The Peanut Gallery

From the rehearsal hall for Macbeth, on talking to the audience.

First off, I think that in Shakespeare there ought to be a lot more talking to the audience done, that it ought not to be limited to the soliloquies, and that lights should be up on the audience. I picked up this opinion from Salina Cadell and others at the Globe while I was studying in London, and I’ve never shaken it. But that is for another thought.

Scott Kaiser, from OSF, has a great book: Mastering Shakespeare – buy it. Hands down the most practical handbook on acting Shakespeare I’ve ever come across, and I owe much of what I’m saying here to him.

The deal with speaking to the audience is this. You gotta talk to the people in the room (if you’re lucky enough to be able to see them past the glare of the lights), but you can’t rehearse with them.

So pick people to talk to in the audience at various focal points. A scholar, a fool, a lord, a drunk, a doctor, a policeman, a child, a lunatic. Scott doesn’t, but I call these ideapeople – to distinguish them from real people. The idea is that each person you talk to will provide you with a different point of view and tactic.

But don’t just pick ideapeople based on which tactic illuminates only one parcel of text – pick ideapeople which illuminate the important guideposts of your character’s identity: what she needs and fears, what she tries and tries not to do. (Perhaps they are other characters in the play?) These are the characters inhabiting your character’s unconscious. As Jung says of all people and things in dreams – they’re all you. But this, this is an active relationship with Jung’s peanut gallery, where you can need real things from them. Now: stick with those ideapeople throughout the play.

(This, for the record, is where I have an Idea that isn’t Scott’s. Necessarily.)

Make a map for reference. By returning again and again to the same ideapeople focal points, you develop a relationship with each section of the audience which evolves as the play goes on, and you also engage actively with the ideas and themes that tell us who the character is. Maybe your character starts off with no respect for the law, but gains it; starts out asking questions of the scholar, ends up berating her.

Rehearse that way, and you’ll build a character whose relationship to the audience is important. Perform with that in your bones and orchestration. And if you’re lucky enough to be able to see not just supposed ideapeople, but real people who paid for tickets, then talk to them, and use your orchestration as a base from which to improvise. Maybe the murderer to your left doesn’t seem so hardened after all. How does that affect you?

If you’ve chosen your ideapeople well, and if you talk to the real people in the room, your audiences ought to keep you honest and play an important and interactive role in the story they came to hear.

Come see me in Macbeth, (failing at?) implementing this idea. Opens the 30th of March, runs through the 29th of April.

christ had cooties too

more jesus stuff today.

recently the Episcopal Church of the USA, the mainline, protestant, Anglican church we all know (ha ha) and love, has come under a lot of heat for ordaining a bishop with cooties. it’s gotten out of hand, and there are international conferences on the identity of the church, whole countries breaking communion with us, american diocese asking for african non-cootie friendly bishops to lead them, pages and pages of extremely english stuff denouncing, not precisely gays per se, but our inclusion of gays in the church, proposed radical changes to the canonical and authoritativeand on and on. here’s a pretty accurate if hilarious representation of one of the most important documents in the whole thing.

i’ma lean on my pa again for a more detailed look at the inside baseball, if you’re interested.

the bishops of the ECUSA recently met in texas to respond to one of the commmuniques, and put the smackdown pretty hard on cootie-based theology. this is a good bit:

We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

BOO-yah!

they pretty much get it all right in the whole thing.

gives you hope that maybea really meaningful and potentially widespread reformation might be underway in certain sectors of the american christian psyche.

In defense of Christ on Humanist grounds

This is a letter I wrote recently to Gary Stockdale, one of the genius forces behind Bukowsical! The Musical.

We got in a (drunken?) discussion, as one is wont to do at the Reptilian Lounge, on the merits of Christ and Chistianity on humanist grounds. We got cut short, and he told me to send him my thoughts. Little did he know how too-seriously I take myself, and how I’ve been down this road before.

---

In defense of Christ on Humanist grounds

First off, there are two basic assumptions I’m making. One, Jesus existed. By any measure of historical study we have to conclude that there was a teacher named Jesus who lived, taught and died in and around Galilee and Jerusalem. Two, we have a pretty good record of some of those things that Jesus said and did – filtered albeit through whatever communities of faith recorded them. If you can’t get on board with those assumptions, the rest of this is going to be pure drivel, and we may as well stick sauerkraut up our noses and dance the hoky-poky.As for the question of whether or not there is a God, well. The question is complex, and life is short. Anyway, it’s hardly important to a defense of Christ on humanist grounds.

My point, simply: Jesus rapped for the ones that Johnny Cash wore the black for.

And behind the curtain: my agenda is not to convert you to Christianity. Ecgh. Disgusting. I’m trying to reconfigure some of the assumptions you (seem to) have about Christ and Christians. I think that’s important, partly because we will never have meaningful change in this country until we have a reevaluation of christ, and how the secular left treats christians has a lot to do with whether or not that reevaluation is possible. I’ll get back to that.

Witchy Shit

For God so loved us, that he sent his only son a really great guy, that whoever believed in him put their faith in his ways might not perish suffer so badly, but have eternal life enter that quality of life that Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

That’s something like what I think John 3:16 might look like if it made any goddamn sense. Which is to say, if we took it seriously and not literally.

Which is to say nothing at all about how people take it these days. These days the question of faith often becomes like credentials for the entrance to a club. If you Believe the right things then you are Saved. If you don’t, then you aren’t, and too fucking bad for you, it’s your own fault. Here: recite the sinner’s prayer along with me, and everything will be o-kay. Now drink some blood.

Witchy.

A good friend of mine, and a pretty hardcore atheist, once asked me, point blank and pointdly, whether or not I believed in Jesus Christ.

In what sense? In the sense that he existed? Clearly. But you don’t say that you believe in Ghengis Khan. But you do tell your four year old daughter that you believe in her. So you believe she exists? I should well and fucking hope so. No. You believe that she is of value, that she can and will live a fulfilling life, and on and on.

So the question of belief in Jesus, and ultimately, of membership in a church, had ought to be about whether or not you’re choosing to make a commitment to living according to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Is that the main question for mainstream American protestant Christians? Probably not. Which brings us to

Bad Shit “the Church” Has Done

Under this category fall such exciting blunders as the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, Latin American Missions, abetting Mussolini and Hitler, lynchings, and so on. Bad, bad shit que no sirve por nada.

But the broad themes of the good book and especially the gospels are basically some of the most revolutionarily wonderful ideas ever proposed. They aren’t, however, unique to that source. Secular Humanists, for example, often ascribe to the same basic ideals: help the poor, love each other, money is less important than people, forgive others, evolve beyond violence, all people have value, forgive yourself for being human…

So naturally we ought to cut welfare, torture prisoners of war, ignore exploitive sweatshop labor, enforce the death penalty, bomb the evildoers, and refuse homosexuals basic human rights, and teach abstinence only! All high points on the Christian Coalition agenda, yeah?

This is, how you say, crap – of the highest possible insanity. We Christians got another word for that shit, and it’s called heresy.

Can we quote scripture to say that gays are evil? Sure we can. But if you’re interested in Leviticus 18:23 then take a look at leviticus 19:19. Cotton poly blend t-shirt, mothafucka? Abomination!

Again. Seriously, not literally.

It’s easy to write off all Christians by lumping them all together under the same category. And if you do that, their actions speak so loud, you can’t hear a word they’re saying.

But look: there are a lot of Churches. That there is a mistake that a lot of atheists make: assuming that Christians of all stripes are of one indistinguishable mob. It’s actually pretty meaningless to lump the Quakers, the Greek Orthodox, fundamentalist African Anglicans, and Liberation Theologists in the same category.

Which brings us back to Oz.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Interestingly enough, there is a bit of a reformation happening in the Anglican Communion – more specifically, the Episcopal church of the USA. These questions are probably going to split the church. I won’t get into that, but my Pa’s got the goods. (Here’s the sermon he gave on that lately.) It’s precisely this kind of reformation that secular humanists can’t afford to ignore or belittle.

My attitudes help to enable a system of churches which is generally antithetical to the good principles Jesus actually taught in that it is oligarchic, oppressive, and reactionary rather than progressive. Yes?

Your attitudes force reasonable people to do one of two things: swallow the red pill and go along for the ride, or take the blue pill and stop believing in imaginary friends.

Now that might not sound so bad to you. But hang up a minute.

A lot of people are going to take the red pill no matter what. Too much for too many rides on the idea of a God to let it go, and if the only option readily available once you’ve swallowed God is a witchy equation towards salvation, a superstitious John 3:16, then we’re fucked. But if we could listen to what the guy actually said, then we might start to make a move to set a few things right.

Which is why I say that meaningful change in American politics is impossible with a reevaluation of Christ.

And if people are attacked by progressives solely for being christian, they choose one or the other: Progressive or Christian, Sanity or Christianity. And if they aren’t both, we’ll never get a progressive reevaluation of Christ. It’s like blowing up buildings, see: it creates a kind of Christian nationalism and defense mechanism. Presto-chango, Allaka-JOHN ASHCROFT! Oh, shit!

So you, as a secular culture figure in Lalaland, gotta be concerned for what kinds of adventures are available to people who take the red pill.

Now go listen to Johnny Cash, and keep writing brilliant musicals about forgiving yourself for being human.

The bit with the Bishop, by the way, was hands-down my favorite part.

-Samuel

p.s.

Once more,
with feeling:

seriously,
not literally.