Category Archives: Life

An Open Letter to the Small Theatre Community

Listen, we need to talk. I’ve been around the Houston small theatre community for a while, now, and I have to say, I’m getting a little bothered by what I’m starting to see. To be honest, I think that much of the problem comes from a simple misunderstanding: You are not professional theatres, so quit trying to pretend you are.

Now, the reason I said, “small” theatre instead of “community” or “amateur” theatre is simple. I’m not just talking to those theatres that claim “education” or “community arts” in their founding documents. I’m talking to every little theatre that pays its actors less than Equity scale and its crew members less than minimum wage. You know who you are. I don’t care if you call it a stipend or offer them points on net as “co-producers”, if the total payout divided by the time you expect them to be there is less than a minimal living wage, you’re not professional. At best, you’re a start-up.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with running an amateur or startup theatre. You ask half of Hollywood and all of Broadway how they got their start and they’ll trot out some long, tear-filled story of the community theatre that first sparked their love of the boards. More so, small theatre inspires an interest in the arts in general, in literature, history, and even science and the trades. Small theatre is an honorable genre, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

It is not, however, professional theatre, so different rules have to apply.

You don’t get to prioritize yourself above your volunteers’ lives. The main difference between professional and small theatre is that, when all the numbers are crunched, professional theatres pay their employees something that comes close to what the government considers a living wage. If you’re not cutting checks for everyone in your shop, including for rehearsals, then you have no right to expect them to treat their hobby like a job. That means you have to make allowances for their real job, and sometimes for other issues that may come up in their lives. Parents have to put their children before their hobbies, and, these days, many adults are in the unenviable position of caring for an aged parent. These people can’t always maintain a grueling 30-hour-a-week rehearsal schedule. Or even a light 20.

I’m not saying anyone should tolerate bullshit. If an actor is skipping whole chunks of rehearsal or refuses to learn their lines or approximate their blocking, by all means boot them out like a hobo. No one wants a bad show, and tolerating bullshit is one of the quickest ways to get one. I’m just asking that you show some reasonable restraint. If an actor is otherwise tight, then letting him skip a Saturday to check on his aged mother is probably not going to kill you.

Really, I guess it all comes down to this: Never forget that your volunteers are volunteers. They don’t owe you a goddamn thing. Period. They do what they do for love of the craft and because you asked them to. Sets go up, props get built, and lights shine because someone— who isn’t even getting the thrill of having 50-100 people applaud their ability to spit out words —is making it happen. Ushers (and other lobby volunteers) get to see a show for free, but “free” often means they have to attend to the needs of 50-100 people, wrangle refreshments, ensure the balance of the box, and clean up the auditorium afterward. Don’t try to fob off unwanted chores on these people like they’re immigrant dishwashers.

They’re volunteers, and failing to show your appreciation of their effort is the easiest way to lose them. And without volunteers, you won’t have a theatre at all.

Casual Friday–Just Like Dubuque

Still a lot going on, here. Penny and Diana are arguing about Diana’s bad habits (the mythical Diana/Artemis did the same thing…a lot. Look it up). Steve is recognizing Phil (which comes up later), and other things.

There’s important information here that I couldn’t really place. Penny works as an administrator for her father’s private detective agency, which also has a sideline of solving problems related to the supernatural and, in particular, the loose group of immortals known as the Old Crowd. Every time Diana has one of her snits, she makes a phone call and Penny has a lot of work to do making irritations go away, especially since Diana’s snits usually result in someone dying ironically (Acteon was eaten by his own dogs).

The Dubuque incident went down like this: Diana was waiting to meet a client in a bar (she’s a sports agent) when a guy approached her seeking directions to the bathroom. She turned him into a sheep (he was wearing a wool suit), and refused to turn him back because, “He probably saw my cleavage.” (She was wearing a scoop-necked t-shirt, so pretty much everyone in Dubuque had seen her cleavage by then.)

Anyway, the upshot was that the guy was coincidentally emotionally and physically abusive, so his wife wasn’t too heart-broken over his “fatal traffic accident.” His kids got to go to college on the “insurance settlement,” and the guy himself got to enjoy an early retirement on a farm in Upstate New York, where he provided wool for the Brooks Brothers corporation until his death from more or less natural causes in 1974. He was committed to eternity with some baby potatoes and a nice mint jelly.

Shiny Things

Now that the Epiphany has officially marked the end of the Christmas Season, I can freely discuss my own beliefs without crapping all over someone else’s holiday. So, in answer to those few people who ask what I celebrate in the middle of December, I celebrate Christmas, because, why not?

There was probably some big party that related in one way or another to the Winter Solstice; every northern culture has one, but the fragments that have survived don’t mention its name or significance. Yule, for you Wiccans out there, is a Germanic holiday.

There’s Kittenalia, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a dodge to get extra treats.

The Gaelic calendar doesn’t border its seasons on the solar events, it centers them there, with the months measured out by full moons. So Samhain, the beginning of winter, falls around the beginning of November, two full moons after the autumnal equinox, and Imbolc, the beginning of spring, is celebrated around the beginning of February, on the second moon after the winter solstice. There was almost certainly some big do on the longest night of the year, probably relating to culling and to enjoying the people you have while you have them, but it hasn’t survived.

So I celebrate Christmas, because I live in a culture where the party during the winter solstice is called Christmas, even though the person who’s birth it celebrates was undoubtedly born in early spring. Do I worship Jesus at that time? No, but I don’t care who does. It’s none of my business if someone wants to say December 25 is his god’s birthday. To me, the important thing is a day to see my family and enjoy their presence.

To me, Yeshua bin Miriam was (if reports of him are accurate) an astoundingly advanced philosopher with some great ideas about how to treat each other, but he isn’t my god. He’s my family’s god, so, as long as he continues to allow me to celebrate the shortest days of the year with them, I’m cool with that.

I’m cool with any holiday that gives me an excuse to draw my family together and tell them how much I love them, because everything can change in an instant. Refusing the opportunity to be with our loved ones over personal details of faith is stupid.

Discourse, Rational and Otherwise

Not long ago, I mentioned that I thrive on debate. More recently, this was thrown in my face as evidence that I like starting shit. Whether the accusation is true or not, I find the evidence questionable, but only because I don’t believe that debate is a bad thing.

There are, in my mind, three levels of influential discussion. Debate, argument, and fighting. I prefer debate, and I try to avoid fighting altogether. I don’t care if someone else changes their opinion to match mine, but I don’t like being pressured to accept someone else’s opinion in favor of my own. That is why I prefer debate.

There is no winner in a true debate. That competitive argument is called debate seems ironic to me, since, in it’s purest form, debate is merely an exchange of viewpoints and the facts that support them. If I point out that Adam Smith, the father of Free-market economics was not a laissez-faire capitalist, I am not trying to sway you from your socialist stance. I’m simply supporting my view that some government interference in the economy is acceptable, as long as that interference is limited and performs the government’s primary purpose of protection from abuse.

In debate, it’s okay to agree to disagree. That is, in fact, the most likely outcome. The minute you enter a debate with the intention that you are going to change someone’s mind, it stops being a debate and becomes an argument. Arguments are laden with words of judgment. Socialism is wrong. Capitalism is unfair. Everything about an argument suggests that the other person is committing an error in holding their beliefs and opinions. Facts that don’t support your position are glossed over or ignored in favor of those that do. Conclusions are drawn that are not necessarily the result of the facts used to support them. If you state that corporate culture and power in the US is proof that capitalism doesn’t work, then you are arguing, because you are ignoring the fact that modern corporate culture stands more as an argument for more stringent enforcement of anti-trust laws than it does for further muddying of the waters separating business and the government.

Most discussions end up as arguments, because it’s hard to fathom the idea that someone, given your store of information, might draw different conclusions. In many ways, human society has out-evolved human brains, and we’re still monkeys trying to convince the other members of our troop that “fire good” or “fire bad” depending on which end of the stick we picked up. The problem arises in that many arguments devolve into nothing more than fights. You can tell you’re in a fight if you find yourself resorting to a lot of argumentative fallacies.

Mind you, I tend to have an open attitude toward such tools of argument. For one thing, the classes of argument referred to as fallacies are only fallacies under certain circumstances, and are perfectly reasonable arguments under others. If a man states that he is against abortion, it is a tu quoque fallacy to point out that one of the group funds that his mutual invests in has money in a business that experiments with fetal stem cells. It is not a tu quoque fallacy to point out that a man who loudly decries homosexuality was caught soliciting blowjobs in a bus station.

So maybe avoiding fallacy isn’t the best way to avoid devolving into a fight. Maybe the difference really lies in the lack of respect shown to the other person. If you find yourself getting emotionally involved in the other person’s failure to adopt your viewpoint, you’re probably in a fight. If you find yourself using abusive language, or threats, to impose your view on someone else, you’re almost certainly fighting. If you deride someone’s viewpoint for no other reason than that it differs from you’re own, not only are you fighting, but you’re also a bully. You need to stop that shit.

I love debate. I can trade facts and opinions for hours, and even days, and I get great joy from the things I learn in the process, whether anyone changes their mind or not. I’m okay with argument. I’m not really comfortable trying to make others change their stance, but, as long as everyone is civil, some learning can be achieved. I try not to fight, and I regret every time I was drawn into one. While I’ve often come away from debates thinking, “Wow, I never knew that.” I have never come away from a fight with anything useful, and I usually come away angry or frustrated.

Let’s all try to debate more and fight less.

You’re Doing It Wrong

Far be it from me to tell anyone else what they should believe. My own faith is a learning process with very few actual graven-in-stone tenets. Be a good host, bring honor to your family name, don’t piss off the local spirits; other bits that may or may not be true or even accurate. Reconstructed faiths are that way. It’s a lot like putting together an old Lego set: pieces get lost, and sometimes you end up with a red brick right where the Death Star’s giant laser belongs. That’s fine; I need the challenge.

So, no, you believe what you want to believe, because this is America, and you have that right. Whatever you believe, however, stop doing it wrong, okay? Faith is not about forcing the world to fit into your personal matchbox of expectations. Faith is about understanding the world and your own place in it. Whether it’s God’s plan, fractal math, or Nuada’s lessons on accepting a situation and dealing with it, the whole point of religion, all religion (and a lot of demi-religious philosophies) is about you, and no one else.

If you’re an atheist and you find it necessary to share your thoughts on the illusion of faith, and the great epiphany you had that joy is just a bunch of electro-chemical reactions, zip it. You’re doing it wrong. My Corn Flakes may just be deep fried cattle feed, but I like them, and I don’t need you crapping in them because you don’t approve of my choices. If your life runs better believing that life is more or less meaningless and we’re really a bunch of ants on a cosmic truck tire, then fine for you. I think otherwise, and I’m not interested in debating the ineffable with someone who demands a NASA report to believe the sun still rises on cloudy days.

LIES!!!

By that same token, if you’re a Christian, and you’re berating people (who aren’t your minor children) for committing any sin, zip it, and read your bible again. You’re doing it wrong. There is nothing, from the first letter of Matthew to the last period in Revelation that instructs people of the faith to browbeat anyone for anything. The harshest treatment you will find you are allowed to direct at people who don’t engage in Christian morality is to dissociate from them. You don’t get to tell to people in love that they can’t get married under the law, because the civil law is Caesar’s coin and it is reserved for Caesar. You sure as hell don’t get to tell anyone why being gay, reading crappy literature, or dressing in their own fashion makes them horrible. I can give you five quotes attributed to Jesus that tell you the opposite; his whole thing was your salvation, and he spent a lot of time reminding people to keep their own house in order. Period. Full stop.

Besides, Pretend Cat already knows what you did.

Lastly, if you are a practicing neo-pagan of any kind, and you’re not just trying to piss off your parents, shut up. The victims of witch-burnings weren’t Wiccans, they were Christians who had things that some douchebags wanted. The Celts, Greeks, Egyptians, and even Native Americans were never about peace and good stewardship of the planet. If those faiths speak to you. Yay for you. I know how you feel, Reconstructed Celticism is where I settled and it feels right. Just try not to subscribe to the Facebook Infographic version of that faith, because that’s doing it wrong.

Your faith is your own, and you are free to celebrate it any way you want to. But the same goes for me.

Casual Notice

Get off the damn phone!