Good morning, America, the beautiful. It’s a sunny day in neighborhood.
Now, Would you like:
Gypsy or Cap’n Crunch?
Which kind of sugar do you want:
The kind that rots your teeth, or
The kind that rots your brain?
Come on, kiddo,
Do you want
Patti LuPone
or
The Cap’n
?
Because they both cost the same, honey. They’re both worth the same.
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PATTI couldn’t take it anymore. She felt she’d been exploited, damnit.
Stop stop stop stop taking pictures right now You heard the announcement Who do you think you are (Applause) Get out How dare you Who do you think you are Get them out I won’t continue if they’re taking pictures Get them out Three times three times you took a picture You heard the announcement at the beginning You heard the announcement at intermission Who do you think you are Thank you alright, you know what we’re gonna do? (Applause) I have to say this I have to say this We have forgotten our public manners And we have forgotten that we are in a community and this is the theatre And all of you every single one of you except for that person has respect And I and the rest of this company o-preciate it thank you (Applause)
But what she failed to realize was that she was feeding the monster.
-----------
It’s been said before, but..
I’m saying anyway because it isn’t reading loud and clear enough –
Theatre in America is in danger of becoming a caricature of itself, much like Liza Minelli. And if we don’t do something to rejuvenate its vagina, it’s going to rot to its core.
And we need that snatch to be in tip-top shape.
GASP! Am I suggesting that theatre is a woman?
An exploited, chained-to-the-bed woman,
Doesn’t matter.
But she’s dying because she has a horrible series of venereal diseases and we’re doing nothing to eliminate the infection. It’s spreading with unforgiving ferocity and disgusting recklessness. It needs the money.
The details of her condition are as follows:
• Suffers from Heavy fluff. Sickening, pink-and-purple, glitzed-out, fluff on roller skates. Starring Whoopi Goldberg.
• Brains have taken the consistency of grape Jell-O. Grape because it’s the kind that tastes like bad medicine. Because “good morning Baltimore” won’t stop echoing in her brain.
• She has been sleeping with Walt Disney again. He won’t let her abort any of his demented babies. He’s given her genital warts shaped like Zac Effron’s flat-ironed hair-do.
• Her diva wants another Tony award and has been in a snit because of the thing. Standing ovations aren’t enough, have never been enough.
• ASU’s Lyric Opera Theatre exploits her by telling her she’s pretty and then shitting on a picture of her face four times a year.
• She cries herself to sleep at night because of the burning, itching, puss-ridden mess “down there” that says, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” just to taunt her.
• No one will pay for her medical care. Especially not Bill Maher. Especially not the N.E.A.
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nobody wants to think anymore because it’s easier to feel and find instant gratification in that moment of wild applause when idina menzel hits her high note I get it.
..but it’s fucked up..
and I’m reminded of when the real rock era ended and n’sync came along and shit on everything the beatles and the stones had put in place and then jacked themselves off to bubble gum and barbie-doll-sized versions of themselves.
because once upon a time, theatre had the ability to change and transform the way people, communities, worlds thought and acted. it had the ability to engage and thrill without having to involve mindless dance routines or contrived music. real theatre has had to go underground to hide from the commerial-broadway-gestapo.
“Apparently, musical theatre is like a prehistoric beast capable of destroying whatever genre it touches (imagine a 200-foot Ethel Merman stomping on Tokyo)… Which reminds me of one of the worst insults I've ever heard hurled at an actor. The target was Broadway star Ann Reinking, who was performing some sort of razzle-dazzle production number on an awards show, and the comment was: "You can see every lesson she's ever had in her life." That's exactly how I feel when I watch musicals: While there may be real passion and humanity up there, it's buried beneath musical theatre's slick, soulless, impeccably groomed, perfectly articulated package” (Fairhurst).
what isn’t making money is wasting it and sell,sell,sell
and can’t we all just enjoy legally blonde?
No
We can’t
We won't
I refuse to be satisfied with the disgusting commercial machine that theatre in
this nation has become. And I refuse to operate its mechanisms or oil its cogs.
Art
was never supposed to be a business, but that’s what it’s become. Because
somewhere long ago, an accountant raped a violinist and the world ended.
And suddenly our voices were not heard.
And suddenly $110 was how much it cost to sell art into slavery.
-------------------------------
Theatre today is a Twinkie-flavored life jacket. It surely won’t sink and it smells good and everyone everyone loves it and it won’t go bad in your cupboard and it tastes like a dollar well spent and it’s cute like a puppy. But what theatre needs to be is the little spark at the top of the match that sets that Twinkie ablaze as everyone watches in horror and fascination and then ponders their own mortality. “[The playing space] is an exercise room, a factory, an examination room, a laboratory.” (Foreman 54).
It should make people want to gouge out their eyeballs
and hyperventilate with joy and shiver in all their private places.
CENSORSHIP CANNOT EXIST!
Because true art is an extension of the soul. And to censor someone’s soul is to commit a heinous crime against that person. Art that doesn’t extend from the soul of the creator, that doesn’t stir and stimulate and wreak havoc on the psyche, won’t feel the pain of censorship and is never at risk for it. But that art isn’t honest. It isn’t the truth that sits in the brightly lit, purple ball of guts inside each of us. “…the texts of my plays became increasingly fragmented in order to echo the truth of psychic life…” (Foreman 62)
---------------------
Here’s the deal:
1. Abolish all theatre fluff. This includes Disney musicals, most all musicals, anything that exists solely to suck people dry. Only theatre that pushes the envelope of conscious convention is allowed to remain in existence. No, Xanadu does not count.
2. Reduce the price of theatre tickets to “donate what you will.” Because everyone deserves and needs to see theatre. And the bourgeoisie is not allowed a monopoly on the arts simply because “it’s trendy.”
3. Turn vacant spaces into studios for communities and ensembles of artists to develop work
4. Find the bridge between theatre, dance, music, media, and other art forms. There should be an artistic coalition. The mediums should combine.
5. Art should be an honest extension and expression of the soul, uncensored and raw for the world to see. Like Richard says, “I thought of writing as evidence of my mental and spiritual state. Above all I tried to be honest about myself by keeping my style uncorrected by my well-schooled intelligence” (Foreman 10).
6. True art is allowed to be, and encouraged to be, ugly
7. True art has the ability to infuriate, enrapture, birth, infect, and intrigue.
8. The audience should be moved in a way unrelated to what they would expect based on the example of Broadway: “Make the audience feel the differences present in the room and those outside of it… Give them the taste of sitting and laughing alone. The feel of a body that laughs in public and then, embarrassed, has to doubt its action. Give them gifts. Pleasures. Laughs. Dances. Bring them ‘together’ again… The watcher’s desire is so often for nakedness, defenselessness. An exposure that does not have a name. Transparency. Something beyond” (Heathfield 215-216).
9. True art is dangerous. It cannot be safe. It cannot be comfortable.
10. We will be bold and unapologetic, whatever the cost
11. We will not fear the negative response of others. Our art is not designed to please or impress them. It merely seeks to ignite and provoke.
“Performance offers once of those planes of ‘unique reality’ where memory and dreams, past and present, the everyday and the once-in-a-lifetime are reconciled and woven together upon a single loom of time…” (Drain 282.)
If the guidelines of this manifesto are ignored, then we are destined, as theatre artists, to become extinct, to die out in the moldy apple that lives on Broadway and 42nd street, dancing until our legs bleed because they’ve put duct tape on our mouths and drugged us into a “Hairspray” coma so we can’t bleed from our hearts anymore even though that sounds cliché.
And we will continue to sell our souls to the commercial Mephistopheles, and no one and nothing will be able to save us from the snide meows of all the Jellicle cats that haunt our vacant, pathetic thoughts.
