Free Fire Zone

As I expected, I'm really enjoying Theresa Rebeck's "Free Fire Zone" - admittedly in part because we think alike. She feels the same as I about post-modernism in the theatre:

...On one side of that line you have people who think post-modernism is a good idea, and on the other people who think that post-modernism is a load of nonsense perpetrated on the story-telling community by protofascists from Italy...

Although she doesn't name Mac Wellman as the leading perpetrator, like I do. She puts the blame on Gertrude Stein:

...Obviously not all writing is character-centric. If you're interested in writing nihilistic postapocalyptic pseudo-Gertrude Stein verse drama, you can toss everything I said out the window. The same perhaps can be said if you want to write action movies, where the most complicated emotional moment will be someone yelling "Get in the truck!"

And I thought this was an especially good explanation of what went wrong in the theater:

"...The propagation and worship of bad theater, particularly in America, has come about through a series of worthy historical events that collided in a way that wasn't as useful as it could have been. The achievement of theatrical titans such as Eugene Ionesco, Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett cast a wide shadow at a time when the audience for theater began to dwindle. The heyday of post-modern achievement consequently presents itself as the model of theatrical storytelling in opposition to more realistic models adopted in television and film. Subsequent generations of writers, struggling for an identity concluded that, because their heroes did it, tossing out narrative altogether is automatically art. Unfortunately abandoning forward motion in an art form that exists in time is not such a good idea. Audience expectations that they are on a ride with a beginning, middle and end that will get them to a destination are undermined. Consequently, theater increasingly becomes a kind of elitist event one attends because "it's good for you" - like opera or going to the dentist... 

If she didn't have Mac Wellman in mind when she wrote that passage, she might as well have. Wellman said: 

The failure of a lot of theater is that it’s Aristotelian, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end: 

He thinks that meeting audience expectations is failure. And I think it's truly because he has this elitist idea that he, the artiste, knows what's good for the audience, and they're a bunch of banality-mongering losers for preferring stories that have a forward motion in time. 

Rebeck also has a good theory on the rise of the importance of the director in theater,  which jibes with my belief that part of the problem is that since directors can do whatever the hell they want with Shakespeare's scripts, they certainly don't hesitate to do anything they want to anybody else's scripts:

My theory is that as theater has become increasingly problematic to produce, producers have turned to classics and revivals as a way of protecting themselves. But these plays require vital new interpreters - you can't just stage them, that's been done already - hence the rise of the star director... 

...One director I know directs alot of Shakespeare, and he seemingly convinced himself that by being an expert at interpreting Shakespeare, he can also "become" Shakespeare - he seriously thinks that he is a genius because he's good at staging Shakespeare, and Shakespeare was a genius. Consequently, all living playwrights (who are not Shakespeare) are beneath him...

And she also puts in a plug for playwrights directing their own work:

...writers still have no reason to suspect their own authenticity. We know that we know how to tell stories because we create them out of whole cloth every day. That aspect of our psyche is unusually (in this business) secure. We know how to tell stories, and a lot of directors, some of whom are wildly overhyped, really don't know how to tell a story, at least not from scratch. So... I say go ahead and direct. What are you waiting for?

Nice. I think I will quote that on the NYCPlaywrights web site.

More gems from this indispensable book soon.

my Schopenhauer hubris

I thought my reference to Schopenhauer in JULIA AND BUDDY could be the first ever on the New York stage. Not even close.

And I had to find out from John Simon of all people. Simon has a blog and he says:

"even the fancy stripper in Pal Joey thinks of Schopenhauer while she works"

PAL JOEY - a musical yet, originally produced in 1940. Made into a movie with Frank Sinatra. Here's Rita Hayworth doing the song that mentions Schopenhauer:

"I was reading Schopenhauer last night, and I think Schopenhauer was right."

Of course I still hang onto the hope that my play will be the first time that Schopenhauer appears as a character on stage.

I did another Xtranormal animation - this one is an enactment of scene 6,  the fever-dream sequence with Schopenhauer in JULIA AND BUDDY. They now give you a German accent voice to work with. Of course the character looks more like Freud than Schopenhauer, but that's the closest I could get. Also they had no dog-barking sound effects, so Atma sounds like a crow. Oh well, you can't have everything.

And there was a happy accident - sometimes Xtranormal can't properly reproduce some words - even worse than some of them in this animation - the word "philosopher" is pretty hit-and-miss. The line originally said: "That fool Hegel! That anybody should still read his inane twaddle - it is beyond belief." But Xtranormal could not say "inane twaddle" within a country mile, so I decided to make it easy and have him speak a German word - which the voice algorithm is set for anyway - so now he says "That anybody should still read his scheisse" - and I think enough people know what that word means that it will get a laugh. And that's important for a romantic comedy. JULIA AND BUDDY has plenty of romance, I always feel like I need to punch up the comedy. It's slowly getting funnier.



And here is JULIA AND BUDDY scene 4 animation I did a year and a half ago. This scene always gets laughs.

These are the only scenes from the play that I will do Xtranormal animations for. Two scenes is enough.

Why Mark Twain, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Nancy McClernan are not racists

I grew up among Philistines. My parents never had any interest in any form of culture, ever. My mother always bragged how she was able to pass English literature class tests by reading the Classic Comics versions of famous novels.

They aren't bad people (my father died in 2004), really, in spite of their tendency to vote Republican, and their devotion to the Catholic Church. But they just didn't see the point of reading anything except the local daily newspaper, the occasional self-help magazine, and the church bulletin. They had no interest in movies as art - to this day my mother refuses to see any movie that doesn't have a G rating. They had no interest in going to a museum, and they didn't care for rock and roll, let alone classical music - and they both came of age during the heyday of Elvis. Neither of them ever saw a play that wasn't a relative's production - usually a school production, except MAN OF LA MANCHA, which I took them to see; and my mother saw my JANE EYRE.  She thought Jane should go off and become a missionary with St. John Rivers.

Often Philistinism is associated with religious extremism, which makes sense. Religious extremists want solid, simple answers to the meaning of life. And if you don't agree with those simple answers you are most likely doomed to an eternity of torment, or even worse, you could be in league with the Devil yourself. And the fact that artists sometimes portray ugly evil things make them suspects - why would you want to write about ugly evil things unless you approved of such things? That's how Philistines think.

Religious extremist Philistines - evangelicals and the Catholic hierarchy - were responsible for opposition to the Harry Potter books. Harry Potter even inspired a response in a Chick tract.

A hallmark of Philistines is ignorance. They are proud to be ignorant and they don't need to gather information before leaping to a conclusion - information only impedes quick and simple conclusions. 

And so the great irony is that Harry Potter turns out to be a huge Christian allegory. 

Philistines aren't just religious extremists though. Every now and then "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is banned by people who don't want children to read the word "nigger." 

Part of the problem is that Huck Finn really isn't a children's book. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a children's book, and Huck Finn is a sequel to Sawyer, so you can understand why people would be confused. But Huck Finn deals with much more adult topics than Tom Sawyer. Kids really don't get a lot of Huck Finn - it should be reserved for high school curricula.

And I'm not saying that Twain was perfect. He basically ruined the last third of Huck by forgetting about Jim's goal to rescue his family from slavery - as I argue here.

But only a Philistine could believe that Mark Twain includes the word "nigger" because he was a racist. Twain uses that offensive word because that is what the people at the time used to refer to slaves. And to remove the "N" word - as someone tried to do - only whitewashes history. 

But Philistines don't want to hear about such fine points as "history" and "irony" - a bad word is a bad word, period and anybody who uses that word - in any context - is bad.

It is this kind of thinking that caused a mob of Philistines to claim that John Lennon and Yoko Ono are racists for writing a song called "Woman is the Nigger of the World." If you don't know about this song, you can read about it on Wikipedia.

But if you'd rather just assume they are racists because they used the word "nigger" you are probably a Philistine.

Now the people who claim that Lennon and Ono are racists don't disagree - I think - with the idea being expressed by the song - which is that no matter what group of people is being oppressed, the female members of that group are even more oppressed. Women have the double trouble of being part of the oppressed group and then being oppressed as a female.

Lennon/Ono are making a feminist point - and the people who are accusing them of racism seem to fancy themselves feminists.

I suppose Lennon/Ono could have entitled the song:

"Women as a group are more oppressed than any other in the world, even more oppressed than black people, a group which is understood to be the most oppressed at the present time."

But the title they did choose is more succinct. And also the word "nigger" is more extreme and shocking. That's what they were after - that's what artists do, try to get an emotional/intellectual response.

But you simply cannot reason with Philistines on this kind of thing. They flat-out don't get it. Lennon/Ono used the word "nigger" and that's all they want to know.

Lennon and Ono certainly didn't need to be told how ugly racism is. Yoko was subjected to plenty of racist slurs after she and Lennon became a couple. You only have to watch cartoonist Al Capp confronting John and Yoko when they did their "bed in for peace" in 1969 to understand the kind of responses Yoko provoked. Capp was a proud Philistine.

Philistines don't understand art, but they do understand the politics of personal destruction and thanks to the confluence of Tumblr and Google, they have the power to brand anybody a racist. Even someone like me who is a life-long anti-racist and is on the record as such.

Thanks to Tumblr, it's Philistine mob rule, all the way.

ABG - latest episode!

The latest episode of Adventures of Awkward Black Girl is finally out.

women in Pakistan begin to say no to forced marriages - AKA sexual slavery

The NYTimes has a story today about women in Pakistan who are risking death at the hands of their families because they refuse to be sold in "marriage" to the highest bidder. 

The image on the left is an "Affidavit of Free Will" signed by a woman and the man she chose for herself to be her husband. In spite of this document, the woman's family is still trying to claim that she was kidnapped by her husband.

You see, "Ms. Mochi had been promised since birth to her father’s cousin, 15 years her senior. Her family refused to end the engagement."

The fact that this kind of legal slavery is allowed to exist, without any international sanctions whatsoever demonstrates that although it isn't as unquestioned as it once was, Patriarchy still reigns supreme in the world. Under Patriarchy, slavery is OK as long as the slaves are female.

The fact the Nusrat Mochi could be treated as a possession to be bought and sold is clear from the deal her father tried to make:

"Ms. Mochi’s father soon began harassing Mr. Bhatti’s father for the return of his daughter or some monetary compensation. "


Women are treated like animals in many parts of the world. And nobody calls it what it is - slavery.

One of the most laughable aspects of "evolutionary psychology" - and there are so many as this excellent article in this week's New Yorker describes - is the claim that women throughout the history of the world have a "natural" sexual preference for older men. And the fact that selling your daughter to the highest bidder was an even more commonplace practice in former times is ignored, utterly.

Men have treated women like animals. Of course they had the luxury of choosing women based on youth and beauty while women did not have that luxury - men were the consumers, women were the merchandise.

And the evolutionary psychologists will always interpret this system of male dominance as female sexual preference. And they will never stop with this interpretation because it is the very basis of evolutionary psychology itself. 

No surprise that a hard-core misogynist like Richard Dawkins is one of the most prominent promoters of evolutionary psychology. Meanwhile Dawkins' rabid fan-boys continue their campaign against women in skeptical circles who speak out against misogyny. (It wasn't enough to attack Jen at BlagHag - they also harrassed her father.)

I am disappointed in Tony Kushner

By way of Parabasis recently I discovered that originally there were no female characters in ANGELS IN AMERICA. According to Oskar Eustis, interviewed by Anne Bogart in her book "Conversations with Anne":

We sort of created a company around the development of ANGELS IN AMERICA that went on for six years. It had lots of firings, including my own, and that was part of it. But it, nonetheless, was a continuous process of work among a group of artists for six years, and that is absolutely at the heart of why it's a great play Tony had three women in ANGELS who would not have been in that play. I can't tell you how many times Tony would whine to me, "Why do I have to have these women in the show? This is a play about gay men. I don't know what to do with them. Abigail, this mother. Okay, we'll make her Joe Pitt's mother, but I don't know what the mother's going to do in the play." Well he had to have these three women in the play because we had these three women in the company. If those three female characters hadn't been written in the play, I don't think we could be sitting here talking about ANGELS IN AMERICA. It's absolutely part of what stretched that play to have the reach that it ended up having.

Boy is he right about that.  I can't imagine AIA without Mother Pitt, or Harper or the Angel. And I thought Tony Kushner was such a big feminist that he just naturally included women in his plays. Well there goes that illusion.

Speaking of theater books, I finally ordered my copy of Teresa Rebeck's Free Fire Zone: A Playwright's Adventures on the Creative Battlefields of Film, TV, and Theater. I've been jonesing for this book for months. I'm sure I will have plenty to say about it once I read it.

Google Analytics interface - designed by a team of sadists and software developers FOR smug software developers

Here's something I really hate - software developers designing user interfaces. And it happens ALL THE TIME. I really wonder how Jakob Nielsen makes a living selling all his usability seminars because I've yet to work for a company that does usability testing or gives a rat's ass about user-friendly interfaces. I think that Amazon probably has a usability team since the Amazon interface is very intuitive. But Amazon is the rare exception to the rule. 

The rule is that companies let the software developers create the user interface, as a by-product of creating the code. It's strictly an afterthought. And then they hire technical writers like me to explain their stupid user-hostile interfaces instead of spending money on designing an intuitive interface that doesn't require a manual to understand.

And Google, which has no excuse, clearly followed that rule. Because the new Google Analytics interface is obviously designed by a team of software developers and sadists. The sadists are responsible for telling you how cool all the features like Events and Goals are, and the software developers created the user interface for using these features that require you to be a software developer yourself to use them.

It's NOT USABLE. Unless you are a software developer. Don't believe me? Here's the Goal setup interface.

All I want to do is track when a link in one of my blog's HTML/Javascript widgets is clicked. You'd think they would already make that statistic available but no. You have to set up some torturous Event/Goal mechanism. The only reason I had ANY idea what "category" "action"  and "label" were is because I found some random guy on the Internet talking about it. It was here that I learned that I had to insert a piece of code into my A tag in order to create an "event." Here's the example the guy gave:

a href="http://www.webanalyticsblueprint.com/" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Ads', 'Sidebar', 'WAB']);"

Nowhere in the Google Analytics help section did I come across a heads-up that you have to use this  "_trackEvent" code. I mean, if nothing tells you that you will need to use code, you won't even be looking for it. 

I was able to glean some information because random Internet guy used an example. But his example doesn't include a value and his explanation of a value is 

"this element helps you specify a value for you event that can be used when you setup a goal for your event."

That's what is known as a tautology. It tells you that a value is a value. That's no help at all. But of course he's a software developer - he doesn't need to express himself clearly in English.

And to add insult to injury if you do an online search to try to find people to commiserate with about the fiendishly confusing Analytics interface, instead you get this:

Google Analytics already has one of the most usable interfaces in the Web Analytics world. 

 If Google Analytics "has one of the most usable interfaces in the Web Analytics world" what that tells you is that the entire Web Analytics world is composed of software developers and sadists.

People who look at web analytics are not software developers. They are people who want to make money from their web site. A web site that is not about software development. If they WERE developers they could create their own analytic tools. 

Now we've already seen that you have to have some level of comfort with code, but here's the best part of all: you have to learn something called "regular expressions." 

As another random Internet person says: Regular Expressions – Don’t Use Google Analytics Without Them.

Would you like to see an example of a regular expression? Here you go:

$string1 =~ m/(H..).(o..)/)

Now as it happens, I have some minor experience with regular expressions due to some database text verification work. I've also had experience with Javascript and SQL and PHP. I actually created a PHP page to track out clicks by sending the out click information to my SQL database on my ISP - but it took too long to process database insert so I tried to use Google Analytics instead. I almost ripped my own head off.

I can't imagine what someone with no code experience at all makes of the Google Analytics interface.

So anybody out there who is looking for someone else to commiserate with over the sadistic Google Analytics interface - you are not alone.

Theatre Essay: In defense of Act I Scene 1 of HAMLET

I saw two very different productions of HAMLET in the last two weeks. Almost the only thing they both had in common was that they excised Act I Scene 1.

I object.

I have no problem with trimming the play. Everybody does it and with good reason. Avon Bill never used one word when he could use ten, and it's hard enough for modern audiences to interpret the language. And in spite of what some people would have you believe, it is not finally the language that is the most important aspect of Shakespeare's work, impressive though his language is - it's the plot and the emotions.

Here is the scene as written:

ACT I

         SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

            FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO

        BERNARDO

            Who's there?

        FRANCISCO

            Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

        BERNARDO

            Long live the king!

        FRANCISCO

            Bernardo?

        BERNARDO

            He.

        FRANCISCO

            You come most carefully upon your hour.

        BERNARDO

            'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

        FRANCISCO

            For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
            And I am sick at heart.

        BERNARDO

            Have you had quiet guard?

        FRANCISCO

            Not a mouse stirring.

        BERNARDO

            Well, good night.
            If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
            The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

        FRANCISCO

            I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

            Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS

        HORATIO

            Friends to this ground.

        MARCELLUS

            And liegemen to the Dane.

        FRANCISCO

            Give you good night.

        MARCELLUS

            O, farewell, honest soldier:
            Who hath relieved you?

        FRANCISCO

            Bernardo has my place.
            Give you good night.

            Exit

        MARCELLUS

            Holla! Bernardo!

        BERNARDO

            Say, What, is Horatio there?

        HORATIO

            A piece of him.

        BERNARDO

            Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.

        MARCELLUS

            What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

        BERNARDO

            I have seen nothing.

        MARCELLUS

            Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
            And will not let belief take hold of him
            Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
            Therefore I have entreated him along
            With us to watch the minutes of this night;
            That if again this apparition come,
            He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

        HORATIO

            Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

        BERNARDO

            Sit down awhile;
            And let us once again assail your ears,
            That are so fortified against our story
            What we have two nights seen.

        HORATIO

            Well, sit we down,
            And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

        BERNARDO

            Last night of all,
            When yond same star that's westward from the pole
            Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
            Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
            The bell then beating one,--

            Enter Ghost

        MARCELLUS

            Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

        BERNARDO

            In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

        MARCELLUS

            Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

        BERNARDO

            Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

        HORATIO

            Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

        BERNARDO

            It would be spoke to.

        MARCELLUS

            Question it, Horatio.

        HORATIO

            What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
            Together with that fair and warlike form
            In which the majesty of buried Denmark
            Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

        MARCELLUS

            It is offended.

        BERNARDO

            See, it stalks away!

        HORATIO

            Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

            Exit Ghost

        MARCELLUS

            'Tis gone, and will not answer.

        BERNARDO

            How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
            Is not this something more than fantasy?
            What think you on't?

        HORATIO

            Before my God, I might not this believe
            Without the sensible and true avouch
            Of mine own eyes.

        MARCELLUS

            Is it not like the king?

        HORATIO

            As thou art to thyself:
            Such was the very armour he had on
            When he the ambitious Norway combated;
            So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
            He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
            'Tis strange.

        MARCELLUS

            Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
            With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

        HORATIO

            In what particular thought to work I know not;
            But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
            This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

        MARCELLUS

            Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
            Why this same strict and most observant watch
            So nightly toils the subject of the land,
            And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
            And foreign mart for implements of war;
            Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
            Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
            What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
            Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
            Who is't that can inform me?

        HORATIO

            That can I;
            At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
            Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
            Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
            Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
            Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
            For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
            Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
            Well ratified by law and heraldry,
            Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
            Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
            Against the which, a moiety competent
            Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
            To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
            Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
            And carriage of the article design'd,
            His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
            Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
            Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
            Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
            For food and diet, to some enterprise
            That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
            As it doth well appear unto our state--
            But to recover of us, by strong hand
            And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
            So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
            Is the main motive of our preparations,
            The source of this our watch and the chief head
            Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

        BERNARDO

            I think it be no other but e'en so:
            Well may it sort that this portentous figure
            Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
           That was and is the question of these wars.

        HORATIO

            A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
            In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
            A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
            The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
            Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
            As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
            Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
            Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
            Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
            And even the like precurse of fierce events,
            As harbingers preceding still the fates
            And prologue to the omen coming on,
            Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
            Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
            But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

Theatre Essay: Bitches is Crazy: or why I despise TALLEY'S FOLLY

BITCHES IS CRAZY

~ OR ~

Why I despise and loathe the Pulitzer Prize-winning play TALLEY'S FOLLY

 

In which I explain why I have a problem with a play that presents a stalker, who forces a woman to remain in a boathouse until she submits, as a romantic hero.

When I first saw Lanford Wilson’s TALLEY’S FOLLY, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, I didn’t even pick up on the horrific stalking and bullying aspect. This was in the early 1990s, when I first became interested in writing plays, and I considered it homework to go and see a community theatre production of the play in Haddonfield New Jersey. I picked the play exactly because it had won the Pulitzer Prize: I figured it had to be good. Like Shakespeare good.

But instead I was bored. It’s a ninety minute play that felt like two hours, but I gritted my teeth and stayed until the end. As I was walking out of the theatre I remember wondering whether I should abandon playwriting and go back to painting. If that was theatre, then I hated theatre.

My impression of the play, based on that long-ago production, was a long boring conversation, with lots of exposition, and the man doing most of the talking. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on the truly repulsive underlying message of the play - perhaps it was the way it was directed - I don't remember any physical force used, as specified in the stage directions of the published script. 

Cultural gatekeepers have always been men (or men's female enablers.) To this day the vast majority of movie and theatre critics in the traditional media are men. But thanks to the new technologies all kinds of excellent feminist commentary is available to the public. One of the best purveyors of feminist culture theory is a web site called Tiger Beatdown. And one of its best essays is called TIGER BEATDOWN FOR DUDES Presents: That’s Not Funny. No, Seriously Dude, It’s Not.

In this essay, the author identifies a cultural trope called the Because...? Um Girl. I’ll let author Sady Doyle explain:

So then, of course, you have (television series) Eastbound & Down, where a man calls a woman a “bitch” and promises to “fuck her up (with some truth),” because she doesn’t want to immediately jump into a relationship with him, and her reaction to this is to dump her fiance and move to a new city with him about five seconds later, so he basically verbally abuses her into being his girlfriend, which, if we were encouraged to look into her motivations to the same extent that we’re allowed to examine the motivations of the other (male) characters on the show, would be some spooky tragic cycle-of-abuse bullshit – the show emphasizes that the only other characters who are drawn to him are deeply fucked up, I would take “deeply fucked up” as an answer here – but in the context of the show, it’s all cool. Because she’s not a person; she’s a plot point. Because she’s a woman.

Fear and contempt of women are the only motivating factors to write a character this way. In Apatow-Brand comedies, the girls who are not “Because, Um…?” girls are either bitches (wives; sexually unavailable women; professional women; ex-girlfriends) or sluts, typically of the crazy drunk variety. (Woody Allen, another prominent “Because, Um…?” writer, uses Manhattan to compress all of the above-listed “bitch” characteristics into a successful lesbian ex-wife, whom he hilariously confesses to having tried to run over with his car. HA! A man trying to murder a woman because she ended their relationship and/or is not heterosexual! It’s funny, ’cause that’s how a lot of women actually die!) Eastbound & Down takes this tack by having literally only two other female characters, a wife whom we’re encouraged to think of as an uptight bitch and a “fuckbuddy” whose only defining characteristic is that she is such a crazy drunk slut all the time. The “Because, Um…?” girl can only exist in the negative space created by this double bind. If women have standards, they’re bitches; if they don’t have standards, they’re sluts: try to write yourself out of this, and you find that the only feasible way to create a non-threatening female character is to give her no motivations or personality whatsoever, to turn her into a cipher who provides love or sex simply because the plot demands it.

This is an exact description of Sally in TALLEY’S FOLLY. 

Let us review the evidence. Wikipedia mentions some salient plot points:

While on vacation in Lebanon, Missouri the previous summer, Matt met Sally and has sent her a letter every day since. Though the single reply from Sally gave him no hope for romantic encouragement, he has bravely returned to ask her to marry him.

*** 

Sally arrives at the boathouse and is in disbelief that Matt has shown up uninvited, even though he had written her that he planned to come for the holiday.

*** 

Matt's interest in Sally had never waned; once, he drove from his home in St. Louis to the hospital where she worked and waited hours for her, even after being informed that she was not available.

Notice how the Wikipedia entry - which sounds like it was taken right from marketing copy - refers to the stalker coming to confront the stalkee after a year of rejection as "brave." 

But Matt didn’t just wait for her at the hospital, he did a little snooping around while he was there:

                   MATT
Also, I talk to the patients at the hospital, remember? Some are not so young. And they all say "Are you Sally's beau? Every time we say something sweet to Sally, try to get fresh, she says 'Come on now, I got a beau."

Now please note - we are supposed to take this to mean that Sally is “really” in love with Matt because she’s telling men who are hitting on her that she has a boyfriend. She is supposed to be playing extreme “hard to get." 

In addition to spying on her at work, Matt spies on Sally through her aunt:

                    MATT

Oh my goodness. She does have a vanity as well as a temper. You are thirty-one because you were fired from teaching Sunday school on your twenty-eight birthday and that was three years ago.

                   SALLY

What?

                   MATT

I've become great friends with your Aunt Charlotte. There's a counterspy in your home. You're infiltrated. I didn't tell you. You're ambushed. I've come up on you from behind.

                   SALLY

When did you talk to Aunt Charlotte?

                   MATT

Last year. For a second today. And every few weeks during the winter. On the telephone. (He laughs.) I never heard of anyone being fired from Sunday school before.

                   SALLY

I quit. We didn't get along.

This is an astounding, grotesque exchange for many reasons. First, because Sally’s aunt has betrayed her to a stranger. Either the aunt has all her faculties and still gave out embarrassing personal information about her niece because she's an awful person with no respect for her own niece's privacy, or she has mental problems and Matt is taking advantage of this to get the dirt on his obsession. 



And Matt is not the least bit bashful about the fact that he has been obsessively spying on this woman - he brags about it with undisguised triumph:



You're infiltrated. I didn't tell you. You're ambushed. I've come up on you from behind.


I won’t even go into the apparent sexual assault metaphor there. And don’t tell me that Wilson was unaware of that possible interpretation.

The third reason that the “talking to Aunt Charlotte” passage is so objectionable is because of the way that Sally reacts right after Matt has humiliated her. Remember now, Matt has just said a few lines earlier that Sally has a temper. Here’s how she responds to all this information:

                   SALLY

I quit. We didn't get along.

Now most human beings would have some kind of objection to this gross violation of privacy let alone someone who is supposed to have a temper. But Sally is a “because...um girl?” defined as

"a non-threatening female character (with) no motivations or personality whatsoever...  a cipher who provides love or sex simply because the plot demands it."

To have Sally respond in a way that a person with a temper would respond would work against the narrative that says that Matt will win her in the end. And the plot demands that he win her in the end. And that's not hyperbole - the Matt character confides in the audience at the top of the play:

They tell me that we have ninety-seven minutes here tonight without intermission... if everything goes well for me tonight this should be a waltz one-two-three, one-two-three a no-holds barred romantic story..."

He virtually declares the outcome and how long it will take. There's certainly no time for Sally to have an actual personality, or for there to be any realistic consequences to Matt's actions. The plot demands that she provide love. She delivers, like a compliant plot device.

Matt's charm offensive doesn't end with the stalking, however. He's not afraid to use physical force - several times throughout the play Sally tries to leave the boathouse and Matt stops her by holding her back or blocking the door:


                      SALLY

-Get gone now. Leave before I hit you with something. You can walk to the Barnettes', they'll give you some gas for a couple of coupons.

                      MATT

Now who is making the disturbance?

                     SALLY

               (Angry, quite loud.)

Get off this property or get out of my way so I can go back to the house, or I'll disturb you for real.

                     MATT

We are going to settle this before anyone goes anywhere.

                     SALLY

I won't be made a fool just because I fell in love again, Matt, and I won't be pushed around again.

                     MATT

You're not getting away from me.

                     SALLY

Get out of here!

                     MATT

Do you realize what you said? Did you hear yourself?

                    SALLY

             (Yelling toward the door.)

Buddy! Cliffy! Here he is. Matt Friedman is down here!

(Her last words are muffled by Matt's hand as he grabs her and holds her fast. She tries to speak over his lines.)

                     MATT

              (Grabbing her.)

Vilde chaya! you are a crazy woman! We could both be shot with that gun. People do not scream and yell and kick.

              (She stops struggling.)

People are blessed with the beautiful gift of reason and communication.

              (He starts to release her.)

                    SALLY
Cliffy!

                    MATT

               (Grabbing her again.)

How can such a thing happen? When they passed out logic everybody in the Ozarks went on a marshmallow roast. You are rational now?

(He releases her. She moves away. Matt stands where he can block her exit.)

Life is going to be interesting with you. Are you hurt?

Is there anything more repulsive than a thug using physical force against someone he is supposed to love, and then lecturing her on the proper way for people to behave? 

But remember how Sally is playing hard-to-get? Stalker/bully Matt can see the clues that tells him what she really wants, in spite of her many protestations.

This passage contains one of those clues:



                   SALLY

I won't be made a fool just because I fell in love again, Matt, and I won't be pushed around again.

Did “because I fell in love again” leap out at you too? Who ever says that, right in the middle of screaming at somebody to go away? Women, of course, in "romantic comedies" and that’s why you have to respond to their craziness by replying:



                  MATT

You're not getting away from me.

Women don’t know what they want. Or maybe they secretly do know what they want, but they’ll jerk you around for a whole year. And that's why, as a man, you can’t take no for an answer. You have to keep her in that boathouse until she gives you the right answer.

But maybe Sally is just crazy and so Matt is forced to act crazy too. But here’s the thing - nowhere in the play are we led to believe that Sally is crazy. She’s normal, albeit sad yet beautiful. No, Sally isn't crazy, Sally is a woman and bitches is crazy. 

But even more important than Sally blurting out that she fell in love is Matt blurting out in Yiddish during the struggle.

But first let's look at more of Matt’s charms:

                      MATT

I am foolish to insinuate myself down here and try to feel like one of the hillbillies. Who ever heard of this Friedman? I don't blame you. I won't be Matt Friedman any more. I'll join the throng. Call myself... August Hedgepeth. Sip moonshine over the back of my elbow. Wheat straw in the gap in my teeth. I'm not cleaning my glasses, I'm fishing for crappies. Bass.

                     SALLY

Sun perch.

                     MATT

Oh heck, yes. Only I'm not. I can't even take off my shoes without feeling absurd.

                     SALLY

People don't walk around with their shoes off here, sipping moonshine. It isn't really the Hatfields and the McCoys. The ones who go barefoot only do it because they can't afford shoes.

So we’ve seen that Matt is a stalker, a bully, and he mocks Sally’s community. How could such a character possibly be acceptable as a romantic lead?

Here’s how:  

                      MATT

...and Buddy came - does your entire family have such absurd names?

                      SALLY

His real name is Kenny. We call him Buddy.

                      MATT

Kenny? Is his real name? This is better, for a grown man? Kenny? Kenny Talley, Lottie Talley, Timmy Talley, Sally Talley? Your brother also does not know how to converse. Your brother talks in rhetorical questions. "You're Sally's Jewish friend, ain't ya? What do you think you want here? Did you ever hear that trespassing was against the law?"

Kenny has a good reason for telling Matt he's trespassing - he told him to leave because Sally wasn't there. Matt believed she was hiding from him and that's why he refuses to leave. 

So why is Buddy the bad guy and Matt the hero of this passage? 

Anti-Semitism. 

Matt's from an oppressed minority so he's allowed to be completely obnoxious and still get the girl. 

Still not convinced? Imagine how obnoxious Sally would sound if she said this to Matt: "What kind of names are those? Schlomo, Golda, Moishe, Uri?" She even says at one point that he shouldn't make fun of her accent because she wouldn't make fun of his. But the normal rules of polite behavior do not apply to Matt: we are expected to excuse him because he is a victim of anti-Semitism. 

And this should not be surprising - if people can excuse Roman Polanski for drugging and raping a 13-year-old due to the Holocaust, surely we can forgive Matt a little stalking and bullying and bigotry.

As much as I loathe TALLEY’S FOLLY, Wilson, in his introduction to the published version, reveals it could have been much worse. Wilson writes:

Everyone loved it, that is, except Marshall W. Mason, who was to direct. After many glowing comments and applause, Marshall and I retired to his office. He had (ominously) said nothing during the discussion period. I thought the play was perfect, so I had quite a chip on my shoulder. He said something like, "So the story is, essentially, Matt comes down to Lebanon and browbeats this girl into hysterical admission that she's barren." I said yes and he said "What's fun about that?" He pointed out that with Matt knowing she couldn't bear children he didn't even have to tell her he refused to bring children into the world. Except for being turned down, he had nothing more at stake. He didn't even have to browbeat her, he could just say Lottie told me. It wasn't even dramatic. His actions were brutal with little cost to himself.

All true enough, but please note that in spite of the glaring flaws that Wilson admits were in the script, "everyone" - that would be the Circle Rep play reading group - loved it prior to the re-write, and Wilson himself thought it was "perfect." Wilson continues:

However, if he did not know her situation, then he would first have to tell Sally that he refused to have children and ask if she would have him in that condition. He had to risk something. Marshall must have been very convincing because the chip fell off my shoulder and very soon I was taking notes. I rewrote the middle third of the play. It was much more dramatic... Marshall said, "Let's read it. I'll read Matt, you read Sally.

OK, so Wilson rewrote some of this "perfect" play, but there was still a huge problem, he continues:

I had sat there as Sally, watching Matt jump through hoops, and all I said was "Oh Matt" and "Come on now, Matt." I didn't like my part. And I especially didn't like it when Matt finally told me he wanted to marry me but he didn't want kids. The writer had not provided me with the obvious response: "Who told you I couldn't have children?" I sat there livid because he had made me feel terrible about his lousy childhood and I thought it had all been a ploy. And all I did in the script was cave in. Back to the typewriter. Sally's part grew by a third. It is still not as flamboyant as Matt's but I think she now holds her own. She is much stronger and much more her own woman. We finally had a play.

I would argue Wilson is giving himself too much credit here - as I've demonstrated, Sally is a sap when it's narratively convenient. But then Wilson admits there are still problems with the final version of the play - the version that won the 1980 Pulitzer for drama:

If Matt knows she can't have children and it takes the whole play for him to convince Sally it's OK that she can't have children - it's a story. If he doesn't know and he presents his resolution, and then finds out she can't have children anyway - it's a plot. What happens is a very strange phenomenon. When Sally finally screams out in desperation, "I can't have children, I can't bear children!" there is an almost audible click as the last piece of the plot locks into place. It is an enormously satisfying moment. We feel the perfection of it. But it is also terribly disappointing. We feel like we have been manipulated. This has all been a carefully worked out artifice... that's what a plot this starkly presented does. It underlines the artifice... we decided to live with it.

And bingo - Pulitzer. 

Now the repulsiveness of Matt's character is not an issue for Wilson because, as I said, Matt gets an asshole license due to anti-Semitism. But the problem with the plot as-is goes beyond the "perfection" of its artifice. Wilson has set up a situation where a woman is interested in a man, but tells him to go away many many times, presumably because she can't have children. But if that's the issue, why didn't she just tell him she can't have children?

But if that is really why she rejects him, why wouldn't she immediately respond, when he tells her he doesn't want children, that she can't have children? Instead he has to drag it out of her - still.

No matter how many times Wilson has someone tell us that Sally is strong, what he shows us instead is that Sally is a dithering, childish cipher who has to be browbeaten and physically restrained by Matt in order to achieve a happy ending. 

And are we to believe that because she can't have children, Sally has sworn off men forever? And that only a browbeating stalker who doesn't want children and is eleven years older could possibly make her interested in sex, love and marriage again? Are we supposed to believe that Sally is going to end up an old maid unless Matt comes along, like Mary in the George Bailey-free alternate universe in "It's a Wonderful Life?" That movie has the excuse of being made in the 1940s. TALLEY'S FOLLY was written in 1979. 

Finally, the device of having Matt speak to the audience at the beginning of the play, telling us up front that he's going to try to get the girl, adds nothing to the story. In fact, it puts Matt and Sally on an even more unequal footing by making Matt the omniscient narrator and Sally just a character behind the fourth wall, and it puts the audience in the position of being confederates of Matt in his campaign to win Sally.

And his little winking aside to the audience at the end of the play: 

(takes out his watch, shows time to Sally and then the audience) 

...right on the button. Good-night

- is creepy, precious and smug, all at the same time. 

I've been involved in play readings since November 2000 in New York City, and I've seen actors make really crappy plays sound good. Skilled and appealing actors can work wonders on bad scripts. And Wilson had access to a very high caliber of actor for his work by the time he wrote TALLEY'S FOLLY. But what those not-so-great actors in Haddonfield New Jersey made plain to me, and what the text itself and Wilson's own comments make even plainer is that this is actually a poorly thought-out play with a repulsive character as a romantic lead.

During the course of writing this essay, I had an argument on Facebook with an actor who defended TALLEY'S FOLLY by saying that obviously I am wrong about the play, since it's so popular and nobody else has noticed the whole stalking/bully aspect.

But in the past few years, critics are finally beginning to take note. 

This is from Theatre Mirror Reviews in 2006:

Adam Zahler’s canny direction makes Matt’s determination -- and aggression (He’s not taking ‘NO’ for an answer) -- seems ever so romantic. Remember, the play is set in 1944, way before “stalking” entered our vocabulary. Stephen Russell makes Matt an earnest, if gangly, hero to rescue Marianna Bassham’s fragile maiden-in-distress. The two seem so mismatched that we, just like Sally, need convincing---and we get it in Zahler’s heartfelt production.

This is from a 2009 theatre review in Pegasus News:

Matt Friedman is persistent (as many smitten men can be) but he doesn't seem delusional. The idea of stalking in the sense we have today didn't exist in 1979, when Folly won the Pulitzer, or 1944 when the play is set. Sally doesn't make Matt feel welcome, but she doesn't exactly chase him off.

And this is from a 2012 review in a blog associated with the Journal News:

She finds moments — flashes of moments, really — where Sally drops her resolve to reveal emotion in a shy smile, a glint in her eye, a color change on her expressive face.It’s not much for Matt to work with, but Stone uses those moments as fuel, to push, prod and needle his way into Sally’s heart.

In our modern age, Sally’s family would have a restraining order, power being power and no meaning no. Matt’s considerable charms — despite the best of intentions — would be kept at bay.

Of course the stalking is excused based on the "that's just how it was in the good old days" argument - but at least there is acknowledgement of the behavior. 

But why keep producing a play that excuses stalking and bullying? Not only excuses it, but posits those behaviors as absolutely necessary for a romantic comedy - the only actual dramatic struggle on stage in the whole play is Matt restraining Sally from leaving the boathouse, after refusing to leave it himself. 

My theory is that in addition to being relatively inexpensive to produce, most of the people who've seen this play in the past twenty years are old - theatre audiences are famously old. When the audience for TALLEY'S FOLLY was coming of age, male dominance was the absolute law of the land. Nobody even questioned it. So of course these attitudes and behaviors are perfectly acceptable to them, even "romantic." 

As the post-baby boomers become old and become the theatre audience, they might not be so comfortable with the extreme patriarchy of this play - and TALLEY'S FOLLY will one day go the way of WHY MARRY, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize winner that nobody ever produces anymore. Because it's crap.

So sure, few people notice the egregiousness of TALLEY'S FOLLY now, but that's just because I'm ahead of the curve.

c. 2012 by Nancy McClernan

And if that isn't enough for you here are even more reasons why I hate TALLEY'S FOLLY.

UPDATE: years after the #metoo movement, misogynist idiots are still producing this play.