Language - Part II: Copyright ... the Religious Right ... It's Your Right to be Offended ... etc

Posted by Bruce Miller
Warning: To add clarity to this discussion of "offensive language," a few words are used that you may find "offensive." Continue at your own risk. Thanks.

Under U. S. copyright law, it’s illegal for any theatre to rewrite or edit a single word in any play published after 1923 without first receiving written permission from the author or his/her agents. It’s not only a legal issue; it’s an ethical issue. If you’re going to tell people that you’re producing a play written by, say, Tennessee Williams, then the only honest thing to do is present the play as Williams wrote it. Williams no doubt chose his words carefully and with purpose, and it’s unethical to “sanitize” his language and then market the play as the authentic original. That’s why Barksdale, along with every other professional theatre worth its salt, presents plays as they were originally written.

Our 2004 production of The Man Who Came to Dinner starred Jill Bari Steinberg and Joseph Pabst (pictured to the right), and was written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in 1939. During the run I received several letters from audience members complaining that I’d “added” profanity to the play. Of course I hadn’t. The few mildly profane words that were spoken from our stage all came from the minds and pens of those beloved, iconic American playwrights, Kaufman and Hart (pictured below and to the left). In the popular culture of 1939, their language caused nary a ripple. In today’s cultural climate, heavily influenced by the rise of the religious right, these same words prompted a small parade of conservative audience members to march to the exits in a huff.

When I assured the complainers that I had not added profanity to this cherished American script, they told me I was lying. They had “seen the movie,” they said (and perhaps a couple high school or community productions), and “those words were not spoken." What they may have failed to consider is that the film codes of the ‘40s were more Puritanical than the Broadway codes, and so Kaufman and Hart apparently chose to cut a few words from the movie version while keeping the original stage version in tact. The high school and community producers who had removed the words on their own accord most likely did so illegally.

Yes, I know this happens all the time and I'm making no judgements about high school and community theatres. They face their own challenges and I applaud their work. I also believe that professional theatres are held to a different standard.

As we engage in Part II of this discussion about “offensive language,” I’m using “profanity” as the catch-all word. At its root, “profane” means “worldly,” as in the opposite of “spiritual.” Profane language—profanity—can be sub-divided into four categories:
· blasphemy (taking the name of a diety in vain),
· obscenity ("crude" words for sex acts or private body parts),
· scatology (having a fascination with excrement or urine), and
· cursing (“damn you,” “go to hell” etc. and their abreviations and euphemisms).
There are other offensive words having to do with race, but we’re going to discuss race in a separate blog entry. Slurs and profanity are not really the same thing.

By far the most objections I hear relate to blasphemy and stem from offense to religious principles. (If you like, you can read my thoughts on “offensive language” and Christian faith in Language – Part I: From Potter to Shakespeare to Jesus and Beyond, Jan 12, 2008.)

Sometimes it almost seems ludicrous. We produced The Lark in 2006, written by Jean Anouilh and adapted by Lillian Hellman, and the central character of the play was Joan of Arc (pictured to the left in a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti). This is, of course, the same Joan who was at first persecuted and later sainted by the Catholic Church. A couple audience members were offended when Joan cried out to God in her moments of greatest spiritual despair. “Why did you have to make Joan of Arc use the Lord’s name in vain?” one chastiser wrote. IN VAIN!!?? What on earth led any audience member to think that Joan’s cry to God was in vain?

When we produced The 1940's Radio Hour in 2002, one congregant really let me have it over the telephone for performing “Satanic music.” “That old black magic has me in its spell,” she eerily chanted into the phone. “That old black magic that you weave so well. Those icy fingers up and down my spine…” Finally the images became too much for her to continue.

Sometimes religious concerns cross over into moral situations. When we produced Winnie the Pooh at Theatre IV, a very sweet grandmother called me to ask if we couldn’t rewrite A. A. Milne to make it clearer that Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit were married. “I mean they keep talking about having all those babies, and you never really make it crystal clear that they’re married.” When I reminded her that Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit were, in fact, rabbits, and that rabbits didn’t get married, even in the days of A. A. Milne, she simply said, “Oh, you know what I mean.”

I did know what she meant. But still...

Another animal that never ceases to rile the religious right at Theatre IV is the ass referred to in Peter Pan—come see it this spring; my mailbox is ready and waiting. When Tinkerbell becomes frustrated with Peter’s attentions to Wendy, she calls Wendy “a silly ass.” Of course, Tinkerbell “speaks” only through the tinkling piano (or is it a flute?) that represents her fairy voice. Peter giggles when Tink calls Wendy the name. When Wendy inquires as to what funny thing Tinkerbell just said, Peter translates, and you can often hear the gasps.

I’m frequently told that language is so much more coarse in popular culture now than it used to be—and in many ways that’s true. But what’s also true is that there’s a growing group that becomes offended far more easily than people used to. When Mary Martin (pictured to the left) said “a silly ass” on the national airwaves in 1954's TV version of Peter Pan, no one batted an eye. Everybody accepted the word “ass” as another word for donkey. Today, some people hear “ass” and all they can think of is someone’s buttocks.

So is the problem with the word or the person hearing the word?

Thousands of audience members have loved our current production of Moonlight and Magnolias (pictured to the right, starring Dave Bridgewater, Scott Wichmann and Joe Pabst). And 20 or 40 audience members have been really offended by the language. A group of well-meaning folks from Good Samaritan Ministries called and asked for comps to one of our shows. They do amazing rehabilitation work with indigent men dealing with addiction in Richmond's South Side, and we were eager to help them out. We gave them comp tickets to the show of their choice, and they selected Moonlight.

The woman who set up the group called the box office to double-check the language. “No, the language isn’t bad,” our box office representative assured her. “They say the d-word once…I’m a little embarrassed to say it over the phone…but other than that, the language is fine.”

The woman thought, well, they only say “damn” once, and I think we can handle that, so we’ll accept the 15 free tickets and have a lovely evening out. What she didn’t know—what we didn’t make clear—is that “the d-word” was not “damn” but “dick,” as in Selznick’s graphic line about Hollywood pandering, “We suck the collective dicks" of our audience.

In fact, the actors in Moonlight say “damn”—and the far more controversial “God damn”—several times long before they get to the “collective dicks.” Our box office representative never even noticed that language when he saw the show. It simply rolled by him without calling any attention to itself. I'm not faulting him for this. He is pure of heart and more power to him. I'm just telling the story the way it happened.

When our urban missionaries arrived at the theatre and took their seats, they lasted only about 10 minutes before they couldn’t take it anymore. They stood up en masse and beat a hasty retreat to the lobby. Others in the audience looked at them and hadn’t a clue as to what was the problem. I called them on the following Monday, after hearing about their departure, and learned the whole story.

One of the challenges we face is finding the correct way to communicate with our audience about the language they can expect in any particular production. It is never our intention to surprise or offend. It is also not our intention to bowdlerize the language of the great playwrights to meet the particularly sensibilities of our times.

Coming soon – Language Part III: a history of censorship

--Bruce Miller

The Turkey Who Came Out from the Cold

Posted by Bruce Miller

Under the headline Refridgerator Refresher Course, there was a helpful household article a couple weeks back on the opening page of MSN.com. Who knew you were required to dust your condenser coils every two months—more if you have pets? I thought you dusted the coils every time your wife painted the kitchen and you had to pull the fridge away from the wall.

This, my friends, is why I’m not known as a handyman.

There were also helpful tips as to the best places in the fridge to store certain food items so as to avoid spoilage. For example, did you know to close the humidity vent on your fruit drawer and open the vent on your vegetable crisper because trapped moisture causes fruit to spoil more quickly but keeps vegetables fresher longer? Finally, a reason to know that tomatoes are a fruit and not a vegetable.

The article also said to “never keep eggs in the door of your fridge”—something I’ve been doing since I was old enough to know what an egg was. Which came first, the chicken or the egg or the salmonella?

All this sage advice prompted me to recall how invaluable are the theatrical services of Jason Weinbarger, one of Richmond’s most loyal theatre artists. Several years ago, Theatre IV was producing Having Our Say by Emily Mann in the historic Empire Theatre. Having Our Say is a lovely family drama about the first hundred years of the real life Delany sisters. Jason was brought in for a very special assignment.

In this wonderful play, the sisters have each passed their 100th birthdays. They had lived prominent and remarkable lives that spanned the entire 20th Century, and in the play they recall over two hours of memories with only minimal time offstage.

The two amazing actors we hired for the show, Marie Goodman Hunter and Kweli Leapart, were certainly nowhere near their centenaries. Nonetheless, they were, as required, actresses of a certain age. For one hundred and twenty-some minutes, the two of them filled the stage with wonder, recounting story after story while simultaneously setting a formal dining table and preparing a sumptuous dinner. Since they were the only two actors in the play, memorizing all those lines while mastering all that activity was in no way an easy assignment.

So we hired Jason to be a prompter, to sit off-stage in a soundproof booth, watch the show on a closed circuit monitor, follow the script, and prompt the ladies, if needed, through a wireless earphone that each of them was wearing. Jason is a remarkably kind and supportive man, and he was the perfect person for the job.

There was one scene in which Marie had to retrieve from the refridgerator all the food that she and Kweli would prepare during the upcoming scene, all the while recounting to the audience priceless memories from the Civil Rights Movement. To make life easier, we loaded the refridgerator before every performance so that the food items could be accessed in the proper order. I won’t pretend to remember the exact sequence, but for the sake of the story, let’s say that the potatoes came first, then the celery, then the carrots, then the cabbage, and finally the turkey. We loaded the refridgerator so that everything came out in that order.

For some reason we’ll never know, from the first day of rehearsal, Marie always wanted to go for the turkey first, which was not an easy thing to do. She had to reshuffle all those vegetables before she could get to the turkey, but on some days, in front of a live audience, that’s what she felt compelled to do. And when she did, it presented a few challenges.

There were specific lines having to do with that turkey, and other earlier lines having to do with the potatoes, celery, carrots and cabbage. If you pulled the food out of the fridge in the wrong order, then the lines also tended to arrive out of order. When that happened, God help us all.

One day I was walking backstage during the show, just checking to see if everything was running smoothly. I walked by Jason’s offstage booth, and through the door I heard a muted but firm voice talking into Marie’s earphone. “Marie,” Jason implored, “don’t go for the turkey. Pick up the potatoes, Marie. Marie, the potatoes! Not the celery, no ... Don't touch the cabbage, Marie! Go back to the potatoes!! (beat) MARIE, STEP AWAY FROM THE TURKEY!!!”

I had visions of poor Marie standing on stage jerking involuntarily in response to the demon voices we were piping into her head. But when I listened to the stage action with my other ear, no, she was just chatting pleasantly with the audience, determined to truss that turkey first and then deal with the potatoes later. I don’t think the audience had a clue that anything was amiss.

Today, as Terrie and I prepare holiday meals, it’s not uncommon for one of us to blurt out to the other, “STEP AWAY FROM THE TURKEY!!!” I’ve also heard it once or twice after I whined too much about an Opening Night that hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped.

It’s an ongoing tribute to Jason and Marie—a Refridgerator Refresher Course that I’ll always remember.

--Bruce Miller

Deathtr ... errr ... Birdtrap

Posted by Jacqueline "Jackie" Jones

A new acquaintance once asked me what kinds of roles I play. My friend Holly came to the rescue: "Jackie tends to play quirky characters," she said. Yeah, I thought. That and moms. Helga "I am psychic" Ten Dorp, my delicious current role in the production of Deathtrap now playing at Barksdale Hanover Tavern, definitely falls into the quirky category.

At Barksdale’s Hanover home, the cast dressing room is affectionately known as "the Pat Carroll Room" because it was the bedroom Ms Carroll occupied during her earliest runs of Nunsense. It shares the Tavern’s third floor with the business office of Michelle's Restaurant, and in this upper sanctum, actors and culinary artisans co-exist side by side.

About a year ago, Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap was my first show back at the Tavern since its renovation. During the run, we actors had been instructed not to open the windows because of the new alarm system. Till last week, I had never been tempted to disobey.

But on the Thursday evening of Deathtrap's Invitational Dress Rehearsal, I climbed the crooked “servant” stairs at the Tavern’s southwestern corner and entered the long and winding hallway that leads to our northwestern dressing room. Was it my imagination? A pigeon flew overhead. “There’s a bird up here!” I shouted.

Back and forth my new feathered friend frantically flew, seeking escape. That's when I noticed a broom-wielding bartender rushing forward from the other end of the hall, holding his “weapon” aloft like Sweeney Todd. And an arm-flapping waitress (Mrs. Lovett?) began squawking at my back. The pigeon, knowing an animal lover when he saw one, assessed the situation and headed straight toward me.

Quick as a bunny, I turned to the eastern windows looking out toward the historic Hanover Courthouse, hastily removed the "security nail" and tapped with all my might until the top window dropped. The bird, knowing a good thing when he saw one, circled my head like a plane attempting to land at JFK and then whizzed past my ear and out the window into the freedom of beautiful Hanover County.

“Give me liberty,” I thought. Patrick Henry tended bar in the original Hanover Tavern, you know. And his immortal words seemed to be working just as well for pigeons in 2007 as they had for patriots in 1775.

The restaurant staff, relieved by the speedy departure of our uninvited guest, headed back to their stations as I sauntered into the dressing room. My fellow actors were oblivious to all the excitement.

Soon the show began, and I headed downstairs in all my theatrical regalia to prepare for my first entrance. Except for a brief introduction the previous evening (and our Hitchcock moment a half hour earlier in the upstairs hall), Michelle’s new bartender and I had never met. Even if he were able to recognize me in street clothes, he'd never seen me all done up for the play in Helga's Little Dutch Boy wig and blue beret. Perhaps that explains the very curious look he gave as I strode past the bar on my way to the stage door and whispered, "You really didn’t need the broom, you know. It's good luck to have bird-poop on your head."

Oh, those crazy theatre people, I’m sure he thought, probably not identifying me with the pigeon rescuer from the upstairs hall. I smiled. Pete and Nancy Kilgore (animal lovers extraordinaire) would have been so proud.


--Jacqueline “Jackie” Jones
http://www.jacquelinejones.net/

"Odd Couple" Closes Flush with Laughs

Posted by Bruce Miller

We closed The Odd Couple today to a sold-out house, a theatre full of laughter, and a standing ovation. Congratulations and thanks to all involved.

We had three shows running simultaneously this summer--a first for us. Into the Woods, Disney's High School Musical and The Odd Couple. All three shows were hits, with lots of sold out performances. All three ended on a high note.

As soon as the house lights came up after Odd Couple curtain call, Joe Pabst (the director) and I scurried onto the stage to begin collecting the props we had lent to the production. As soon as the audience cleared, Jeff Clevenger (Speed), Jennifer Frank (Gwendolyn Pigeon) and Dave Bridgewater (Oscar Madison) joined us. Seems that over the years we’ve all learned the same valuable lesson. When you lend a prop to a show, be sure to claim it immediately after the final curtain call, or expect never to see it again.
Somewhere there’s a black hole that contains all the props that are routinely sucked into it approximately 60 minutes after each show ends. These props are destined to remain missing forever. It’s one of the laws of stage physics. I guarantee you that anyone who comes looking for props tomorrow will walk away empty handed. I’ve never figured out where the props go, but they go somewhere. And they go very quickly.

Jeannie Kilgore, who’s been subbing for stage manager Joseph Papa this week, warned me that one of the tin coffee mugs went missing in action this week, before the show even closed. It seems that Scott threw it down the hall one night, as Felix is supposed to, midway through Act II. The mug has never been heard from since. Seems Scotty’s got a great pitching arm. And the black hole was waiting, like a catcher, just offstage, behind home plate. Go Red Sox!

Jeannie also apologized for her faux pas during last night’s curtain speech, dutifully performed by Phil Whiteway. Phil and his family headed off to Nags Head today. Since he knew he’d be missing the final performance, he attended last night to personally thank our outstanding cast and crew.

Whenever Phil shows up at the theatre, he feels honor bound to make a curtain speech. God bless him for it. I HATE making curtain speeches, and more times than not, I ignore my responsibilities (opportunities?) and remain silent. Phil is far more responsible than I. He knows that making curtain speeches is an important component of our efforts to raise funds and sell tickets. So he selflessly mounts the stage, time after time, exercising due diligence for himself and also for me.

Anyway, as his pre-show welcoming speech was drawing to a close, Jeannie Kilgore was pushing buttons in the booth, preparing for the first sound cue (pre-show music) that she intended to start as soon as Phil finished. But, Jeannie, as I said earlier, is only filling in for Joseph Papa, and didn’t know exactly which button was which. So just as Phil was on his last two or three sentences, Jeannie hit the button that started a particularly loud rendition of the second sound cue—a exuberant toilet flush coming from off stage right. Phil apparently played it to the hilt and graciously allowed himself to be flushed off stage. The audience laughed uproariously. Jeannie was mortified.

At least we now know how to end Phil’s curtain speeches and still get a robust first laugh for the show.

Thanks again to everyone who made The Odd Couple such a hit. You couldn’t have been more Odd, and we appreciate it.

--Bruce Miller

Unexpected Co-Star Joins Dell Performance

In Genesis 3:14, God says to the serpent, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman.” When God said “the woman,” the particular woman He had in mind may have been Kesha Afrika Oliver, one of the leading lights of African American Repertory Theatre (formerly the Living Word Stage Company). Kesha HATES snakes!!

Can I hear an "Amen" somebody?

More’s the pity, then, when during one of last weekend’s outdoor performances of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the late great August Wilson play presented by AART at Dogwood Dell, Mr. No Shoulders himself decided to make a surprise appearance with Kesha onstage in front of a live audience.

Kesha was just beginning the “shout” section of the play, when she bowed her head to become one with the Holy Spirit, and found herself foot-to-fang with a wholly disgusting serpent instead.

“People must have thought I was really in touch with the Almighty,” Kesha said. “I shouted ‘Jesus!’ and jumped up, clapping my hands and tears flowing down my face.”

Other cast members said afterwards that they saw Kesha step on the snake, and then saw the snake slither out from under her skirt. After enjoying his few minutes of stardom, the serpent calmly returned to the wild, but not before inspiring one of Kesha’s more powerful and moving performances.

“I was saying prayers on stage that night, and really meaning 'em,” Kesha said. “That wasn’t acting. That was real. And the good Lord saw me through.”

For the latest on the newly-named African American Repertory Theatre, check out their website at http://www.livingwordstage.com/ .

--Bruce Miller