that strange and empty light.
Yeah the blessings...

See them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.

Actor Nat Cassidy and I put most of the music for the recent production of my play JANE EYRE together using sound loops from GarageBand, but I did compose one original piece the "Jane Eyre Waltz" from scratch, which I'm pretty proud of. The most complete piece of music before that which I created was Cinco de Mayo, which, although I wrote the melody line, is mostly loops.

Check out music from JANE EYRE here.

He's no longer hinting at his right-wing attitudes via plays like OLEANNA anymore - now Mamet has OFFICIALLY come out of the closet as an asshole.

This is so satisfying - I was just arguing with a bunch of actors a few weeks ago that Mamet is ultimately a reactionary. So nice to be proven right so quickly.

Best part of Mamet's VOICE essay: Kennedy = Bush

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Wow. Mamet, a late-middle-aged, wealthy white guy has turned to the right. Who would EVER have seen that coming???

Chet Scoville delivers a righteous smack-down at Shakespeare's Sister

The intuitive brain is like an oversized retarded child playing with a bauble and mumbling incoherent phrases. It acts like a baby, it wants its own way in everything, it requires perpetual attention, it is unreliable and completely unreasonable. But within that moronic child lives the brilliant composer of dreams. Dreams are arrangements of poetically perfect, preciously interlocking, self-referential symbols.
There is a quality of perfect creation in a dream. That perfect poetic creativity is the work of the little genius, or the "little professor," sitting in the intuitive brain. In other words, the intuitive brain is the home of an amorphic moron who is selfish, moody and irresponsible but who, on certain occasions, is inspired with flashes of brilliant and unassailably right thought, flawlessly appropriate action, and sublime clarity of vision. Intuition is capable of inspiring one with instant truth, with absolute and perfect clarity. It is ironic that intuition, the source of inspiration and genius, should spend most of its time behaving "like a slob."

Coming soon: the very poor quality of off-off Broadway critics...

Christians may not believe in Karma...

...but Eliot Spitzer sure does...

Eliot Spitzer resigns

Why do people like that always think they will never be caught???? Arrogance? Stupidity? Undefeatable self-absorption?

May all philanderers come to this kind of humiliation. I feel sorry for the poor spouses and children though...

I met the partner of an actor acquaintance recently, and the partner said to me that when he heard that the actor was an actor, he was uninterested in pursuing a relationship, but that when he realized the actor was "realistic" about all actorly aspirations, he changed his mind and they hooked up.

What sorts of aspirations does the actor's partner, this mighty paragon of practicality have? you may wonder. Equities investments? Real estate? No, this advocate of all things real spends much of his time drawing.

So if the supposedly "realistic" side of this partnership should go a little nuts while involved in a theatre production, grabbing fellow actors and opportunities for creative expression with equal wayward gusto, it would not be entirely surprising.

I believe Gloria Steinem said the exact same thing a couple of months ago

A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can't imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. "Asians Really Do Just Copy." "No Wonder Africa's Such a Mess: It's Full of Black People!" Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation's clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media. I can just picture the edit meeting: This time, let's get a woman to say women are dumb and silly! If readers raise too big a ruckus, Outlook editor John Pomfret can say it was all "tongue in cheek." Women are dingbats! Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.

more at the Washington Post

You gigantic hypocrite. How could you?


Spitzer is linked to a prostitution ring

William Ball's "A Sense of Direction - Some Observations on the Art of Directing" has many interesting and valuable things to say, especially this:

The general beauty of a work is the way in which we talk about its worthiness to be seen. The general beauty contains the theme. The general beauty is the reason we feel passionately that an audience should see it. The general beauty is what excites the director and what makes him feel that other people should be excited. A director has to be a missionary. He must feel strongly about the theme of a play - to the extent that he feels it is important for other people to share or to witness that theme...

...the director must believe. We are makers of belief... he has to believe that he could stand on the corner and sell it, that he could market it, that he could convince people of the beauty, that he could stop passersby and say, "Did you ever wonder about the possibility of this? Isn't this beautiful? Doesn't this strike you as something important and marvelous and amazing and peculiar and wonderful?...

...When a director chooses the general beauty he is making a choice on behalf of the audience. The director agrees to represent the public. The identity of the director goes like this: "I am an audience, I am everyman, I am all, I am judge, I am servant, I am listener, I am moderator, I am synthesizer, I am seeker, I am helper, I am child, I am believer, I am maker of belief."

One of the things that made me so happy about the recent production of a play of mine is that I think we did achieve the general beauty.

In my ongoing struggle with the anguish of a friendship destroyed thanks to this production, I have to stop for a moment and acknowledge that the actor who hurt me so much did succeed in the mission, even beyond my expectations. There is one moment of his performance that I will always remember. The actor is playing a man who is very much in love with his fiancee, a woman who is younger and less experienced in the world than he. She informs him that she knows that a man's love is fleeting because she has read all about it in books written by men. And when she says this, it usually got a laugh, but more importantly it always caused the actor to smile in such a tender, indulgent, appreciative way as if to say "isn't my darling girl the most wonderous creature on earth with her skeptical view of the world based only on what she has read in books? And how wrong she is to doubt my devotion." It's alot to be said in a brief smile, but he did it, every single performance.

But the most amazing part is this - now that I've come to know this actor, I truly believe that he has never felt anything close to such feelings, himself, in his entire life. I believe that what he did was channel those feelings directly from the collective human unconscious through his body.

I suppose he isn't the only actor capable of such a thing - it may even be routine - but it's still a bit shocking to realize this is what you are witnessing, rather than an expression of feelings that the actor himself understands. It's almost mystical, and a little scary, the way you feel when you try to wrap your head around the idea that serial killers have no sense of empathy.

Scary or not, I could never stop watching him do that scene, I was so amazed and enamored of the spectacle.

But how strange that in his determination to make sure the play was executed flawlessly each night - by harrassing and insulting the stage manager, stage crew and me - he ensured that he would never perform in the play again. I wonder if, even now, he understands the irony. I don't think he'll ever understand his own culpability.

Maybe he'll learn how to channel an apology some day.

One of the hottest videos around is found in the "Family" section, thanks to the amazing Brendan Fraser in George of the Jungle.

Watch this great clip on youtube

AND Naked fight between Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser. whoohooo!

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

People who are overly narcissistic commonly feel rejected, humiliated and threatened when criticised. To protect themselves from these dangers, they often react with disdain, rage, and/or defiance to any slight criticism, real or imagined. To avoid such situations, some narcissistic people withdraw socially and may feign modesty or humility.

Though individuals with NPD are often ambitious and capable, the inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional achievements. With narcissistic personality disorder, the person's perceived fantastic grandiosity, often coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically not commensurate with his or her real accomplishments.

The exploitativeness, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, disregard for others, and constant need for attention inherent in NPD, adversely affects interpersonal relationships.

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect.

The sublime religious parody now in video format!

Also - Hankisms

Sample Hankisms

Atheism - Hank doesn't have an ass to kiss.

Christian Fundamentalism - Kiss Hank's ass and he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town. If you don't, he's going to kick the shit out of you. Read Karl's list, it's important. Only eat wieners on buns, without condiments.

Protestantism - It's OK, you don't have to kiss Hank's ass— but you'll want to, if you trust him. If you don't trust him, he's going to kick the shit out of you when you leave town. If you do trust him, he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.

Jehovah's Witnesses - Everybody in town should kiss Hank's ass, but only 144 are going to get a million dollars after Hank burns the town down, which we think will be Real Soon Now. Then he'll kick the shit out of anyone who didn't kiss his ass, and send the rest to a nicer, newer town. Here, have a pamphlet; it describes what we think we mean. We'll be back tomorrow to tell you why everyone else is kissing Hank's ass wrong.

Exodus Ministries - We love you, and we want to help you heal yourself of this terrible sickness of eating wieners The Wrong Way. Let us teach you to enjoy wieners only in buns, without condiments. Then, and only then, will you be allowed to kiss Hank's ass and collect your million dollars when you leave town.

Shi'A Islam - A long time ago, Karl died. Then his father-in-law tried to make his own list, but we know Karl's wife hid the real list and gave it to her son. Listen to Karl's wife's son, or we'll kick the shit out of you.

Sunni Islam - Baloney. You know Karl's father-in-law's list is the real one, and if you don't admit that, we'll kick the shit out of you.

Heaven's Gate - Kiss Karl's ass, and -- oh, wait, Karl just saw Hank's limo drive by. We're leaving town NOW to catch it.

...you’ll find something in Push Productions’ hilarious Actors are F*@#ing Stupid that addresses humanity’s universal obsession with attention, praise and, most importantly, seeing the other guy fail. Don’t bother to look for characters connecting on any genuine level. As in life, so it goes in the vicious acting community - it's every narcissistic moron for themselves.

more at off-off-online.com

That is the caption of the New Yorker cartoon above.

My daughter took me out for my birthday, and we discussed the theatre trouble I've had recently. She believes that sexism plays a large part in the disrespect, disdain, or even contempt that I'm given on occasion, whether in the role of playwright, director or producer.

I'm inclined to agree with her, although I don't think that the theatre scene is more sexist then the rest of society. But people in the theatre scene like to think of themselves as enlightened, progressive and (ugh) "cutting edge" and so it's just a bit more hypocritical when they mindlessly reflect sexist attitudes.

I think she's especially right concerning a recent production - if I was a man I doubt that the Desperate Housewife in the cast would have been trying to undermine me or find fault with me incessantly - instead, she probably would have treated me the way she treated male cast members - giving me massages and clinging to my arm like a gigantic ravenous pink leech.

I caught his show in the Village last night and the best part was his riffs on religion and atheism.

Eddie Izzard clip at ex-christian.net

Meanwhile, not far away at the Reformed Church in America, they still believe in "election" which means basically, that some people are "saved" and the rest are damned, purely through a random act of God.

Lest you have a problem with this, the RCA is ready to get all up in your face:

Article 18: The Proper Attitude toward Election and Reprobation

To those who complain about this grace of an undeserved election and about the severity of a just reprobation, we reply with the words of the Apostle, "Who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?" 14 and with the words of our Savior, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?" 15 We, however, with reverent adoration of these secret things, cry out with the Apostle: "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." 16

Translation: God said so, so suck it.

No wonder people who believe in this crap are so incredibly superior and insufferable and convinced they are blameless, no matter what rotten things they do.

Here's the whole deal:

Article 7: Election

Election is God's unchangeable purpose by which God did the following:

Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of God's will, God chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. God did this in Christ, whom God also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation.

And so God decreed to give to Christ those chosen for salvation, and to call and draw them effectively into Christ's fellowship through the Word and Spirit, that is to grant them true faith, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of God's Son, to glorify them. God did all this in order to demonstrate God's mercy, to the praise of the riches of God's glorious grace.

More on the RCA web site

Most Christian denominations seem to say that if you do wrong, you need merely ask for Jesus's forgiveness, and everything's OK. This is a much easier way to go than the popular belief in Karma which is that bad things you do will turn into energy that will come back to get you later. There doesn't seem to be any way to escape Karma.

Although the original Karma is about being reborn, on a higher or lower plane, this people's Karma seems to have much greater currency. And so even Christians believe in it, much like many Christians also believe in Astrology although I would think that would be tantamount to heresy.

The Christian churches seem to be getting really lax on matters of dogma.

The first in a series.

Lesson 1: 30% of all off-off Broadway actors are assholes

I've done several off-off Broadway productions over the years, and that seems to be a pretty solid number. So if you have a cast of 10, three of the actors in the cast will be assholes.

It's an odd thing, but I have found that the better you treat a cast, the more likely it is that asshole behavior will surface. I treat actors very well for off-off Broadway - I pay them, for one thing, which is pretty rare. Some off-off Broadway producers, like the asshole who sued me justify not paying on the grounds that actors "get the glory of... being on stage, which is why they are usually happy to work for free." I also buy them food, transport them, etc. etc. This seems to lead, in some cases, to an inevitable inflation of the ego, as if the generosity is not coming from me, but from the universe, finally acknowledging the actor's greatness.

The victims of the asshole actors' bad behavior vary. In my TAM LIN production, the lead asshole actor, whom I'll call Tori, decided that her costars were very far beneath her in terms of actorly skills and proceded to treat them with incredible rudeness. Especially the man whom she played opposite in a romantic role. She felt that he was not nearly hot enough for her and I'm sure she felt that nobody could blame her for treating him with utter contempt.

In the case of a more recent production, the object of asshole disdain was the stage crew and me, the producer/director/author. To disdain someone who is in the position to give you paying work as an actor is beyond stupid for an off-off Broadway actor, but these two particular asshole actors are not noted for deep thought.

Often one asshole actor will manage to sour others, as was the case here. An actor who is in my opinion, extremely shallow, silly and vain decided that I didn't meet her exacting standards as a director and producer. I think she's one of these women who can't stand to see other women do well, and so sabotages the other women as a simple matter of course. If you've ever read Maureen Dowd's columns about Hillary Clinton, you'll understand exactly what I mean. Another member of the production and I came to call her The Snake.

I recall how, during rehearsals, she went on and on about how she didn't like another female director/producer she had worked with recently. At the time, I just accepted her criticisms as valid, since I was not yet clued into the toxicity level of The Snake's venom. I had had minor dealings with the other female director/producer before myself, and she'd never done me any harm. And now I am seriously questioning whether this other director/producer is as awful as The Snake suggested, or whether this is yet another example of the Maureen Dowd syndrome. (Also known as the Queen Bee Syndrome.)

The Snake made it clear to everybody that she was barely tolerating my incompetence. If I showed a moment's hesitation about how I wanted to direct a scene, she would immediately start trying to direct it for me. And I don't mean, making suggestions about her role or a scene she was acting in - no she tried to direct scenes she was not in, from the sidelines, so to speak.

If the stage crew made a mistake, she complained about it bitterly. If the photo shoot wasn't perfectly planned, more bitter complaints. And she invited Tori, the asshole from my TAM LIN production to see my show, knowing full well how much I despised Tori, who, in addition to being horrible to other actors, was also a good friend of Edward "[actors] are usually happy to work for free" Einhorn.

But the worst of it was that she made sure an actor whom I had really admired, and carried a torch for, started acting like an asshole too. Of course the fact that he could be so easily manipulated by such a despicable person extinguished my admiration for him - and that was extremely painful. It hurts like hell when romantic illusions die.

He was the last person whom I would have guessed would turn out to be an asshole - I had worked with him before, and as another member of the production said to me: "This was not the same [actor's name] I knew last year."

The change really was remarkable. He went from being a sweet, charming friendly person into a demanding, obnoxious asshole. It seems as if he and The Snake came to believe they were the King and Queen of the Theatre, and the rest of us (except for approved members of the cast) were their unworthy minions. According to another member of the production: (the asshole actors) "have not been respectful to the crew. They have been berating them when things go wrong rather than letting them work on the solution. They make comments like "why can't they ever get it fucking right" (this is concerning the curtain, which you and I know is virtually impossible to be accurate with, much less in dim lighting when it has to be done quickly) and "that's what you get when you hire college students" and other derogatory remarks of that nature. They yell and scream when things are not quite the way they expect (which is usually because they are in the process of being set up, and if not then [the stage crew] are in the process of fixing it) and are generally completely unappreciative and disrespectful."

Not the same guy we knew last year at all.

The assholes were not perfect themselves, but nobody went around screaming and making snide comments about their errors. Or emailed them a list of their errors as the former nice actor did for me (he threw in an error from a previous production, which made it clear that the list was about attacking me, NOT fixing errors in the current production.)

But fairness and reciprocity are not concepts understood by assholes.

And the thing about the curtains was that these two assholes justified being assholes about the curtains on the grounds that they cared so deeply about the play. But I saw the scene with the curtains many times from the audience and I never noticed any problem in the scene because of the curtains, except one early performance. The rest of the time, the curtains had no impact on the scene. I'm the playwright - if it had hurt the meaning of the scene, I would have been the first to say something. I asked other audience members - they had noticed nothing amiss either.

Which tells you what the fuss about the curtains was - not because it was important, but because they liked to have something to scream about - it made them feel good, and it was a good way to attack me indirectly as well.

It's sad really, because I was working on a play for the actor I had once admired, and I would have paid him to act in it - whether or not he responded to my romantic overtures*. I almost feel sorry for him for being so stupid. But on the other hand, he's an asshole, and his best friend is The Snake and he doesn't deserve my sympathy.

So if you plan to do an off-off Broadway show, be warned - even people who were not assholes may be transformed into assholes, so there's very little you can do to avoid them. Just consider it the price of working with off-off Broadway actors.

*I should point out that I never made any romantic overtures to him during the production, since that would have been unethical, as I was his employer. And, realistically I couldn't have tried anything even if I had wanted to, since I would have had to pry the Snake off of him with a crowbar first.

And as many people have pointed out to me, it really came out for the best - thanks to the Snake, I discovered what a huge creep this guy is before I did any more extremely expensive favors for him.

David Hyde Pierce has a reputation as a really cool down-to-earth guy, so I was not entirely surprised that he responded to my invitation to stop by and visit my JANE EYRE production by actually stopping by - but I was still thrilled.

We closed today and I was helping load up a truck with set pieces and props. Somebody came up to me and said "David Hyde Pierce is looking for you."

I went back into the theatre, there he was, and I just hugged him - I couldn't stop myself somehow. He's just very huggable. Or maybe because I'm so familiar with his work it feels like I know him.

I then introduced him to some of the actors from JANE EYRE who were also helping with the load out.

And then he was gone. *siiiigh*

But still, it was great, he's great and you should go see his show Curtains because I've heard that it is great.