Theater Aug 27, 2012 at 9:19 am

Comments

1
Cool comment.

And professionals or not, I wonder how interpreters managed to do their jobs without cracking up.
2
I managed to make it to the final performance on Saturday and went in with some hesitation. I had prepared myself to be a little outraged and was definitely taken aback at the first appearance of Hellen Stellar on stage.

I was a quick convert, however, and realized that while the performance was indeed outrageous, it was not at all offensive. It managed to take a story we've all heard a thousand times and finally tell it in a way that allowed a modern audience to actually listen to it.

Great job, Dan! I saw you after the show and wanted to tell you in person, but you were accosted by so many people I thought you would appreciate this small note much more. :)
3
I really want to see this show - I hope it makes it to the east coast.
4
Yay Dan!!!!
5
No, no. You've been rumbled as a bigot already by someone who'd never seen the show. There's no defending yourself with your own rationale and informed comments from people who have seen the show now. You anti-deaf fascist.
6
I wonder if this Zoe person is aware how much her screed has done to increase the likelihood the show will have legs and be seen all over the place now. Including wherever it is she lives, so she can buy a ticket her own damn self.
7
Tweak #1: Actually commit to setting the play in the 1990's since it clearly represents that era of drag and gay culture...

Tweak #2: Give Michael Place's character something to DO!
8
Tweak #3: Make it more filthy and crude, please.
9
@7: But then we have to lose "Pussy, Crack."
10
@9 Don't listen to Michael Strangeways. Play worked beautifully and was incredible from start to finish.
11
It was actually a tearjerker. Very well done and I was extremely happy to see the show. The only truly tasteless joke with no value was the Lacey Peterson joke which was uncalled for.
12
Oh to have been there to watch the rehersals.
13
I literally spent four years working next to the Vancouver School for the Blind.

Like most teenagers, they could be sullen and rude with the best of them.
14
"Its ok, my [deaf|black|gay] friend wasn't offended."
15
@14: Exactly.

Except that the person whose comment I'm highlighting isn't a friend of mine—we don't know each other—and no one who actually saw the show seems to have taken offense.

But, yeah, otherwise it's exactly like you said

16
How does a deaf-blind person go see a play?

How is it different from just having the script read to them by an interpreter?
17
Why don't you just give them the script as it was when the play was performed?
18
Mm. I did see the play, and I came away from it feeling weird. For starters, I felt like the disclaimers that were posted all around the theater about the play being "OMG SO OFFENSIVE!!!!" were a bit of a. Cop out? I guess? I'm not really in the practice of getting offended, and I've read and been a fan of Dan's work for a long time now. And I knew the premise of the play, so on paper I was on board. But when, despite my game-ness, I found myself feeling like there was something mean-spirited in that initial representation of the way a deaf-blind person might do a drag number, the implied message from those disclaimers was, "well, you must be some kinda SQUARE." But my negative response to the play wasn't about the "offensiveness." I just didn't think that moment--Helen Stellar's "big reveal"--worked. If it was ABOUT making the audience uncomfortable, there weren't enough cues in the text to encourage that kind of meta-thinking as an audience member. As I watched it, it just seemed like the fact of disability was being played up for laughs. Or rather, that it was like one really long Helen Keller joke. Just as a work shouldn't be dismissed because of some arbitrary "offensiveness" marker, it shouldn't automatically get a pass or get bonus points because it was conceived out of an outrageous premise. It felt like a whole play built around a one note gag. And that gag was a laughing-at-not-with kind of gag.
19
Dan,
Never mind the issue about the play being offensive. Your gig is to wink at your base and heap invective on others -- then express shock that the target can't get the joke.

Forget all that.

I saw the play. It sucked. The whole notion of draping drag on a familiar tale is ...shocking! Nope. It was dull.

Dan, don't let your son see the play. He'll want Dad to stay away from the stage. Shocking!
20
15

No. One?

Absolutely No One?

really?
21
Hey.

I farted during the show and no one minded.

Please wait...

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