If you find a dead baby in your food, is it morally permissible to eat it? You're not starving; you just kinda want to eat human flesh in general and especially the flesh of this dead baby. Suppose that you know that nobody will ever come looking for this baby. No evidence will exist to tie you to this dead baby (you are in fact planning to eat this baby whole) and nobody will ever know that you ate the dead baby. In fact, reporting this dead baby may cause insurmountable problems for well-meaning people (like the nice lady who accidentally dropped this dead baby into your food; she'd probably never again be able to work this job that fills her with pride). At the very least, reasonable people might disagree about whether our taboo against eating dead babies should apply when the pros of a specific eating dead baby far outpace the cons.

Wait -- the baby twitched! Oh, wow. This baby is moving a lot. This baby is alive. It will probably die without your help, but you are here to help it... if you choose. You still, however, really want to eat this baby. Nobody will come looking for this baby; nobody will know you ate the baby; nothing's changed except that now the baby is clearly alive and fully capable of surviving if you render aid. Can civilized people disagree about whether it is morally permissible to eat this baby? Of... course they can! Slurp.

Okay, fine, we won't eat the baby. How could anyone ever think that we'd eat the baby?? We're not monsters. Hell -- we'll even RAISE the baby. Ourselves. We *could* take the baby to the hospital, the church, somewhere equipped to care for a baby -- which, yeah, could cause problems for someone, but probably not more problems for the child than being reared in secret by two teenagers -- but nah, we're going to raise it ourselves. Oh, look at this little friend! Look at how beautiful life is! Can you believe we were actually going to eat this baby?

The baby is dead. Power failure in the storage room meant it froze to death. Hospitals aren't equipped to deal with that sort of thing. We are so very sad.

Beastars S3 is really very not good.

I'm not sure I've posted about it in the context of Salome yet, but I'm sure I've admitted this before: I have difficulty with suspension of disbelief in theatrical settings. I can respect, for example, all of the effort that goes into a well-choreographed stage fight or intimate moment, and I've found it interesting to participate in those sorts of scenes. To the extent that audiences believe them, I can even sort of grasp the appeal and impact of those sorts of scenes. But for me... they just don't do anything?

And I understand that that's a me thing. I really do. (I also find car chases in movies boring AF, and I have fallen asleep on many an action movie final fight between two very similar CGI things chaotically slugging it out.) But it definitely feels not great to be unable to appreciate such deliberately integral elements to so much media? And depending upon the emphasis people place on those elements and how much their appeal derives from their relatability -- particularly when it comes to intimate connections between characters -- it feels not good to be the sort of person who can't appreciate those things. (more...)

As I keep pondering this, it occurs to me that we should define what it means to "just do the play"... because, depending upon what we mean, we pretty much never just do the play. (By some definitions it would be impossible to *just* do the play, since taking on a playwright's work from a different perspective in a wholly different context with crew and actors who also bring their own individuality to the work is necessarily a reinterpretation outside the bounds of the author's intent, even with dramaturgy and casting and an approach designed to remain maximally within the bounds of authorial intent and expectation. And arguably there is *some* room for this sort of reinterpretation to occur and still rightly be "just doing the play," as that is the nature of plays and a playwright who expects their work to be performed must allow for the necessary idiosyncrasies of individual productions.)

But if one means that we should approach classics with a purist's attitude, serving as mouthpieces for the playwright's words and story and morals with minimal alteration or editorializing, then we pretty much never do the play. Even without altering the text at all, staging a production in a different time period brings context with it (and potentially loses other context) that the author neither intended nor imagined. Costuming -- even if it is convincing period costuming -- may similarly add unintended commentary to a production.

And since we rarely perform Shakespeare uncut, what we cut and what we keep is also commentary and deliberate manipulation of the text by the director/dramaturg/etc in order to produce specific outcomes. Even "just do the play" folks cut scripts with specific goals beyond just making it shorter. Specific lines are cut to change how the audience responds to a character. Specific scenes and characters may be cut to alter the relationships of the ones who remain. Lines spoken by one character may be given to another. All of this is not what the author intended and necessarily changes the story. (more...)

(Context -- I recently directed Oscar Wilde's Salome: Rude Mechanicals 1990s Edition. It was my directorial debut and, though no production is without hiccups, ultimately went really well! I remain super proud of it -- though it's been less than a week since we closed, so that's unsurprising.)

Okay, hear me out: The Importance of Being Earnest, but as staged by aliens who weren't entirely up on Earth/Victorian customs. Maybe the cucumber sandwiches are whole-ass cucumbers on hoagie rolls, and maybe Algernon nom-noms them in sprays of (craft foam) bread crumbs and cucumber chunks. Maybe Jack's home in the countryside is scary for no goddamned reason, and maybe Cecily is a haunted doll and Miss Prism a nun charged with containing her. (Maybe Horror Earnest should be a separate thing.) Maybe there's some *other* reason the name Ernest is important, like maybe it's obviously necessary to power-on and take control of the death ray that's been onstage the entire time but never mentioned. I'm just saying -- there are possibilities here.

So what got me tangentially thinking about that was a thing I was told back when I was developing my concept for Salome: "It's okay to just do the play." And -- sure. I've enjoyed productions where the director's intention was to stage a play in as close to its original presentation as possible given our limitations. Period dress, affected accents, furniture of the day and/or conscious attempts to avoid anachronisms in staging. I've been part of these productions (though admittedly not many). It's okay to do them. (more...)

So. I have no idea why I'm being vague about any of this -- dramatic effect? -- but here we go. Some years ago, I was working on a production where the director wanted to set one scene at an outdoor campfire. I could actually appreciate the aesthetic -- a campfire is a perfect setting for spookiness, and this scene did in fact contain spookiness -- but nevertheless early on one of us asked why, given the context, the scene should take place at a campfire. The director's response -- which I rather took to heart -- was effectively, "Shrug. I think it's cool." Noted.

And yet: later, when blocking another dramatic scene, I suggested two assailants entering from opposite entrances in order to converge on their quarry in dramatic fashion, I was effectively told, in kinda dismissive fashion, "That's stupid. Why would they be coming from two different places? On that side is <specific place>; on that side is <other specific place>." Noted.

So the production got reviewed, and reviews explicitly called out the confusing choice of setting that prior scene at a campfire, and there was much commentary about how the review was unfair because it included nitpicks like that. And yet I personally didn't think it was unfair, because we clearly *did* care about things like that throughout. Even if the audience couldn't entirely follow it (I never quite worked it out myself), entrances and exits were blocked according to a floor/nation plan. There were references to a greater world and world-building (that arguably didn't map 1:1 to the text, but it was there). There was, to my mind, clearly enough intention put into the setting to justify criticism where one thought it fell short. (more...)