Why would anyone want to meet with Tracy Morgan now?

In an opinion piece on CNN.com, Jarrett Barrios, the President of GLAAD, suggests that Tracy Morgan should now meet with victims or the families of victims of anti-gay violence.  Here’s an excerpt:

“While it is certainly a good thing that Morgan has started to take responsibility for the offensive content of his routine by apologizing publicly to his fans and the gay community, he must do more to balance the harm that his words have inflicted. He could take one profound step to show his sincerity by meeting with parents and young people who have been personally effected [sic] by anti-gay violence or family rejection.”

Call me crazy, but why would any person who considers her or himself a victim of anti-gay violence or that person’s family members want to meet with Tracy Morgan after the awful things he said in his comedy routine in Nashville about what he would do if he found out his son was gay?  I know that GLAAD does very important work, but this call for some kind of summit meeting makes absolutely no sense to me at all.  “Meeting” with Tracy Morgan is not going to change anything.  He’s done the damage to his credibility already. And why should people who have been victimized by anti-gay violence do Morgan any service by allowing him a public relationships opportunity to atone for this tirade?  No way.  That spanks of collusion if you ask me.

Mr. Barrios can meet with whoever he wants, but he shouldn’t be calling on other people to meet with this guy.

I will not be rushing out to buy a ticket to see Tracy Morgan or to begin watching 30 Rock anytime soon.

Queering Weinergate

I can’t believe that I just typed that title for this blog post…

The newest revelation about an alleged “x-rated” picture of Anthony Weiner’s erect penis got me thinking about the very public arena in which we live. I read an article by Marie Griffith on Huffington Post last evening, and I think she hit the nail on the head. Then I started thinking some more about how we label an erect penis as “x-rated.” As a direct descendent of Mayflower Compact signers (the Fuller family for those who care), I feel their puritanical beliefs running very deep in my psyche. It’s taken me lots of hours in the chair to learn how to respect those beliefs while also quieting the judging voices that come with them. It’s why I’m trying so desperately hard not to condemn Anthony Weiner’s actions. The lying part I’m pretty unhappy about, but politicians lie all the time. I’m not sure why people get so bent out of shape when politicians lie. Yes, let’s hold them to a higher standard, but haven’t we seen that the higher standard is unattainable for most of these people? Maybe we need to adjust our expectations. Our romance with a public person’s persona is impossible to keep going for too long, because our obsession with participating in social media connections takes all the mystery right out of the equation. Nothing is private anymore.

But technology has also changed how people construct their sexual identities. Confession: I am a bit of a closet queer theorist. Shocker. Queer theory is an academic discipline that grew out of the women’s studies movement. The term “queer” can actually be used to describe anything that is non-normative or that challenges normalcy. So if we lived in a culture where everyone only wore Converse sneakers, and I decided to wear penny loafers, then that would make me non-normative and queer. Some may call that an oversimplification, but it’s how I make meaning of the term.

People have spent a lot of time over the last three days criticizing Anthony Weiner for his actions and passing judgment about his tweeting, implying immorality, mental illness, etc. Then the revelation of a pregnant wife added additional weight to those judgments, and the moralists piled on that as a way to further condemn his actions. As I said, the lying I’m disappointed about, but given the current state of our society, I’m less interested in judging Anthony Weiner’s tweeting. For me, it’s an example of non-normative or queer behavior. Here’s why.

In his 2003 book Queer Theories, Donald Hall writes:

“Indeed, it is stunningly clear that technology has thoroughly complicated what constitutes sexuality and our mechanisms of sexual identification or identifications.”

Since Hall wrote those words, technology has only grown more accessible and increased the public way in which we live, document, and share our lives. Anthony Weiner, like millions of other people every day, expressed a constructed sexual identity through his tweets, Facebook messages, text messages, and phone messages, and none of that particular sexual identity may be reflected in his relationship with his wife. Not only has the internet made our lives more public, but it also provides people with a way to have multiple identities and ways of expressing themselves. Because we can’t see how fast our society is changing (or don’t want to see it), we label Weiner as an outsider engaging in non-normative behavior. We “queer” him. And for most people, that means condemning him. However, if we pay attention to what Hall wrote over eight years ago, we should see that Weiner’s identity as a sexual tweeter may not be all that queer. We don’t have the sexual privacy that we used to have because we splatter our sexuality all over an information highway that has no toll plazas.

Bottom line: Weinergate has ruined someone’s career and disrupted a number of people’s lives. It’s given Americans another reason to question the integrity of elected officials. But Americans need to do some soul searching as a society about how we judge people’s sexual identities and practices. A lot of so-called “normal” people engage in queer behavior every day, so picking up a stone to throw at someone else’s glass house right now may not be the best idea.

Put your stones down, people, and take a step back.

Leave Huma out of the tweeting controversy

News outlets are now reporting that Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner’s wife, is in the early stages of pregnancy.

It would be helpful for everyone involved if Huma Abedin could have some privacy right now. She’s not the one who tweeted; he did. Maybe the media should find a way to just leave her out of it, since she has remained out of the public eye since Weiner’s announcement.

If this husband and wife did not have some kind of agreement or understanding about their relationship before this revelation, they need the space and time to figure it out now. It’s not the media’s place to reveal her pregnancy to the world. Please stay out of her personal business.

Teaching Play Development at NYU Steinhardt

Last evening I started teaching a three-week graduate intensive called Theatre Practices: Problems in Play Production, the Development of New Plays at NYU Steinhardt’s Program in Educational Theatre.  As a bit of a disclaimer, I inherited the title of the course, so I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily think that play development automatically equals a play production “problem.”  I’m not sure how the title came about, as the course was written before my time at NYU, but I do thoroughly enjoy teaching the course.

Part of my excitement for teaching stems from my own experiences as a playwright, director, and dramaturg.  However, one of the unique things about the course is that it runs in concert with a three-week play development laboratory housed in NYU Steinhardt’s Program in Educational Theatre called New Plays for Young Audiences (Twitter: @NPYA).  Three playwrights each get one week of development time for their new plays with a director, a dramaturg, and a cast of actors.  The week culminates in three staged readings of the script for public audiences, and these audiences are asked to feed back through surveys and/or a post-reading discussion.  The series has operated since 1998 and has produced a number of TYA plays that have gone on to professional productions and publication.  I am not an expert in Theatre for Young Audiences, however, the opportunity to observe this laboratory with my students provides excellent jumping off points for discussions about what it means to “develop” a new play.

The graduate students have the change to observe one 90-minute rehearsal period each week, and their main written project for the course is to track one of the roles in the process (playwright, actor, or director) through the three different development weeks.  The final paper summarizes their findings and also explores the implications of the experience for their own future work as theatre artists.  Additionally students research other play development opportunities throughout the US and present on their findings through in-class presentations.  Students also read five plays from the TYA canon and work through various steps in a play analysis process.  We read the draft of the new play at the top of each week (individually and aloud in class), and we receive copies of all of the changes that occur on a day-to-day basis.  As a result, students can track how a given play develops over the course of the week, both on the page and through their own observations of the rehearsal process.

We begin the course by reading Outrageous Fortune by Todd London with Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Voss.  Their study of new play development in the US is both insightful and depressing, but it provides an important reality check for us as we start our exploration.  The discussion of the text in class last evening already raised great questions for us to consider.  I’m excited to see what this group of graduate students may think when we complete the course and what innovations they may have to offer to the field in the future.

Anthony Weiner did tweet his…well, enough said.

Another one bites the dust, people.  These politicians should rethink their chosen professions if they’re going to do these kinds of things.  I’m not a prude, but people in public office need to be a little more careful with tweeting, Facebooking, etc.  So far, this is what sets Barack Obama heads and shoulders above any other public figure this country has seen in a long time.

I just heard Anthony Weiner say that he’s been doing this with six women over the past three years.  OK?  He wasn’t married for part of that time.  OK?  He did lie about it for a week.  OK?

It’s all a little dicey, isn’t it?  OK.

These moments need to serve as lessons for all of us about our personal lives and social media.  Even though Steve Jobs just introduced a new cloud, I think we collectively need to stop seeding the clouds with our own personal “stuff” or “bizness” as some like to say.  As we’re seeing with Anthony Weiner and a host of others, when it rains, it pours.