Interactive Theatre in a Post-COVID World

How will we emerge from the COVID Quarantine? 

Mark Nassar

Mark Nassar is an immersive theatre pioneer based in San Francisco.

That is the question. 

How are cities going to open up? Here in first-to-close, last-to-open, San Francisco, we predict we’ll emerge in a very methodical way.  Our fair city might not allow gatherings of over 20 people at the start of reopening. 

I’ll stay in my corner and talk theater, immersive theater in particular, where I can make an informed guess.

Theater artists, who create outside the orthodox platforms, have an edge, untethered as they are, from a particular infrastructure. 

Let me share the advantages of immersive theater in general and then get more specific about ideas that might work for future projects, soon after cities and towns re-open.    

In the immersive sphere we constantly conjure up ideas on how to make a theater experience as intimate and realistic as possible for the audience AND the actor.  How can we make it easier for audiences to enter a world and actually live in the moment without distraction? In an immersive world the audience doesn’t see a stage. The actors don’t see rows of audience members – no fourth wall, no cameras, no sightline issues, etc.  Like children, we create a world and play pretend.  Even in an abstract immersive piece like the juggernaut, Sleep no More, the audience experiences intimacy and inclusion, as they live inside a world that feels very real.  As much as any other factor, this is what attracts audiences, especially young audiences to immersive experiences. And there are an infinite range of styles and budgets within the genre.  

On one end you have the Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding style: improv driven, low-budget interactive party plays that audiences, for decades, have loved being a part of.  When performed properly without caricature, it’s a very trippy experience for audience and actor. 

Today, immersive artists and producers are going upscale, budget-wise, to create expensive and elaborate productions like Sleep no More.  These are more in line with John Krizanc’s, Tamara, circa 1981, where audiences were voyeurs in an Italian villa. 

The last few years in San Francisco have given me first-hand experience with both ends of that budget spectrum. 

Take the immersive hit The Speakeasy for instance. The production built a vintage 10,000 square foot underground Prohibition-Era Speakeasy (virtual tour). There was a 1500 page script. It was a drama that ran in seven different rooms with seven different full-length plays in each of them with a story that interconnected room to room. 

The Speakeasy

As an actor on the project, playing the owner of the speakeasy, it was one of the most challenging rehearsal experiences of my life.  Try figuring the timing of entrances and exits in a labyrinth. But as an actor, it was a dream to live in that kind of fantasy. It was like being inside a great film. It was an upscale endeavor, costing a few million to produce. Audiences were all-in, dressing in 1920’s attire.  It had a three-year run with new incarnations in the works.

The superb thing about immersive theatre is that it can also be produced effectively on a small budget. Small enough, that you can borrow the money from your cousin with a real job. Thanks, Cuz!

Last year, with transgender legends Collette LeGrande and Donna Personna, we created an immersive play based on the historical Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, entitled – you guessed it - The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot.  It was co-produced with Tenderloin Museum.

In 1966, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, transgender women rioted against police brutality.  It started at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria. We recreated that night in an actual diner on Polk St.  The audience enjoyed a midnight breakfast of waffles and bacon and watched a scripted drama that re-imagined a significant event in LGBTQ history. Our audience had an up-close and personal experience.  

As a matter of fact, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIt_ExhfGJM

At 0:33, in this KQED(PBS) feature, you’ll see a young woman with red hair and a polka-dot dress sitting at the counter during the play’s climax. She’s an audience member.  Her reaction is visceral.  She’s experiencing feelings that are intense, perhaps even more intense than what the actors are feeling.

Two actors, Jaylyn Abergas (L.) Shane Zaldivar (R.) The audience members peek from behind.

These audience members, in the middle of it, wear the same expressions as the actors, experiencing the same traumatic exchange. 

The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot cost around $15,000 in pre-production and it could have been done for half that amount if we had to.  Note: All of our artists get paid.

Another advantage of immersive theater is that we can find venues that need us. We can avoid crazy theater rents.  The New Village Café, where we performed “Comptons”, was a breakfast and lunch joint. They close every day after 3pm.  We approached the owner and asked him if he would like to sell his place out for several nights a week.  The production pays for the food and the venue keeps the bar. No rent involved. I approach it like a promoter, not a renter.  We’re bringing that venue business they otherwise wouldn’t have. Even if there are no meals or drinks to sell you can definitely make an arrangement that works better than renting a theater because, as you know, the prices are so steep, it’s almost impossible to get an investment back (even if you’re the greatest producer and have a kickass play). With Compton’s we had our money back in a month. We had no rent.  We didn’t need to build a set. The New Village Café’s vibe already worked for us with its long counter, swivel stools and patina of decades old grease stains that scream reality.  It would have cost tens of thousands to build that set from scratch. How about free rehearsal at the venue? Yes.

The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, had a sold out run with two extensions and a waiting list.  We had as much publicity, if not more, than a million-dollar production. We secured investment to take it to the next level and planned to reopen this June in a venue we designed and built.  We’ll push the opening to February, until we find out more.  Note: The play will be directed by a transgender woman with a transgender cast.  There’s an ethical obligation to cast transgender and non-binary actors, but in an immersive piece, with the audience up close, authenticity takes it to another level, the blow-them-away level. And we did and will again.

SO, how do we stick our toes back into the water? 

I’m currently working on a project that involves moving 10 to 15 people at a time, through a set-to-set immersive experience.  

I’m also working on an idea with Tenderloin Museum that will utilize a boutique hotel. Audience members will go hotel room to hotel room. Each room will have a unique setting, scene, and sensation that lasts about 3 minutes with 4 to 5 people in a room at a time.

In both of these scenarios, we still have the potential to sell a couple hundred tickets an evening, using staggered starts.  No more than 10-15 people will occupy a room at a time. Usually they’ll be groups of friends and the experience won’t be diminished if the wear masks. We plan to provide (sell) very “artsy” ones.  Ha.  

It might be interesting to have a theatrical bar crawl with our favorite bar scenes from plays or movies in each venue.  An immersive The Iceman Cometh in an actual bar would be out of this world. McSorley’s anybody? Bar owners would love this. They could get a100 customers over the course of a few hours and stay within the probable reopening limits.  The producers get a free stage. They also get twenty guests at a time with staggered starts to go through the crawl.  

Admittedly, this kind of theater can be rough on actors. They might have to repeat the same scene 5 to 15 times a night.  It will be a great acting exercise though. Maybe after the 10th time, they’ll stop acting and live the part. Hey, there’s an idea! 

When cities first reopen, I think audiences are going to want light fare, but they’ll always respond to an audacious imagination no matter what the times are.

Let’s try an immersive free association – immersive experience in an operating room. Every actor, audience member, and technician will be in full-on hermetically sealed hospital gear. Could it take place in a medical school? Preferably with the old-fashioned gallery where medical students look down to watch an operation … 

… masks, masks… how about an immersive Suffragette rally? Or an experience that took place during the 1918 flu pandemic (two years before women received the national right to vote). Masks!!!!  Great costumes. Vivid high-stakes drama. AND it could be performed outdoors – how about on the steps of Federal Hall, where our First President was inaugurated.  Why hasn’t it been done already?  

Why hasn’t an immersive play about Stonewall been conceived? Can you imagine? It’s already written…Laundromats!!!! And people can actually do their own laundry. Stop! The madness!

The possibilities are infinite. Like traditional theater, talent is very much a requirement. You need great writers and artists, but there are fewer obstacles to the finish and more opportunities for reward. 

After 9/11, it took a long while for audiences to come back to the theater. They were afraid to gather in a place where a bomb might go off.  It literally was an act of bravery to see a show. When they first opened theaters after 9/11, I was performing in Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding in New York.  It was strange. We had about 25 people in the audience our first night of reopening (about one audience member for every actor). I particularly remember a group of southern ladies who were courageous enough to fly and not cancel their theater weekend. I remember having a newfound feeling of love and admiration for them.  

I remember thinking, “How in God’s name are we going to improv with this crowd? The play takes place in the moment. How are we going to avoid the 9/11 topic?”

The audience that night felt us. They were too kind. Those 25 people laughed harder, danced harder, partied harder than any audience ever.  They, like us, were deeply appreciative and giddy to be back out. 

They need us. We need them. Let’s get to it.

Sincerely,

Mark

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Mark Nassar is an immersive theater pioneer. He helped create multiple interactive shows including, Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, Johnny Boy’s Graduation, The Bobby Dallas After-Party and Birdy’s Bachelorette Party.  Nassar recently co-created The Compton’s Cafetaria Riot, which was picked to be apart of the Best of 2018 by SF weekly. Nassar’s Off-Broadway play, The Mayor’s Limo was published by Samuel French and was the basis of the feature film A Line in the Sand, starring Jon Bernthal. Nassar recently finished a three-year run, performing in San Francisco’s immersive hit, The Speakeasy. 

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.  

A Dancer in Quarantine 💃

Rochelle Martin-Vecchio

A New York-based dancer and choreographer

I entered 2020 having a 7-month-old baby boy, a husband, bills to pay, and a busy teaching schedule. I was choreographing a show that opened in February (while also performing in and costuming that show), rehearsing and performing with Peconic Ballet Foundation, planning a Dance Parade event for Third Street Music Settlement, getting other students ready for competition at the Broadway Dance Academy, and finally I was set to choreograph Long Island University’s Choreography Showcase. I thought it a well-balanced diet for an artist.

Fast Forward to May; I now have an 11-month-old who doesn’t stop moving (have no idea where he gets that from), but the rest of New York is on PAUSE.

Deep Breath. 

We can’t stop ourselves from reading social media all the time. We see artists, peers, and mentors express their thoughts openly. 

Well, here are my thoughts. It’s time to innovate. As role models, we tell our students to rise to the occasion, and to work hard to achieve your goals. Fight!  We can’t be in the classroom teaching or in the theatre performing but that doesn’t mean we are restricted. At times like these, I think back to choreography class at Long Island University where we read Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. Tharp states, “Creativeness is not a gift from God.” She goes on, “In order to be creative we have to prepare to be creative.” So why are so many creators viewing this situation as artistically negative? Let’s be innovative and prepare to get those creative juices flowing.

I wake up every day exhausted. Fun fact: babies between 9 and 10 months old go through sleep regression. No, he doesn't sleep through the night. Since 4 months, my little man has slept through the night but he has now taken back that luxury. I try to keep my routine the same but it’s very hard with a growing baby. It’s his world, I'm just living in it. Diaper change. I get ready every morning. A ballet teacher once told me, “You're never fully dressed without some mascara and lipstick.” I do my hair and put on my make-up and get in my workout/dance clothes while chasing the energizer bunny along with his partner in crime (a sixty-five pound dog). Diaper change. It makes me feel good- alive, and motivated. I work out and get those endorphins going. I watch my son discover new things every day. I realize that, as babies, we never stop learning. So why do we dismiss this as we get older? We should never stop learning.

Diaper change/lunch time.  While my son naps, I watch videos via Instagram and Facebook that show artists rising to the occasion, disallowing the coronavirus to defeat us. I talk to other artists to see how they are overcoming this obstacle. I brainstorm during what we adults call meetings.  

I teach my ballet classes on Zoom. My students are a constant reminder and inspiration for me to keep inspiring, pushing forward, and rising to the challenge. I am so thankful.

By the time I'm in the midst of teaching, my son gets bored hearing me repeat, “Core. Knees over toes. Posture. Long neck. Stretch your feet. Aghhhh! Arms! Arms! Arms!” My husband comes home from work and rescues my son from hearing me yell, “It ain't Christmas! Don’t let me see Santa’s belly, and demi plie! CORE!”

I recently read a post on social media about World War II. It showed a picture of Ballet dancers still rehearsing and practicing their craft during those war-torn times. Okay, we might not be in a World War right now, but we are nevertheless in a war against a virus. People are still on the front lines, people are grieving, and people are going through hardships. In a way, it’s not that big of a difference. They made it work. They made it work without Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok.

At night, I enjoy the family time I have with my husband, son, and dog, and the memories we’re creating, memories that would not have been created if the world were still going on as usual. I have the chance to cook dinner and eat with my family, which, as any artist knows, doesn't happen all the time.  These are memories that I will cherish and not take for granted, just like all the times I stepped onto a stage and thanked the audience for my life. These are memories that I’ll be able to talk to the next generation about: “What do you mean, you CAN’T? When I couldn’t teach from the studio or theatre, I did it via the Internet! Don’t make an excuse to escape, pave the path to create.” When I say this I can’t help but think of my grandfather’s generation, born in the 1920’s, who told us how they walked uphill both ways to get to school.

Lastly, I hope this experience humbles people. Let them appreciate the time spent in the studio prepping for the stage.

Let it allow every artist to enjoy the process and the journey, not the destination. I hope it allows them to dig back to their roots, create, and develop into better artists.

I hope it opens people's eyes to how strong a group, a team, a family, or a community can be, and how they can become bigger and stronger. I hope that, once this storm passes, the world sees a beautiful renaissance in the arts.

With Grace and Patience,

Rochelle

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Rochelle Martin-Vecchio trained at the Joffrey Ballet School, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and she also privately trained with Trutti Gasparinetti. She has had the pleasure to perform at The West Point Military Academy and in the debut of Dear Nadezhda by Venti Petrov in New York City. She has danced principal roles and has had work created on her. She had the honor of performing Cara Gargano’s “Mahler Pas de deux" in Manhattan at Symphony Space. She taught the Ballet and Contemporary classes from 2016 to 2019 at Tilles Dance Conference.  Rochelle teaches ballet and choreographs for the Students Honor Institute at LIU Post since it begun in 2016. She currently teaches from the Hamptons to Manhattan. 

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.  

The Ever-Changing World 🌎 (and Why It’s Great!)

We live in an ever-changing world, and by that statement I’m not implying that there was ever a time when the world wasn’t changing, but that over the last hundred years and probably even more so in the last fifty, the rate of that change has sped up exponentially.

That change has been possible because of the way technology has changed our lives so drastically post the industrial revolution: electricity, telegram, phone, radio, movies, television, air travel, computers, internet, cell phones and whatever the next game changing piece of technology will be. All of these technologies have one very big component in common - an exchange of data, and with each new toy, said exchange has sped up. For example, there was a time that in order to make a call you had to be at home, the office or that relic of the 20th century: the pay phone. Even worse: you had to wait for the other person to get off the phone before you could use it! The tragedy! If something aired on TV, you had to be there at that moment, to see it. Otherwise, you’d have to wait for reruns during the summer or whenever the TV gods decided you could. If you wanted to look something up, you had to go to the library or if you were fancy enough, you’d have an encyclopedia at home. What fun! No, it was not. But why am I taking you back to the cool days of the first generation walkman or Atari? Because while details are important, sometimes we need to see the bigger picture to understand the full journey.

Pooya Mohseni

Iranian American actress, writer, filmmaker and activist, born and raised in Tehran, Iran.

I’m an actor, who happens to be of Middle Eastern descent, an immigrant, a trans woman, an LGBTQ+ activist, script consultant and few other things that bear little significance to this piece.

10 years ago, I would have been considered a trailblazer. 20 years ago, an amusing novelty by some and a freak by others, and while those sentiments may still be true for some, they’re definitely much less prevalent. 30 years ago, most of you would have never heard of me. Why? Because the entertainment industry and the larger world beyond that had no space or interest in me.

Why do you think until the early 2000’s the only trans or gender non-conforming people you saw on TV or film were either villains, victims in a movie, or as a bunch of “strange” people to point at on shows like Jerry Springer? Not because there’s suddenly been an influx of gnc (gender nonconforming) people in the world, because that’s just a stupid thought, but because within the last 20 years or so we’ve exchanged more information around the world than probably the previous millennium.

We have seen many more different kinds of people and because of that:  1) the majorities have become more aware and slightly more comfortable with the different “other” groups in the society and 2) minorities have realized that they’re not alone, have found ways to come together and fight their way forward, as a collective.

You’re probably thinking that I’m oversimplifying and connecting things that are not connected. You are correct on the former and not completely so on the latter, but I’m also not writing a novel, so I’m condensing a bit. Just look around online. Television and Internet have opened our eyes to things that most of us would have never seen before in our lives. I’ve never travelled to Antarctica, but I know what it looks like. Most of you have never met RuPaul in person, but thanks to cable, the Internet and GIFs galore, you know who that is. And while I’m not going to completely overlook the medical advances in the field of gender studies in both adults and children, I would say that more people know the term “transgender” because of Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, Transparent on Amazon or Pose on FX! And that brings me to my point, which is: the way we exchange information NOW has a lot to do with WHY we know and talk about things today that a decade or so ago would have been utterly unthinkable.

As more people travel out of their hometowns or even countries, the make up of our communities’ change. Yes, there are still Italian neighborhoods and if you go to certain parts of Brooklyn you will mostly see Hasidic families strolling about. But you also see more towns and cities that have people from different backgrounds, even continents, living side-by-side and being exposed to other cultures, lifestyles and general ways of living. Media and entertainment are not exceptions, though usually a few steps behind, and in rare instances, maybe ahead. At one point, you only saw people of color in certain roles that stereotyped a whole race, religion or national background. 

While that has still not completely died out, the tendency to do so is fading as new and younger audiences don’t want to eat the old tropes that were accepted 40 years ago. A gay character on TV in 2020 is very different than his equivalent on TV in the 80s, if you could have found one at all. A middle eastern woman can now hope to see a slightly more accurate representation of herself than the helpless, voiceless stereotype of 20 years ago. If you don’t believe me, take this: as an Iranian trans woman, I have played a judge on “Law and Order: SVU”,  the longest running procedural network show that has an audience of millions, across age groups, racial backgrounds and even countries. 15 years ago this would not have happened. And while I credit this instance of inclusion to the casting directors who are dedicated to inclusion and changing the status quo, writers who don’t want to copy storylines of yesteryear and directors, show runners, and magic makers who want to make their own individual mark in this world, I also acknowledge that these changes have happened because of strong, tireless and brave pioneers who were the firsts of their kind to walk through those doors and pave the way.

But I also want to point out that had we not had certain tools at our disposal like the internet, television, cable, cell phones, numerous gadgets, and different platforms and ways of communication, we either would not have seen these amazing people and what they have given our world at all, or we would have seen them days, weeks or years later, as was the norm before the advent of such technologies. And while I do not claim that these toys are necessarily the answer or a path to a better world, I am suggesting that these are great tools and if used with good intentions and the use of compassion and intellect, they can bring about a world that has room and understanding for everyone, including you, me and everyone else.

So, the next time you turn on your Netflix or peruse your phone screen, remember that you can expand your understanding of the world around you in ways that your parents and their parents could have never imagined. Now, whether you use this advantage to widen your horizon and utilize it to better yourself and the world around you, or to just kill time before you get into another online argument with a bot and further alienate yourself from humanity, is totally your choice. But that choice, defines you and your effect on the world in general. So, make your choice wisely. 

With Love and Gratitude,

Pooya

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Pooya Mohseni is an Iranian-American actor, writer, filmmaker & Trans activist. Co-producer/star/writer of "Transit: A NYC  Fairytale", a short film about love between a trans woman and a cis man, coming soon! She has written articles for The Advocate, medium.com and other platforms, shedding light on the different aspects of being trans in the past, the present, and future. See more at pooyaland.com or follow her @pooyland. #pooyaland

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.  

Are We Done Romanticizing The Bad Boy Trope Yet?

An example of sexualized violence. Stanley Kowalski—A Streetcar Named Desire

We’ve all heard about him. We have watched him smolder and lie his way through a film, a particularly juicy Avon book, and hell, some of us have even dated him. Well, a version of him. 

He’s been with us for years. The one who is a little bit damaged, just a dash lost, but on the crest of being saved. He’s two steps from the ledge and three steps from your arms.  

The reality of the “bad boy” is much more dangerous than art has led us to believe, which leaves me with a persisting question: why do we continually romanticize this recurring cliche? Through an examination of novels, films, television, music, mythology, and my own personal experiences, I will try to gauge exactly what this trope is and if it is still necessary. Has this trope ever been helpful or true? Why does it exist? 

If you are an artist then you understand what it means to be empathetic—to look for the best in people. As actors, we are always searching for the truth in a character…it is a quality the free spirit in us sometimes chooses to ignore when the truth is presented in reality. For in reality, the bad boy is unfortunately, and unscientifically, 9 times out of 10 irredeemable. 

Where did you get this fact Emily? Where is your credible source?

I am the credible source. 

If any of you know my track record for dating, then it’s clear I’ve tested this theory. The truth is, that one chance the bad boy might have to save himself is certainly not going to come from you, your love, or the Heroine complex you’ve got going on (no judgment here, I speak only from experience). It is going to have to come from active change. From him. And sometimes even that is not enough.

I’ve studied, dated, loved, and confronted the bad boy on too many occasions. I even created art based on these occurrences. Capture, an award-winning and subsequently published play I wrote about my relationship with an abusive misogynistic sociopath is just one example. I'm sorry, I meant to say “misunderstood musician.” 

My gripe lies with artists who perpetuate this sort of “dark” love and then turn around and force their “strong” female protagonists to accept abuse, to ignore red flags that blatantly point to the eventuality that things will not end well. No matter how passionate or forbidden their love might be, only pain and suffering is on the horizon.

 But in the fantasy of romance, these men change, they see the error of their ways and suddenly another’s love (YOURS!) is enough to undo years of damage, trauma and mental health issues. 

Dear reader, I think not. 

It does not matter how hard you love someone, you cannot heal their pain… only they can do that for themselves. 

It is an injustice done to young women who know nothing of sex, nothing of love. Impressionable pre-teen/teenage girls who watch unrealistic films about relationships, who sneak romance novels from their mother’s drawer and read them under the blankets with a flashlight, all the while assuming that if a woman wrote such a thing, directed such a film, then it must exist. That it must be real. That this man is true and you and you alone can save him. 

Rubbish.

While preparing to write this article, I came across a preview for a teenage-romance film on Netflix called After, which depicted two college students (she the innocent country girl, he the brooding bad boy) having a heated debate about Pride and Prejudice. 

SIDEBAR: It could have been Romeo and Juliet, or Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or any other classic story of days gone by. Now, I am NOT disputing that these stories are incredible works of art and great literature. However, these are not the worlds we live in anymore. Can you truly imagine what these stories would look like reimagined in a modern context?  NEWS FLASH: Mr. Darcy is a dick (but he changes thanks to Elizabeth!) Mr. Rochester literally kept his wife prisoner in her own damn attic (but Jane’s love saves him!). 

Think about this: Austen and the Brontës weren’t writing about love; they were writing about what life was actually like with a little FICTION sprinkled in. People keep forgetting, it’s fiction. And let’s be real, it was ugly back then even without having the misfortune of being born a woman. I don’t believe it would seem romantic to them (these women writers of the 1800s). Yet it has somehow been bastardized and turned into the gooey, softened and dreamy eyes of our youth that continue to be romanticized in modern films…

 So I watch this film, After, which surprise surprise, the guy is damaged and a straight-up asshole. He lies and seduces this chick as a trick/bet with his friends to make her sleep with him (insert Cruel Intentions ripoff) but in the end she forgives him even though he destroyed her previous relationship, humiliated her and isolated her... it ends up actually being, you guessed it, true love! 

After is based on a fan-fiction--this irritates me to no end, not because I don’t love a good fan-fic but because it gives it a bad name. It's just for fun, until a woman goes and makes money off of someone else’s ideas…hem hem, I’m looking at you E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Gray (originally a Twilight fan-fiction), which is about as trope and vile as it can get. Even the soundtrack to those films make me sick. One particularly upsetting lyric is from a track entitled Heaven by Julia Michaels from the Fifty Shades Freed: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.  “All good boys go to heaven, but bad boys bring heaven to you.”

 Kill. Me. Please. 

Speaking of, Christian Grey is the ultimate control freak, sociopathic narcissist. The author doesn’t even try to hide it, she in fact does the opposite in glorifying it. He is not only a stalker, but verbally abusive, manipulative, forceful--for christs sake his love interest can’t even pick out her own clothes or even decide her own diet. He infiltrates every corner of her life while keeping her blind with his raw sexuality. Yet the film franchise alone accumulated almost a half of a billion dollars in profits. MIND BLOWN. 

Let’s take someone a bit less human…a murdering, psychopathic vampire like Eric Northman in the series True Blood, who is given an unrealistic and outrageous redemption arc. All because of one woman, who was his “weakness.”

"To me, you'll always be that girl in the white dress. The one who walked into my bar." –Eric Northman to Sookie Stackhouse

This quote gets me every time. Young woman + white dress = the cure to fixing the bad boy? How ridiculous of a society are we that we continue to put such emphasis on this equation? It suggests that to be pure is the key, to remain a virgin and retain goodness, to emulate an innocence, which is a magnet for the bad boy. A beacon of light amongst his darkness. It’s archaic and completely delusional on all levels. HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU.  I’m the least virginal person you could meet and bad boys stick to me like flies on shit. Narcissists don’t have a type, they only want someone to control. To conquer.

Now let’s look at the rise of the romance novel. It seems women have always craved these sort of novels because they are given a “happily ever after” and we seem to think that this is all a woman will ever truly need in her life. 

Many women consider Romance a genre that centers on women’s pleasure. But does it actually? With unrealistic expectations of bad men who turn good, giving women the false hope that brutal warriors and fierce highlanders will turn into docile and loyal puppies for their love while remaining violent (i.e. protective) and raging with sexual toxic masculinity. 

Here’s a couple of my favorite ”Romance” novel plots I’ve read over the years: the hero accidentally rapes his love interest because he mistakes her for a whore...all is forgiven. The hero murders and lies and cheats yet somehow remains true to only one person, the woman whose youthful innocence is the key to undoing hard damage.

...and on it goes...

Even J.K. Rowling has commented on her amazement at Harry Potter fans romanticizing the prejudiced and arrogant anti-hero Draco Malfoy (Malfoy literally meaning “Of bad faith”):

"…I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character (although I do not discount the appeal of Tom Felton, who plays Draco brilliantly in the films, and ironically, is about the nicest person you could meet). Draco has all the glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people. All of this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent readers’ daydreams as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends."

Is it the character? The actor who portrays him? A mixture of both…? Or is it us…?

Take the play A Streetcar Named Desire and Marlon Brando’s legendary portrayal of Stanley Kowalski, the acme of masculinity. The “is it us” question I just mentioned above seems to come into play here. Stanley’s charisma and good looks distract us from his true nature --is this what it means to be a manly man? To use power and control as a substitute for true love? To so closely link sexuality and violence so that women continue to assume they go hand in hand? He is never punished for his behavior, he never changes and yet I continue to see the sexualization of a rapist who not only destroys the lives around him but is able to go on living his own without consequence. And yet, I feel there are too many who miss the whole point of the piece and instead claim how handsome and virile Brando made the character out to be. Meanwhile, one does not have to dig deep into the text to discover Blanche’s speech likening Stanley to an ape, his primitive qualities on display from the beginning when we see him hauling around a package of bloody meat. Perhaps the most important theme of the entire play is sexual violence, which is set up as the ultimate conflict between man and woman. Streetcar ultimately asks if values are useless in a savage world. But hey, he was so handsome when he was raping, right? 

Let’s ask a different question.  Before it was even a literary trope, is it possible that this dynamic between men and women was useful during some other period of time? How far back can we go? If art imitates life, can we find evidence of this as we look to the past?

Let’s take a little trip to the late 9th millennium BC, during the Neolithic Revolution where some humans began to switch from a hunter-gatherer existence, to agriculture. I once took a History of Prostitution course in Florence, Italy where my professor had a theory that pretty much went something like this:

When nomads began settling down, they domesticated animals - dogs, hens, cattle, etc. When they observed that no offspring were produced when female and male animals were kept apart, but were produced when the two were kept together, a “scientific” parallel was drawn. This might have very well resulted in man realizing that he was part of the creation process and therefore women were no longer to be feared or worshipped. In that instant, they were demystified, no longer goddesses but humans just the same, who now had to acknowledge man’s contribution to their existence. Gone forever was the Goddess Culture and the empowerment that their supernatural association provided. Enter the Patriarchy.

Whether there was ever a true matriarchal society is up for historical debate. Some claim it simply the stuff of myths or legends. 

Speaking of legends...

Let’s fast forward to the late 2nd millennium BC and the earliest surviving great work of literature and the second oldest religious text - The Epic of Gilgamesh.

One needs to look no further than Tablet Number-fucking-One. Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk (an actual historical figure), is oppressing his people. For the women, this takes the form of droit du seigneur - the legal right a lord has to have sexual relations with subordinate women on their wedding nights. 

It is worthy to note that the men were oppressed as well - exhausted through physical activities and labor. But, of course, when women are oppressed, it’s seemingly always of a sexual nature. It’s literally in part one of the first ever piece of literature. Well then, it’s nice to see this “trope” presented so clearly and as early as ancient Mesopotamia. 

Samuel Noah Kramer was one of the world’s leading Assyriologists and a world renowned expert in Sumerian history and language up until his death in 1990. He described Gilgamesh as, “An adventurous, brave, but tragic figure symbolizing man’s vain but endless drive for fame, glory, and immorality.” 

Sound remotely familiar? Ancient bad boy at your service. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh had a major influence on Homer and both of his epic Greek poems. And so it only makes sense to now delve into how the bad boy trope relates to mythology.  

Acclaimed neuroscientist Dr. Jordan Peterson, in a conversation with the late Sir Roger Scruton on Nov 2, 2018 in Cambridge, England, had this to say:

“The problem is, is that the courageous way to deal with the problem of the predator is to offer a hand in courageous trust and to invite forward a partner from the monster. That's the mythological manner in which this is supposed to be undertaken. A courageous part of the woman's journey, let's say, is to face the monstrosity of a man and to invite out of that something more noble.”

Oh really? 

Let us take the myth of Medusa. It is the tale of a lovely young woman, minding her own business, until she is set upon by Posiden (oh you know - unstable mentality that often leads to extreme violence, often enjoys wielding power over women and brandishing his virile machoism). He traps Medusa in Athena’s temple and rapes her. As a God, it’s suggested that this is Posiden’s privilege. We would hope that the abuse might end there, considering Medusa did nothing to provoke this attack (Trick statement! There is NOTHING ANYONE can do that would justify rape). But no, poor Medusa is punished by the Goddess Athena for desecrating her temple (wait, what?). Athena then turns Medusa into a monster with living venomous snakes in place of hair while any who gaze upon her are turned to stone (#theultimatebodyshaming). She is then banished and slain by Perseus (seems totally fair).

Poseiden the fuck boy with his really small penis vs Posieden the God of your dreams

So why do we only ever hear about Medusa the monster? Why do we never condemn her rape or demonization, but praise her death at the hands of our uber masculine hero and the patrichary he fights to perserve?

 So yes, Mr. Peterson, the mythological manner here is key. It’s false. Whenever a woman faces a monster who is a man she changes him. But whenever a man faces a woman who is a monster, he slays her? Even if he’s the one responsible for her fall to begin with? This is clearly an instance where we must break the cycle, not perpetuate it.  

So her punishment is…making…men…hard? 🙄

Are women made to love? Is it because we bear children? The father can afford to abandon a child, but biologically speaking, a child needs it’s mother to exist? Is it that we’ve always been given the responsibility to love? Some intrinsic part of us that screams to mend and cure and help and give?

Shall we examine this question then from the perspective of evolutionary biology? There is, of course, validity to the idea that women, generally and historically, are not physically as strong as men. So when there has been an extreme threat, women have turned to men for protection. That same protection the man can provide by killing anyone who would hurt her, can also be used against her. And once a man has saved a woman’s life or more importantly, her virtue, she is indebted to him. In extreme cases, she will settle or give herself to the bad man to avoid the worse man. So on a more instinctual and grander level, you could argue that women stray towards the bad boy regardless of his danger because if she has his love, then she is protected. 

 Some medical doctors claim that the bad boy might be biochemical. Our desire for him and his flaws have everything to do with our need to make attractive babies or to release endorphins. It’s all down to dopamine and oxytocin which eventually seem to condition our brains into being masochists. 

So are women who don’t want to have babies the ironic salvation from the bad boy??

 I’ll pass on the whole medical explanation for now. 

I’ve learned in my life, the good guy is where it’s at— you know the other trope - the boy tossed head first into the friend zone - the one who isn’t “strong” enough to get the girl, the lesser sexually attractive option, not because of his looks but because he is evenheaded. But in reality, a good guy supports you, believes in you, respects you, never tries to change you or remove important people from your life, and most critically he puts your welfare above or equal to his own. He also checks you, tells you when you are being self-destructive and attempts to guide you towards the best you. If that’s not bad-ass and incredibly sexy, I don’t know what is. You know what isn’t sexy? Having to come home to someone who verbally or physically abuses you in any capacity. 

The artistic mediums that I have discussed above, who exalt the bad boy are the same ones who tear down the good guy. It’s almost as if they don’t want women to lead emotionally stable lives.

So to the women who dream of being bitten by vampires, these are creatures who cannot love, who do nothing but drain you…and to those who believe the Byronic hero will somehow champion the odds stacked against him…the truth is, he cannot. No sacrifice will ever be greater than the false delusion of love that narcissists hold for themselves. And that is the dilemma with the bad boy. The man who we forgive, over and over because women, and this is something we have been sublimated into accepting, deserve less. 

The perpetuation of rape culture and sexual assault is shot into our blood stream everywhere we turn as it has been for hundreds of years before us. We’ve been told that we should suffer. We should take the man back again and again, even if he isolates us, even if he hurts us or rapes us…it’s not his fault. It’s his mother’s, or yours.

You didn’t give enough.  

I have come to the realization that the bad boy trope has had quite an extensive evolution that may have accurately depicted civilization at one time. But today’s trope is more dangerous than ever. Not only does it not accurately depict the modern male-female hetereosexual relationship, it presents a false equivalence: a logical fallacy that provides women with the false hope of changing a man habituated to immoral conduct. Furthermore, it idealizes that same conduct for men, leading them to believe it is not only okay to engage in such behaviors, but it is necessary to win the woman’s heart.  

While I suppose one could argue that the dynamic between men and women, from an evolutionary standpoint, had some sort of survival-based benefit, I would certainly argue that we have, in art, never actually benefited from this trope. It’s been pressed and pushed onto us for as long as we can remember. And I certainly don’t feel that we need it, not today and definitely not tomorrow.

In conclusion, I think it is pretty clear that the answer is yes. Yes, we should be done romanticizing the bad boy trope. 

I can hear the Stanley Kowalski’s out there yelling already. So what? We’re just going to watch films about men getting smacked around by their wives all day? 

No. Any abuse, by any gender, is still abuse. I’m not saying abuse shouldn’t be presented in art as that, of course, reflects real life. I’m simply saying it’s time to stop glorifying it. There will still be bad boy characters out there - of course; there are plenty of bad boys out there in real life. But now, let us be realistic about them. Let us put the romanticizing of them behind us. 

 How do we do that?

As a writer and as a woman, I implore that we all try to do better, to not force our female voices to bend to the illusion of love being the most powerful thing of all.

Perhaps it is not. 

Perhaps, the art of being, knowing, and respecting yourself is the most powerful thing of all. 

It is our job as artists to shape the future, to stand up for what is true. And that begins here, with no longer forcing a woman to choose between herself and a man. 

There should never be a choice. 

Onwards and Upwards, Always- E

Directors Need to Take More Responsibility for Bad Acting

We’ve all seen what we deem to be bad acting in films and onstage. And while the measurement for good acting can be as subjective as art itself, we can often feel a blatant unbelievability or hollowness in a performance. 

Very often, we criticize the actor individually. Of course we do; that person did not bring what they should have to the table. The job of the actor is literally to effectively communicate the character they are portraying to an audience using their voice, actions, reactions, and their physical instruments. If they fail to authentically communicate a character, they did not properly do their job. Another way to say that is that they did not do their job at all. 

Now, despite common perception, giving a great performance, a believable performance, is not an easy job to do whatsoever. It takes more work and dedication than anyone outside the industry usually understands.  In all honesty, my two years in graduate school studying acting was far more demanding than the previous six years I had studying education on the undergraduate and graduate level combined.  Hands down. No comparison. 

I am an actor. A professional actor (whatever the means – I don’t know at what point one becomes professional as an actor but that’s a different discussion altogether).

I am also a director. I have directed both theatre and film and I believe these combined experiences have provided me with some interesting insights into the mechanics of how things work.

Greg teaching his "Acting like a Teacher" workshop for Education students at Pace University.

One such insight is this: directors need to take more responsibility for the bad acting in their projects. 

To me, it sounds obvious. But rarely do we hear a viewer say, “Wow. That performance was awful. I guess the director couldn’t get that actor to where they needed to be.”

I think we need to be saying this more. And here’s why:

As a director, the buck stops with you. It is your responsibility for everything that happens creatively and artistically. That is why you are hired. This obviously includes performances.  

You hire good actors so they bring the most believable performances. But that doesn’t mean your job is now necessarily a hands-off experience where you can sit back, relax, and watch the magic happen. It is still your vision. Actors must coordinate themselves to your vision. Sometimes this requires a hands-on technique. 

And it is not incidental that I use the word technique. A director who does not speak the actor’s language will find it far more difficult to get an actor where they need to be.  

This brings me to a related point. A director absolutely needs to speak the language of the actor. They need to know technique. Whether it’s Stanislavsky, Meisner, Method, etc., a director should have an approach to infiltrate a lacking performance. They should have an awareness of all of these techniques and dare I say, know what their cast is trained in. That way they can talk the lingo and engage in the process to reach each actor in a constructive manner. 

Bad directors tell actors what to do and what to feel. Good directors guide actors towards their vision of a character. Great directors manipulate actors to think they reached a revelation organically when it was the director the entire time leading them to that desired destination. What makes this director great is simple; they recognize that when actors come up with something themselves, it is far more real to them and thus easier to access and thus more believable. And that’s the name of the game. 

Directors need not be technicians. Every other crewmember on set is an artistic technician of sorts. A director needs to be focused on story, imagery, and performance. The truth of a scene.  Directors hire their crew to specifically take care of the more technical issues so that they need not worry about them. Meetings happen within the months of pre-production so that the crew understands the vision and plans are made to enforce said vision. 

This leaves time for a director to handle the most important aspects of filmmaking while actually shooting– the acting itself.  

As an actor, I found directors who were great at the mechanics of filmmaking but lacked the ability to communicate effectively with actors the worst kind of directors. I found this particularly true, unfortunately, of recent college graduates. It was as if their training program neglected to enroll them in an acting class. All directors should take an acting class. 

Not doing so is self-sabotage as far as I’m concerned. 

Being a director who takes a more hands-on approach with actors can be complicated. There are times when an actor is so prepared you just let that actor do their thing. There are times when you have the opportunity (and hopefully ability) to help them step their game up. But an audience member will never know if it’s a great performance solely because of the actor or because you stepped in and worked your magic. But, in a way, it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the wizardry.  

Conversely, if a performance is extremely poor and you, the actor, and everyone on the planet knows it, the director needs to share in the blame, for neither the actor nor the director did their job. 

If an actor’s job is to effectively communicate the character they are portraying to an audience as mentioned before, it is one of the many jobs of the director to make sure actors effectively communicate the characters they are portraying to that audience. 

Now, let’s be real. A director has a million-and-one jobs. We are constantly being asked questions about the production. Our heads are pretty much in a whirlwind state the entire time. But that’s the job. 

We are the last line of defense on the day. Everything is ultimately our responsibility – even when it’s out of our control. 

I once directed a play where the set to our production was in a U-Haul truck. A U-Haul truck that was stuck in a snowstorm. We ended up performing opening night with no set, as the truck didn’t arrive until the middle of the performance. Was I driving the truck? Nope. Did I control the weather? Nope. Did I plan correctly leaving hours upon hours for the truck to arrive on time? Yup. The festival had a strict load in schedule and so I couldn’t bring the set to the theatre any earlier than that afternoon.

 Yet I stood in front of my cast and I apologized. It was on me. I was in charge. And we had no set. 

I suppose part of my point is that directors need to be more vocal about accountability. Directors are leaders; sometimes it’s appropriate to take it for the team. To accept that responsibility whether or not you are directly to blame. 

To be fair, however, there are scenarios where a director is truly hogtied. Sometimes a producer forces a director to hire an actor that should not be hired. Sometimes the creative vision between a director and a producer is not aligning – if this happens seriously consider leaving the project, albeit on good terms; producers are putting up the money – it’s their movie too after all – two separate visions never end well. If you need to do it for the money, and it’s no longer about the art, execute the producer’s vision. If this makes you sick to your stomach leave amicably and respectfully due to creative differences. 

It is also worth noting that a bad editor, or bad decisions in the editing room in general, can downgrade an actor’s performance from what that actor provided during filming.

It is a cinematic leap of faith for any actor to let go of their performance and leave it in the hands of others; that, of course, is the collaborative nature of film and a reminder that making a great film is hard. All the pieces, the artistic cogs in the wheel of production, need to be firing on all cylinders. That’s two car references in one sentence. I’ve never felt so masculine. 

There are also times, unfortunately, that the actors you hire, who perhaps you know have the potential to bring it, just don’t. No matter how hard you try you just cannot get them there. Sometimes it is no ones fault; it just doesn’t happen. It’s the reason this article is worded directors need to take more responsibility and not all. Sometimes the blame is shared and that’s okay. 

But how does one avoid such a fate?

In theatre, it is obviously common practice that we rehearse for months before opening. In film, we often come to set as actors and get our lines re-written while in the makeup chair. 

That is why it is imperative, as directors, that we hold rehearsals for cinematic performances as well. This doesn’t necessarily have to be as formal and traditional as a theatrical rehearsal. Read-throughs are great but they’re not really rehearsals. Get in a space, act it out, allow actors to have a playground to experiment because once on set such exploration is limited. Call your actors on the phone – have deep discussions about their characters and their objectives, conflicts, and actions. Make sure they build a backstory and know their character inside out. Improvise scenarios. Discuss tactics and motivations. Direct them.  Rehearsing for a film should be more about an actor truly knowing their character (meaning the director has to truly know each character as well) than the specific lines that might very well change soon. This allows an actor to have a seamless transition when minor changes are made with the script. 

 Your project will flourish as a result. I promise. 

I believe this change in outlook and practice will have two effects on our industry. The obvious one being an increase in the quality of acting. The other being, I postulate, an increase in the quantity of good actors. Right now, perhaps on a subconscious level, many great actors are great because they have developed a specific skill: they can take a director’s vague and unhelpful comment and justify it. These actors understand what the director is trying to say, what the director really should be saying, and they step back, search within, do the required work, come back out and present exactly what the director sought. 

 Actors who are unable to do this often give performances that could have been better as they never truly grasped what the hazy and esoteric comments the director made meant. One such way a dedicated actor combats this is by hiring an acting coach, an interceder that has the skillset to understand what needs to be done and can translate a director’s desires for you in a way that is better understood; in other words, the coach speaks the actor’s language. 

But the reality is many actors on the verge of greatness, whose career or lack thereof is teeter tottering, can’t afford an acting coach to be on set with them constantly. And they shouldn’t have to.   

What happens to many of these actors? They never make it. Their talents are categorized as sub-par, sometimes they are deemed difficult to work with because they ask so many questions to better understand. To me, this is a tragedy. A waste of artistic talent. 

It is often said that great actors can take a script and upgrade it one letter grade by giving a believable performance. So they take a C script and make it seem like a B script. 

Russell Crowe famously told screenwriter William Nicholson on the set of Gladiator,

"Your lines are garbage, but I'm the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good".

Harsh much?

This idea also works conversely, although perhaps with a more steep decline – bad acting can take an A script all the way down to, well, an F. 

I think something akin can happen between directors and actors. A great director should be able to take a B actor and raise their game one letter to an A performance. And of course, this too works conversely as bad direction can and will lower the grade of a performance. 

Let’s work on raising the grades. 

By taking on more responsibility for bad acting, directors will be, by nature, more inclined to push and push the boundaries of a performance. They will be more than auteurs. They will be creative educators that help usher in the next great generation of actors and portrayals.  

I think it a worthwhile endeavor. 

Onwards and Upwards, Always - G