tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post3519407160020377474..comments2023-09-20T14:34:21.102+02:00Comments on Postcards from the Gods: Je suis homme blanc / Wir sind alle weißen MännerAndrew Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-69636002339250517562015-11-20T02:35:18.100+01:002015-11-20T02:35:18.100+01:00One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry!One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-63488244983129908852015-11-19T16:50:46.500+01:002015-11-19T16:50:46.500+01:00Yes.
And it may involve challenging very deep wa...Yes. <br /><br />And it may involve challenging very deep ways of thinking. <br /><br />When we tell a joke, we say, "This bloke walks into a bar . . ." and we all accept it. <br /><br />But if we said, "This woman walks into a bar . . ." it would cause consternation. What was the woman doing in a bar? Was she one her own? Was she an alcoholic? What was she wearing? Was it really safe for her to be there?Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14877407195452350555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-25933504449553175532015-11-19T16:39:57.641+01:002015-11-19T16:39:57.641+01:00Well proportional representation raises the spectr...Well proportional representation raises the spectre of quotas and quotas scare everyone, even the people they are meant to help. But they're only provocative if you accept that the system as it currently stands is meritocratic (and if you do, how do you account for the two to one difference in productions of men to women? The unspoken assumption is obvious.) <br /><br />The truth is that a quota system *is* currently in place, it's just invisible and (mostly) unconscious. The Bruntwood and other blind submission prizes average out to 50/50 gender wise but what happens after, during the development process? The stats for commissions to women are absurdly low, something like what, 16 percent? Well below their productions and far below representation of men (where commissions roughly track stage representation.) When women do get commissions they are disproprtionately plays for children. <br /><br />This is an issue of trust. Can she open on a big stage? (Current answer: no) Can she fill the house? And most perniciously - is it a niche play? how will this make our institution look twenty, thirty years from now? I was thrilled that the new National season includes some black playwrights we don't typically see in the UK, then disappointed to find it had been qualified as a 'season of black plays' or some such. Does this not telegraph a certain ambivalence? <br /><br />So what to do. Well first let's acknowledge, as the Abbey eventually did, that we have a quota system in place masquerading as meritocracy. Let's admit that young writer programmes advantage the middle class, the white and the male and replace them with emerging writer programmes without age cut-offs. This is key to getting a broad talent pool, so no one can ever say again 'there weren't enough plays by x out there I could develop'. Let's expand blind submissions wherever possible and where not possible let's adopt (artistic directors, literary managers) a critical attitude to our choices. The idea isn't to replace one quota system with another but to replace reflexive thinking with critical thinking. <br /><br />I think it's happening already. It is a long process because the enemy is within. Most of the men who run theatres think of men to develop and commission because it seems natural. They don't mean to cause harm, but they do. Nor are men the only problem. Women/minorities participate in the system and internalise those ideas. The challenge is to show these numbers for what they are - unnatural, strange, novelty theatre. The product of bias. <br /><br />It starts with an openness to subject matter (and possibly form). It's hard to blame theatre for something that begins in childhood, when boys are made to feel odd for reading about girls. Shakespeare is for everyone, Bronte is for girls - isn't that the defense of the new passport in a nutshell? These are products of that childhood in 2015. But things do change, even in such impenetrable fortresses as Hollywood. How long did it take for women authors to stop using male pseudonyms in order to be taken seriously? Two hundred years, give or take. We're still doing it in theatre. Change can't come soon enough for us.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-402682259526470862015-11-19T10:12:44.383+01:002015-11-19T10:12:44.383+01:00Great post. I'm sitting here thinking about yo...Great post. I'm sitting here thinking about your provocation about proportional representation. And I'm trying not to get distracted by thinking things like, "Well, what if there were five fantastic plays by women, but only three female spaces available?" and, "Would the proportions have to represent vegetarians and cyclists and people over 70 and those with rare skin diseases and wouldn't that be just more tick-boxes than ever?" <br /><br />I think those questions are distractions because there's a bigger question: "Who is the 'we' who should have proportional representation?" There isn't a centralised body making artistic decisions for all theatres, so it's not obvious who a PR system would apply to. The only practical way to campaign for better balance is to focus on the bigger institutions and demand action from the top. <br /><br />The recent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/12/meryl-streep-joins-feminist-protest-bias-dublin-abbey-theatre" rel="nofollow">#wakingthefeminists campaign</a> against the lack of female playwrights in the Abbey Theatre's anniversary programme is an example of that. Even here you could say there were contradictions: are the campaigners happy with the Abbey's record on representing other excluded groups? It's good that they're making a stand, but any change they bring about will just be the start of a long process.<br /><br />So I guess the question I'm throwing back is to do with knowing your enemy. Who are the people or institutions who are not showing openness and trust? And how can their conscious and unconscious biases be challenged?Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14877407195452350555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-76351208983055731022015-11-19T04:36:26.338+01:002015-11-19T04:36:26.338+01:00Reading this I couldn't help but recall the Ro...Reading this I couldn't help but recall the Rotterdam-related interview with Jon Brittain (Exeunt). The question is whether a straight man can write a lesbian/trans story, is this moral etc. <br />Brittain makes an eloquent defense of the imaginative powers of the playwright and points out that limiting him would limit minority writers still more (because the limits go both ways and there are only so many lesbian/trans stories we will see on stage.) Fair enough.<br /><br />But there he hits upon a problem, a problem he acknowledges but ultimately turns away from. To paraphrase, he hopes his work has not taken away an opportunity from someone else to tell their own story. All very noble and nice, but the reality is OF COURSE you're taking the opportunity from someone else. You have Theatre's blessing to tell any story you like, and your qualification for this job is that you are a white man. <br /><br />Does that mean your play isn't good? Is it 'inauthentic' (whatever that means)? Honestly, who cares? The point is the biases work in your favour. If YOU write it, it's universal. If I - gay, working class, minority-white and female for the record - write it, it gets 'developed' for a few months or years and eventually dumped in a niche women's festival. This is a reality that needs to be stared down unflinchingly if we want things to change (and I do believe Brittain does).<br /><br />Any and every good play (or devised piece for that matter) is both specific and universal almost by definition. It lives through but also outside the playwright. But that's not the way it works under our system. By revealing myself as I just did I automatically forfeit my universality credentials and take on a bunch of hyphens. <br /><br />Btw intersectionality is a strangely inert way to describe real human experience. It's as if we run out of energy when we get past the one or two obvious differences, as if having more than one or two is asking too much or piling it on (Oppression Olympics!) But I don't cease being a woman because I'm gay, and I don't cease being gay because I'm working class. What I'd like the straight white men (and occasionally straight white women) to understand is that I'm as capable of transmuting this experience into art as you are yours. I can write about other things - and still write about myself. <br />I'm not asking for your guilt or pity, but your openness. And trust. <br /><br />So what would happen if we had proportional representation? <br /><br />More of everything. Literal and metaphorical difference. Perspectives you've seen and know and others that will be new to you. Sometimes all at once. An end to ticking boxes because there won't be any boxes left. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-46918084810665071672015-11-18T16:16:52.498+01:002015-11-18T16:16:52.498+01:00PS I think the non-white population of the UK is m...PS I think the non-white population of the UK is more like 13% or 14% than 20%.Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14877407195452350555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-68965345972778440472015-11-18T15:55:07.569+01:002015-11-18T15:55:07.569+01:00Agreed. And your comments are reminding me of John...Agreed. And your comments are reminding me of John McGrath's A Good Night Out in which he makes the case that there's no point in having left-wing political theatre if it comes in the clothing of the same old bourgeois theatre. The very form of the theatre has to change if it is to have a real impact. Yeah, so who knows what forms, what interpretations would appear if mainstream theatre was created and reviewed by 1Xtra/Asian Network listeners? And who knows how many people are being written out of the story because of unconscious biases that people like you and me have?Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14877407195452350555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-65021590252368437302015-11-18T15:30:45.397+01:002015-11-18T15:30:45.397+01:00First thing: ARGH! That Jane Griffiths quote was ...First thing: ARGH! That Jane Griffiths quote was actually the one I first thought of, and then elided with the Rachel Chavkin one. How interesting. <br /><br />Second thing: I honestly don't know if you're being blinkered or not. I've decided that, to a certain extent, I live inside my privilege/taste so much that possibly the worst thing I can do is tell people telling me that I don't understand that I definitely do, actually. <br /><br />I mean, yes, what you ask is partly the provocation of this piece. But I think it breaks down across lots of different angles. <br /><br />The first and most important is representation in concrete employment now. This just needs to happen. A reasonable proportion of writers, directors, designers, and leading roles need to be allotted a lot more evenly than at present.<br /><br />The question of what this will do the stories told, the interest taken in them, and so on is what I find more unguessable. I mean, I keep thinking of Heiner Müller's Hamletmaschine as being pretty "universal". Cast it differently and everyone can get everything from it, kinda thing. But of course it's not. It's very specific (and actually sort of ludicrous in its eighties sexism). So I wonder what would and wouldn't be alienating for me in other people's work if I wasn't me. <br /><br />While writing this I was thinking, for example, of how I've never once listened to 1Xtra or The Asian Network on the BBC. And then, does that mean Radio 3 should just be honest and rebrand as White FM. Or Radio 4 most of the time? And is that how other people feel? The idea that because the cultural mainstream is *so* white (and so often male), that literally everyone who isn't feels like they're watching someone else's interests represented. When thinking about it in terms of 1Xtra and The Asian Network, I honestly felt quite dizzy at the scale of alienation that would therefore involve for everyone else. (Of course, I don't suppose everyone Asian does listen to the Asian Network instead of R4, but if I *never* listen to it, and why would I...)<br />Andrew Haydonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07615226061116376519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-90347088403291423372015-11-18T15:01:32.627+01:002015-11-18T15:01:32.627+01:00Another white, middle-class (etc) man responds.
...Another white, middle-class (etc) man responds. <br /><br />Lovely post. I'm finding it hard to say the thing I want to say without sounding like I'm minimising the problem. So let me say, for all the reasons you explain, there is a problem and I'm in favour of finding a solution to it. <br /><br />But I also want to say that, in terms of theatrical representation and critical interpretation, the problem is one of degree. If women understood only women and men understood only men, then we wouldn't see mixed audiences in the theatre. Everything would be segregated by race, class, age, gender, etc. The reason that isn't the case is that there is a lot of overlap in all our experiences. You don't have to be a Victorian lesbian to appreciate Tipping the Velvet and you don't have to be a royal living in the near future to get King Charles III. You just need to be a human being to understand the dilemmas the characters face.<br /><br />I'm fascinated by Jane Griffiths's claim in this article <a href="http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/opinions-and-analysis/performing-arts/jane-griffiths/what-women-critics-know-that-men-dont-249447" rel="nofollow">What Women Critics Know that Men Don't</a> that "women are good at translation". She says this because she believes women are so commonly asked to interpret male stories that they have to develop a special skill. <br /><br />But you don't have to disagree with her claim to make further claims that could be just as true: "working-class men are good at translation" because of all the middle-class stories they hear; "disabled people are good at translation" because of all the able-bodied stories they hear; "Welsh people are good at translation" because of all the English stories they hear. Growing up in the north-west of England, a friend of mine used to watch the washing-up-bottle-and-sticky-back-plastic bits on Blue Peter and think, "That'd be a good thing for children in London to make". It didn't occur to him that this experience could also be his. <br /><br />My point is that, one way or another, most of us translate stories to understand them in terms of our own experience. Actually, it must be all of us: even a patriarchal rich white male will sometimes encounter stories about poverty, disenfranchisement, etc, unless he sticks to a very narrow cultural diet. (That man may be more inclined to reject stories that don't chime with his experience, of course, and that can indeed be a problem.)<br /><br />So, yes, we should have more non-mainstream stories and, yes, we should have a wider variety of critical voices, but we shouldn't imagine that the problem is so great that none of us can understand each other at all. <br /><br />Or am I just being a blinkered patriarchal white male? (Genuine question, not rhetorical.)Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14877407195452350555noreply@blogger.com