I'm in Ashland, Oregon, again at the Shakespeare Festival, and this afternoon I saw a decent Henry V. But walking home I reminded myself that Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses plays are all said to be Tudor regime propaganda. So the French king and the Dauphin and the French lords don't come off too well in Hentry V. Just as Richard III of York is represented as a mean old hunchback, to be eclipsed by the glorious rose of Tudor.
So it is with today's theater people. They are all in on the liberal agenda, 2018 edition, as expressed in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's program, starting with Artistic Director Bill Rauch's intro that starts out: "Based on our plays this season (never mind the political landscape) the theme of leadership is certainly in the air." Golly, what could he mean?
Don't worry, in the intro to Othello Bill Rauch tells us how the "characters disastrously navigate differences of race, religion, gender, and national origin."
In Sense and Sensibility director Hanna S. Sharif tells us about the "smartest people in the room... navigating a world that denied them access to property, wealth, and personal agency." Oh, you mean like the neo-feudal welfare state? Not to mention identity politics?
Liberals are clueless.
Oh, and guess what! In Oklahoma Curly is played by a girl, so the "intentionally inclusive cast... joyfully suggest[s] an alternative utopian community that reflects progress and acceptance for our time." Yep, you'll have left-wing LGBT religious revivalism rammed down your throat and you better like it.
But director Bill Rauch thinks of his audience as "the most adventurous audience in the American theater" when all he is doing is ramming ruling-class conventional wisdom down our throats. This year, for the first time, the program includes preferred pronouns for each artist. The interesting thing about preferred pronouns, for me, is that they are third person pronouns, (he/him/his), which means that people want to control how other people speak about them between themselves. I guess it makes sense in liberal world which is all about ordering other people around.
One of the constants at OSF is liberal race and gender politics. So there is usually a black-themed play (with black actors, of course) and this year there is a Chinese play (with East-Asian actors, of course). But the non-white actors get to play northwestern European characters in the Shakespeare canon.
But wait? What is OSF doing putting on non-white plays? Isn't that cultural appropriation? In Love's Labours Lost there is a lot of rock music and a lot of gesturing that I assume is supposed to be the way they do it down in the 'hood. But wait! Rock music is cultural appropriation of blues and rhythm and Blues. So what in the world is OSF doing insulting blacks with this aping of black culture?
Yeah, I know. It's different when we do it.
I was thinking today that if I did Love's Labours Lost about rich bitch Frenchies and Basques, I would cast the Basque nobles of Navarre as Harvard men and the French princesses as feminists from the Seven Sisters colleges. And all the women would wear black rimmed glasses like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. But I don't think that Bill Rauch, he of the adventurous audience, would even think of satirizing our ruling class in that way.
Because as they say: That's Not Funny.
Look. Bill Rauch puts on liberal-themed plays with liberal-themed race and gender themes because he's a liberal and that's what liberals do. As to what the almost completely white audience thinks about it, I haven't a clue. Ashland is a pretty liberal city -- it has no plastic bags and a paper bag fee at the supermarket -- but I doubt if the audience is that liberal.
Still, if I ruled the world, we wouldn't have liberal race and gender drama. We would be exploring the boundaries between the Three Peoples, what being creative really means, and what it really costs. And there would be a lot of moral posturing about rich bitch liberals leading the People of the Subordinate Self into the wilderness and abandoning them there when they were no longer useful to the liberal power project.
But would anyone want to come to my plays?
So it is with today's theater people. They are all in on the liberal agenda, 2018 edition, as expressed in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's program, starting with Artistic Director Bill Rauch's intro that starts out: "Based on our plays this season (never mind the political landscape) the theme of leadership is certainly in the air." Golly, what could he mean?
Don't worry, in the intro to Othello Bill Rauch tells us how the "characters disastrously navigate differences of race, religion, gender, and national origin."
In Sense and Sensibility director Hanna S. Sharif tells us about the "smartest people in the room... navigating a world that denied them access to property, wealth, and personal agency." Oh, you mean like the neo-feudal welfare state? Not to mention identity politics?
Liberals are clueless.
Oh, and guess what! In Oklahoma Curly is played by a girl, so the "intentionally inclusive cast... joyfully suggest[s] an alternative utopian community that reflects progress and acceptance for our time." Yep, you'll have left-wing LGBT religious revivalism rammed down your throat and you better like it.
But director Bill Rauch thinks of his audience as "the most adventurous audience in the American theater" when all he is doing is ramming ruling-class conventional wisdom down our throats. This year, for the first time, the program includes preferred pronouns for each artist. The interesting thing about preferred pronouns, for me, is that they are third person pronouns, (he/him/his), which means that people want to control how other people speak about them between themselves. I guess it makes sense in liberal world which is all about ordering other people around.
One of the constants at OSF is liberal race and gender politics. So there is usually a black-themed play (with black actors, of course) and this year there is a Chinese play (with East-Asian actors, of course). But the non-white actors get to play northwestern European characters in the Shakespeare canon.
But wait? What is OSF doing putting on non-white plays? Isn't that cultural appropriation? In Love's Labours Lost there is a lot of rock music and a lot of gesturing that I assume is supposed to be the way they do it down in the 'hood. But wait! Rock music is cultural appropriation of blues and rhythm and Blues. So what in the world is OSF doing insulting blacks with this aping of black culture?
Yeah, I know. It's different when we do it.
I was thinking today that if I did Love's Labours Lost about rich bitch Frenchies and Basques, I would cast the Basque nobles of Navarre as Harvard men and the French princesses as feminists from the Seven Sisters colleges. And all the women would wear black rimmed glasses like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. But I don't think that Bill Rauch, he of the adventurous audience, would even think of satirizing our ruling class in that way.
Because as they say: That's Not Funny.
Look. Bill Rauch puts on liberal-themed plays with liberal-themed race and gender themes because he's a liberal and that's what liberals do. As to what the almost completely white audience thinks about it, I haven't a clue. Ashland is a pretty liberal city -- it has no plastic bags and a paper bag fee at the supermarket -- but I doubt if the audience is that liberal.
Still, if I ruled the world, we wouldn't have liberal race and gender drama. We would be exploring the boundaries between the Three Peoples, what being creative really means, and what it really costs. And there would be a lot of moral posturing about rich bitch liberals leading the People of the Subordinate Self into the wilderness and abandoning them there when they were no longer useful to the liberal power project.
But would anyone want to come to my plays?
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