Oregon Shakespeare Festival is not going well

May 13, 2023 10:10 AM

Nataki Garrett to Leave Oregon Shakes Amid Emergency Fund Drive Like many theaters, the legendary Oregon Shakespeare Festival has suffered due to the pandemic, and the periodic fires going on in the region. But even with that, they are out of money and the local population has been resistant to having an African-American director, Nataki Garrett.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival says it needs $2.5 million to save its season and a lot of key staff have left. Glassdoor reviews of the company are not good. Garrett has received death threats and had to get a security team to go around in public. Garrett has had to bring back smaller numbers of plays and people have complained about a lack of Shakespeare. People have also complained about having more diverse casting in a majority-white location, and that plays should appeal to a majority-white audience..

Garrett has now quit the institution at the end of this month, saying she doesn't want to be a liability to the organization. It seems heavily implied from this article that the higher-level donors have quit donating.

In the fall of 2021, she said she “started to receive letters from a group of people that called themselves ‘the old white guard,’ and they were upset because in 2021 I didn’t program Shakespeare.” That, of course, was the year in which only one show, Fannie, made it to a festival stage at all. And Garrett’s track record for programming Shakespeare vs. new work is comparable to her predecessor, Bill Rauch: Her 2022 season featured two Shakespeare plays out of eight, while the Rauch-programmed 2019 season had three out of 11. Two of the five productions in Garrett’s 2023 season are by Shakespeare. Given that the programming under her watch was similar to her predecessor’s, then, it is hard to escape the conclusion that it was something else—i.e., her race and gender—that raised hackles.

“In my first year, a donor told me that I was the reason she rescinded a large gift,” said Garrett. “She came to me and told me to my face, and she said, ‘I want to make sure you know it’s not because you’re Black. But there are things about the organization that you just don’t understand, and you have big shoes to fill.’ I was like, ‘Thank you for letting me know where you stand.’ I went to my development team and said, ‘We’re gonna have to pivot.’ And then the crisis happened. You can’t really build the plane and fly it at the same time.”

posted by jenfullmoon (122 comments total)

Oregon. One of those Left Coast states that is so liberal everyone wants to move there. Right?
posted by hippybear at 10:56 AM on May 13, 2023 [18 favorites]

Goddamnit, Oregon. It's a beautiful state but the deeply ingrained and entrenched racism that exists outside of the urban centers is fucking inexcusable.
posted by tmt at 10:57 AM on May 13, 2023 [31 favorites]

I've been an attendee and supporter for over 20 years. I'm part of a big group of old friends who gather in Ashland for a week every summer to see multiple plays. Ashland is a marvelous place to visit and has some of the best restaurants in Oregon. My out-of-state friends aren't coming this year after attending every year (except 2020-21) since 1995.

I'm old, white, cis, straight but I am woke af. I absolutely endorse diversity and inclusion in cast, crew, and subject matter. But it is possible to overdo DEI and OSF has done so to the point of absurdity (YMMV, don't @ me). In addition, last year the technical production, particularly the audio, was terrible in two plays we saw making them painful to experience.

My family will likely go for a weekend and see a couple of shows this weekend. We've made a donation. Godspeed, OSF.
posted by neuron at 11:00 AM on May 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Oregon is extremely white. Being a white dude I don't experience racism but I know it's common outside the major metro areas. It's very hard to be black or Asian outside the Portland-Eugene corridor.
posted by neuron at 11:02 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

While racism is clearly a factor, OSF was also hit by a one-two punch of wildfire smoke that caused losses over $2m with a number of cancellations and COVID, which has shuttered arts organizations across the country.

Recovery from both would be hard (especially since the fires remain a threat, thanks to climate change. If Garrett had come in without those challenges, she still would have had an uphill battle. All three made it impossible.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:06 AM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

So very saddening, OSF was a big part of my early theater experience in HS and college. We went yearly, I spent my junior and senior summers there at theater camps, and my first two years of college at what was then SOSC majoring in theater. I sure hope they can find a clear path through.
posted by calamari kid at 11:08 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

racism that exists outside of the urban centers
I don't experience racism but I know it's common outside the major metro areas

I would be interested to hear a Black Portlander weigh in on the apparent absence of racism inside the Portland city limits.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:13 AM on May 13, 2023 [53 favorites]

I've spent a lot of time in Oregon, and particularly rural Oregon, and my impression has always been that it's racist AF. The Rogue Valley is full of old sundown towns and some really unpleasant State of Jefferson discriminatory thinking. This feels pretty in line.
posted by bwerdmuller at 11:31 AM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Every summer for more than a decade our family of 5 has piled into the van and driven from SF bay to Ashland. We see as many plays as we can in a week and drive back. In this way OSF has been a wonderful touchstone for our family.

However, it really started to weigh on us how hard the woke axe was getting ground, making the quality of the plays hard to predict. The good plays were still good, especially certain performances, but more and more often the best were not the ones created in-house. The worst performances had interfered with the source material in order to graft on some social statement - which can be done well, but dreadful when ham-fisted and the seams show.

This summer for the first time we are all flying to the Ontario Stratford festival.
posted by untaut at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

it really started to weigh on us how hard the woke axe was getting ground

Can you elaborate on this? This reads super racist.
posted by curious nu at 11:39 AM on May 13, 2023 [63 favorites]

Wow, that's a brutal parade of Glassdoor rants. I'm sure rural Oregon's deep-seated racism (not to mention wildfires) didn't help things, but it sure sounds like this place would've still been an absolute disaster, anywhere in the world.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can you elaborate on this? This reads super racist.

This detail seems pretty clear and not racist to me:

The worst performances had interfered with the source material in order to graft on some social statement - which can be done well, but dreadful when ham-fisted and the seams show.

The opinions from people who have seen the shows seem to be pretty consistent. And none of those people are from Oregon.
posted by billjings at 11:52 AM on May 13, 2023 [13 favorites]

If something seems too woke for you that prob says more about you than the thing. Perhaps as a white person you aren’t the audience, which is definitely a choice an artistic director can make, albeit in racist AF Oregon probably not one that endears one to donors and patrons. It’s a thing all artistic orgs have to fight with. Ultimately you have to get butts in seats or shut the doors. Talk about symphony orchestras playing the same twelve Pops concerts over and over because that’s how they pay the bills. But they also have other shows too, that take risks but lose money. It’s a juggling act and smoke and covid can make the balls fall.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:53 AM on May 13, 2023 [21 favorites]

This detail seems pretty clear and not racist to me:

The worst performances had interfered with the source material in order to graft on some social statement - which can be done well, but dreadful when ham-fisted and the seams show.

That's almost textbook generic, not specific. I'd like to understand the particular "social statement(s)" and how they were not done well.

The opinions from people who have seen the shows seem to be pretty consistent. And none of those people are from Oregon.

Turns out: racist people exist everywhere, not just Oregon!
posted by curious nu at 11:58 AM on May 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

If something seems too woke for you that prob says more about you than the thing.

I haven't seen any of the productions in question, but reading the statement, this isn't about "woke content"... it's about taking something already established and changing it to contain woke content. There are plenty of theater pieces one could do, but as a bullshit example, doing a rewrite of As You Like It to be about Black Lives Matter isn't the way to present such messages.
posted by hippybear at 11:59 AM on May 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

it's about taking something already established and changing it to contain woke content. There are plenty of theater pieces one could do, but as a bullshit example, doing a rewrite of As You Like It to be about Black Lives Matter isn't the way to present such messages.

Shakespeare famously never translates well to other societal messages. Imagine taking Romeo and Juliet and making it about racial tension in the urban poor; the only way you could make it worse would be to add singing and dancing.
posted by Superilla at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2023 [147 favorites]

If something seems too woke for you that prob says more about you than the thing.

I haven't seen any of the productions in question, but reading the statement, this isn't about "woke content"... it's about taking something already established and changing it to contain woke content. There are plenty of theater pieces one could do, but as a bullshit example, doing a rewrite of As You Like It to be about Black Lives Matter isn't the way to present such messages.

Hi! This is racist!

There are a few things to keep in mind:

If you are in any way using "woke" as a pejorative, you absolutely need to take a step back and reconsider. This is a 101-level Republican/fascist tactic. There's no way to use that word in that way at this point in time and not be parroting racist messaging.

Tone-policing about when/where/how to interject/adapt anti-racist messaging is racist. Full stop. There's no nuance here; it's just racist.

Also, point of fact, the comment I originally quoted includes "the woke axe" so it is 100% a complaint about "woke content" and arguing otherwise is disingenuous at best.

I know it's easy to get defensive when someone says something you said is racist, or that you are perpetuating racism, but I really highly encourage anyone about to "nuh uh!" this to take a beat and consider the ways it may, in fact, be true. It doesn't mean you're a terrible human being, but it DOES mean you may be (unconsciously) perpetuating a serious harm.
posted by curious nu at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2023 [123 favorites]

Oregon been institutionally racist since before statehood. Things have been slowly getting better since we had the KKK-endorsed governor back in the '20s, but the peace and love hippie granola veneer is just a surface layer.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 12:08 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Shakespeare famously never translates well to other societal messages. Imagine taking Romeo and Juliet and making it about racial tension in the urban poor; the only way you could make it worse would be to add singing and dancing.
posted by Superilla at 12:07 on May 13 [+] [!]

I'm guessing this is an R+J riff but since the conversation is a little spiky right now it might be good to like, explicitly state you're saying something sarcastic.
posted by curious nu at 12:09 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you interpreted my use of woke as a pejorative in my comment, that's about you and not me. The conversation about whether or not a standing work should be revised is a difficult conversation but you've turned it into a lecture. I'm glad you have absolutist positions on things, but I don't share them and if that labels me as a racist because I think there are plays that address anti-racist matters that could be put on instead of adapting older works, then I'll take that, I guess.
posted by hippybear at 12:14 PM on May 13, 2023 [25 favorites]

I'm guessing this is an R+J riff but since the conversation is a little spiky right now it might be good to like, explicitly state you're saying something sarcastic.

Not to explain someone else’s joke but they’re describing “West Side Story”.
posted by Gygesringtone at 12:23 PM on May 13, 2023 [76 favorites]

explicitly state you're saying something sarcastic.

Fair point, I was referring to West Side Story, which has 100% more Puerto Rican immigrants than the original.

There are also works of art that attempt to make positive social commentary but are artistically unsuccessful, such as the American film Crash.
posted by Superilla at 12:23 PM on May 13, 2023 [23 favorites]

Anyone using the word “woke” should just know that they are lumping themselves in with the QA/NewsMax crowd.

If you actually care about diversity, equity, inclusion, or social justice, use those terms instead.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:25 PM on May 13, 2023 [55 favorites]

Ashland is nearly 300 miles from Portland, OR, and 350 miles from San Francisco. For an urbanite, going to OSF is like going on a pilgrimage away from the real world and into the world of theater.

I was at OSF when the Twin Towers fell, people walking on the Bricks, the plaza between the theaters, wandering in a liminal space between being tourists on vacation, and being trapped, their flights indefinitely canceled.
In the midst of this, the word spread that a free performance would be offered in the Angus Boehmer Theater. It made sense, this is a Shakespearean theater company, dealing with tragedy artistically is what they do.
We entered the theater and were treated to a full performance which was entirely written and performed within hours of the tragedy. It was very much of that era of early post-9/11 genre of art grieving those 5000 falling souls.
When it was done, the theater was quiet and I was getting ready to stand up, then walk outside into the sunlight and quietly process what I had just seen.
Then an audience member stood up and loudly sang, "God Bless America!" and many others stood up and joined in. I stood up, and looked at the audience members who were not singing, and we shared a WTF expression.
And my friends, that expression has not left my face all these years since.
posted by ApplAuD at 12:25 PM on May 13, 2023 [17 favorites]

Catching up on the thread, what Curious Nu said, in other words.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:27 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Aha, thank you for the West Side Story explanation! Totally outside my experience. :)
posted by curious nu at 12:27 PM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would be interested to hear a Black Portlander weigh in on the apparent absence of racism inside the Portland city limits.

Note: I'm a white Portlander, and recently moved here from NY, but from what I've seen, the racism in Portland is of a particular variety of "we're certified liberal so certainly we can't be racist and we never have to examine that ever" kind of thinking, while the rural Oregon racism is of the "stockpile o' guns, just waiting for a reason, please gimme a reason" variety.

Plus the Portland PD has a recent history of buddying up to the Proud Boys, so no, it's not great, and not exclusive to rural areas here. But it's also probably a lot worse in the rural areas.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:30 PM on May 13, 2023 [25 favorites]

MetaFilter: is not going well
posted by rikschell at 12:30 PM on May 13, 2023 [27 favorites]

There are plenty of theater pieces one could do, but as a bullshit example, doing a rewrite of As You Like It to be about Black Lives Matter isn't the way to present such messages.

This is really begging the question! The obviousness of what you're saying is not as evident as you seem to think.
posted by dusty potato at 12:46 PM on May 13, 2023 [34 favorites]

Garrett is only the latest in a sizeable number of artistic directors from underrepresented groups put in positions of power at theaters at the worst possible historical moment, often left holding the bag for the financial mess left by derelict boards of directors.

Just off the top of my head in Chicago I'm thinking of Ken-Matt Martin (Victory Gardens), Will Davis (American Theater Company), and Lanisse Antoine Shelley (The House).

Also, though I'm sure we've all seen productions that were bad due in part to their unsubtle politics, I don't think it's at all hard to imagine a version of As You Like It that turns its plot about in-groups and out-groups, blurred identities, and urban-rural divides into a production about race.
posted by HeroZero at 12:47 PM on May 13, 2023 [33 favorites]

Or, you know, just deprecate all the racist plays and stop doing them.

Or do plays that aren't racist in any way and don't try to put a message in them.
posted by hippybear at 12:50 PM on May 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

One question not mentioned in most discussions of OSF is whether a $45 million performing arts institution could possibly be sustainable in a small town that’s a 4-hour drive from the closest large city. Garrett’s predecessor doubled the organization’s budget, and when she took over she immediately had to deal with COVID and wildfires and overt racism that Bill Rauch never had to face. Garrett’s programming hasn’t been any more “woke” (gag) than Rauch’s, but they have been perceived as such by the old, white, stodgy ticketbuyer base.

For financial reasons, OSF should probably go back to being a smallish Shakespeare company, but the art will be the poorer for it.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:51 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Garrett is only the latest in a sizeable number of artistic directors from underrepresented groups put in positions of power at theaters at the worst possible historical moment, often left holding the bag for the financial mess left by derelict boards of directors.

I suspected glass cliff shit was going on here. Sadly confirmed.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:56 PM on May 13, 2023 [36 favorites]

I last saw The Odyssey there in 2017. It was great until they did this strobe-driven "bullet time" thing for the slaying of the suitors, which went on far too long. (Any amount of time was too much.) It was a choice that left me deeply uncomfortable. Call me stodgy and old. I don't care.
posted by dsword at 12:56 PM on May 13, 2023

Mod note: A few comments removed. Y'all can make your points without personal attacks or insinuations.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:02 PM on May 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

This editorials in the Ashland News where the guy says that only white people can afford to go to Ashland and white people aren’t going to watch plays with nonwhite casts don’t seem to be doing anyone any favors. I also find that critiques of theater for being too woke or diverse are not particularly helpful. People are entitled to an opinion, but a useful critique would actually specify aspects of the performance or play, like complaining about an annoying strobe thing that goes on too long. I mean, if the wokeness is ruining the theater piece, then surely it is possible to describe how it is doing that. That’s my opinion, anyway.
posted by snofoam at 1:14 PM on May 13, 2023 [22 favorites]

Nthing that this seems very much like a glass cliff thing. Previously, it seemed that directors were actually praised for being daring and creative in their interpretations, even if their reach far exceeded their grasp. It makes it worth clawing one's way past the Elizabethan puns and dirty jokes that were probably mostly inscrutable after the Great Vowel Shift. And I want to see a BLM-infused production of As You Like It, if only to imagine it playing on an eternal loop in whatever squalid corner of the afterlife the late, unlamented John Simon was deposited in.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:16 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

I really don’t understand the thread drilling down into whether the productions were good or not, whether they were tampered with too much or not — they got *death threats* over it.

Even assuming that the productions were awful in some real, objectively non-racist way, who cares? Send a polite “I won’t be donating this year because the last few productions were not great” letter at worst. At best, just shrug and realize that it’s not your cup of tea and see if it gets better.

The bottom line is you don’t send death threats because you don’t like something FFS. Don’t tolerate it, don’t “well maybe there was a point” it — the sole focus should be “as a society we don’t tolerate this behavior.” And if you initially were, politely, saying “well the shows kinda sucked” you still need to rally behind the organization when other people are doing this shit.
posted by jzb at 1:23 PM on May 13, 2023 [105 favorites]

I'm thinking about the artists of color I've seen at American Players Theatre the last several years. Brilliant talents -- LaShawn Banks's Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, Gavin Lawrence's Orsino (a difficult role because Orsino is written as a total schmuck really), the entire cast of The River Bride but especially Triney Sandoval and Erica Cruz Hernández, have particularly stuck in my mind -- and I hate to even think how all this impacts them, even half the country away.

The very idea that the mere presence of these artists could damage a theatre company or a production -- I can't even. I don't know where to start with how hideous that is.

I gotta go see what they're doing at APT this summer, while there are tickets left.
posted by humbug at 1:29 PM on May 13, 2023 [17 favorites]

I was also going to post a link to the glass cliff phenomenon, which definitely seems in play here.

Also if you are white and also feel the need to identify yourself as woke you are probably only a half step from also explaining how you have a Black friend. Please don't.

Finally, the scholar Ayanna Thompson has done a ton of work on Shakespeare and race and, if I recall correctly, a lot of her research has been done looking at audience reviews of the OSF productions and she said you could clearly see the rampant coded racism in reviews from the theatergoers (stuff like using words like "strident" or "mannish" only when complaining about Black actresses in roles) over decades. So. Not surprising this is where things are going.

I'd always kind of thought it would be fun to go to the OSF but now I'd rather spend my money closer to home on theater season where I hope my fellow audience-goers will be less terrible, maybe.
posted by TwoStride at 1:32 PM on May 13, 2023 [29 favorites]

I'm not a theater-goer and therefore not the audience for any of this, but from reading the links in the FPP and the comments above, this seems like a very clear example of a glass cliff hire, where with the addition of the fires and covid, there was no way for her to realistically succeed.

Note: I'm a white Portlander, and recently moved here from NY, but from what I've seen, the racism in Portland is of a particular variety of "we're certified liberal so certainly we can't be racist and we never have to examine that ever" kind of thinking, while the rural Oregon racism is of the "stockpile o' guns, just waiting for a reason, please gimme a reason" variety.

As a former Oregon resident, of both Portland and rural areas, I'd say that this description both minimizes the racism in Portland and exaggerates it in the rural areas. And, the focus on Oregon's particular strain of historical and current racism, interesting as it is, ducks the point that the non-local festival attendees (including in this very thread) seem to feel much the same about the recent programming.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:34 PM on May 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

I am side-eyeing -- hard -- a bunch of white Mefites scolding a theater program for being "too woke" in the context of an article about a Black artistic director who had received racists death threats.

Do better, people.

FWIW, the first time I went to multiple shows in an OSF season was 2022. We saw three shows.

- The Tempest was fantastic. It was raining pretty dang hard, and I was incredibly impressed by the tenacity of the actors doing their thing.
- Once on This Island was not really my thing but was beautifully done with amazing costumes and some solid singers.
- Revenge Song was raunchy, over the top, super gay, and magnificently silly.

So, not a full sample but -- unless you think having a multiracial cast for The Tempest or a family-friendly musical about Caribbean experience and folklore is somehow a "woke axe getting ground" -- I have no idea wtf y'all are talking about.

(Bisexual French swordswomen burning down nunneries filled with S&M-ish nuns might be "woke"? I guess? But it sure was fun.)
posted by feckless at 2:44 PM on May 13, 2023 [67 favorites]

I'm not totally sure of the glass cliff. Covid didn't exist when she was hired.

She was working as director at OSF in April 2019, when it was announced she would become artistic director in August 2019. She did a stint as assistant artistic director for awhile as well.

I think she was very unfortunate with Covid hitting in March 2020. They basically lost an entire season of revenue but expenses remained. It left her in an almost impossible spot.
Theatres everywhere were struggling to survive.

She did a good job keeping it afloat. But her longer term vision was at odds with some large donors.

Her point was that they must attract a younger more diverse audience. For simple economic reasons. Their traditional older audience wasn't going to be around forever. Unfortunately that traditional audience liked traditional fare.

I don't think she's wrong but coupled with financial constraints from the pandemic it was an uphill struggle.
posted by yyz at 3:03 PM on May 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

As a former Oregon resident, of both Portland and rural areas, I'd say that this description both minimizes the racism in Portland and exaggerates it in the rural aareas.

I really don't want to get into this but... it's really hard to exaggerate the racial attitudes East of the mountains in both Washington and Oregon. It is not for nothing that people I know refer to those areas as Western Idaho. I grew up in Southern Idaho near the Snake River in the 50s and 60s and it was unbelievable what people there thought then.

I have a few Facebook friends living in my hometown who are milktoast liberals and the shit that gets pitched at them from people living there -- people they have known all their lives and see everyday -- is unfuckingbelievable. Well, actually it is not. Not to me.

But I will say this. It's so much much worse than it was when I was a child living there. People I know from childhood are moving out of state in to our side of the mountains. In droves. Because those neighbors attacking them are stone cold flat out fucking Nazis. Racists and fascists not just structurally but now avidly, intentionally and so so enthusiastically. The people they and I grew up with. People who told me back then that the N-words were born with tails that had to be amputated and could never play quarterback because they lacked the necessities. It has only gotten oh so much worse. You have no idea.

On another note, I am seeing something endemic here among my white compatriots that I have always seen here. A racist is always that guy over there. Not me, it's never ever me. But thee? You are. The virtue signaling has gotten air raid sirens and not just LED headlights but rather tetrawatt anti-missile green lasers.

I have been here for over twenty years now and that is one thing that has never changed about this place. Not in my experience. It is so depressing and always has been. Stop pointing fingers and work on your own shit first. Please please please.
posted by y2karl at 3:17 PM on May 13, 2023 [28 favorites]

Or, you know, just deprecate all the racist plays and stop doing them.

Or do plays that aren't racist in any way and don't try to put a message in them.

This isn't an absolutist position?

Shakespeare (and cultural history) isn't some sacrosanct land that should never be adapted or modified for modern times, and it's not like Shakespeare *wasn't* a wicked satirist and humorist lampooning the social issues of the day.

If he were alive today he absolutely would have been branded as "woke" and controversial by racists the same way he was controversial for being outrageous and outspoken about social commentary when he was alive.

Like that's kind of the whole point of why Shakespeare had so much staying power through about 450 years of theater.

If someone thinks that re-tooling or adapting Shakespeare for modern commentary on social issues isn't true to who or what Shakespeare was I don't think they really understand Shakespeare.

Some of the comments in this thread are super depressing and eye-opening even by MeFi standards.
posted by loquacious at 3:18 PM on May 13, 2023 [57 favorites]

Her point was that they must attract a younger more diverse audience. For simple economic reasons. Their traditional older audience wasn't going to be around forever. Unfortunately that traditional audience liked traditional fare.

Yeah, this is a theater problem In General, really.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:18 PM on May 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

I don't want the theatre side of things to get derailed by Oregon politics in general, but there's some real battles going on right now. The Democrats have a majority, but to prevent them from passing laws, the Republicans are denying them a quorum by not showing up, so nothing is getting done.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:38 PM on May 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

The Tempest was fantastic. It was raining pretty dang hard

The only time I've ever had an opportunity to see The Tempest live, it was an outdoor production that got called on account of rain. Dramatic irony!

Thank you for introducing me to the term "glass cliff." I've seen it in practice many times - had it happen to me, even - but never knew there was a term for it.

I'm reminded of one night during the run of the all-female production of Julius Caesar I was in. Toward the end of the first half, an old man in a cowboy hat stood up and yelled, "This never would have happened when Reagan was in office!" and stormed out of the theater. We never figured out if he was commenting on the political events of the play, or the gender makeup of the production.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:05 PM on May 13, 2023 [23 favorites]

Maybe he thought he was going to see King Lear?
posted by chavenet at 4:15 PM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

I have been following this story and I am sorry to hear that Garrett was driven out. I think how she was treated is embarrassing to the state of theater and to the state of Oregon. Needing a security detail? Wow. Because the people want more Shakespeare? Yikes.

As for those on this thread who are criticizing a choice to bring politics or new meaning into Shakespeare. Uh, I think you need to get out more. For movies, there is:
West Side Story
My Own Private Idaho
10 Things I Hate About You
The Cutting Edge
Forbidden Planet
Strange Brew
The Lion King
Romeo Must Die
There are just too many to list.
posted by Toddles at 4:26 PM on May 13, 2023 [27 favorites]

doing a rewrite of As You Like It to be about Black Lives Matter isn't the way to present such messages.

As You Like It is about a community of people exiled by an unjust establishment who survive through mutual aid, discover and embrace their essential selves, and ultimately bring down the power structure that tried to exclude them. It's one of (I think?) 2 Shakespeare plays where there's regime change without death.

Setting it around a protest movement would work pretty well, I think!
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:38 PM on May 13, 2023 [52 favorites]

Back in hardcore Covid times, a Shakespeare group here in San Francisco produced a live version of Lear, with a female lead, a very diverse cast, and all via Zoom, with the cast spread about at many different locations. They were able to do some simple video mixing from the individual Zoom feeds. And characters were able to pass objects back and forth! Magic… And in the comfort of lockdown at home on my computer with Zoom it was amazing. It kind of showed that with some imagination, technology, and a talented bunch of people, there are no limits to performing Shakespeare.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:52 PM on May 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

“Go woke, go broke” is for the most part right-wing wishful thinking. Nobody’s boycotting pro sports because of kneeling and BLM iconography, nor Disneyworld trips for defying Ron DeSantis.

That makes it really impressive that OSF programming seems to have managed this. It’s not as if even 1% of the audience or donor base lives in rural eastern Oregon or Washington, or could be otherwise described as completely mainstream liberals.

I haven’t been to Ashland in years, so maybe this is typical, but this year’s program seems designed to confront their actual audience and donors.

No white directors and one male director, no male or white living playwrights, and whites maybe 10% of the casts and less than that of the leads.

Romeo and Juliet reimagined to grind numerous contemporary political axes.

Twelfth Night in an African American blues milieu.

A new play that appears to be somehow both about Native American empowerment and Brexit. (Somehow I doubt this involves Native Americans sympathizing with English supporting Brexit out of a fitting desire to preserve themselves from displacement by foreign cultures and peoples…)*

And, to wrap it up, the sop to old backward thinking white people … Rent!

*If this what this play is about, I withdraw 100% of snark and want to read everything the playwright has written immediately!
posted by MattD at 5:09 PM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Anyone using the word “woke” should just know that they are lumping themselves in with the QA/NewsMax crowd.

Actually, no. Per Wikipedia: Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination."

There's no need to let someone else claim the word and change its meaning. Given who created the original meaning, erasing that - and insisting that other also do - might be considered...well you know.
posted by stevil at 5:17 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

If the timing means this isn't a glass cliff, per se, then it's probably just the "black people loot, white people find" problem where if you already don't like a person, race, culture, or community, then you see everything they do as negative, while everything someone you like does is positive. When an individual does this it stands out, but when a community or industry does this then the individuals can believe that they're not biased or discriminatory because they're just echoing the position of the majority (and by extension, it's really the minority who are pointing out the issue that are "causing a problem where there never used to be one").

(Also, ask yourself if you can define woke in a way that matches both the way you use it and see it used. If you can't, maybe don't use it?

And another also; If someone asks for a black take on something and you're white, maybe keep your take to yourself. PoC and minorities are told daily what they can or can't say or do, and your white arse can't cope the once or twice it happens to you a year? Read the room.)
posted by krisjohn at 5:18 PM on May 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

The conversation about whether or not a standing work should be revised is a difficult conversation but you've turned it into a lecture.

I mean, the problem people are having with this is that the time to have this conversation is AFTER we all have a conversation about how death threats towards a woman who is an African-American director for a major artistic festival are racists, misogynist, and evil.

Like Shakespeare is fine, no one's getting rid of Shakespeare. Theater as an artform is, if not fine, then at the very least not going away. It's been part of human culture for about as long as we can trace back, it'll be fine. However, the artistic voices we loose when we don't focus on the fact that they are being silenced by bigots, those have gone away, they're not fine, and chances are they're not coming back. That's the urgent conversation here.

Believe me, nobody is more down to have high minded conversations about art. I just really don't want to give cover to bigots by ignoring the fact that they're threatening violence because I'd rather talk about art.
posted by Gygesringtone at 5:42 PM on May 13, 2023 [39 favorites]

Came to affirm the comment by Gygeringstone. This is not about adaptations of Shakespeare. This is quite news to me that social topics can't be integrated into Shakespeare plays. What?! I was an English major so forced to take a Shakespeare course and one assignment was create an adaptation of a Shakespeare play. As someone else said above... of course you could adapt a play into something related to the Black Lives Matter movement. That is, unless you misunderstand what Black lives matter actually means.

The local children's theater did a fantastic adaptation of a Midsummer's night dream making it contemporary and relevant to Gen z kids.

So yeah this is a complete derail from the issue at hand so thoughtfully outlined above.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 5:57 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Fair point, I was referring to West Side Story, which has 100% more Puerto Rican immigrants than the original.
jsyk, Puerto Ricans aren't immigrants.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:59 PM on May 13, 2023 [15 favorites]

According Ron DeSantis's general counsel, the definition of woke is "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." Consider the source.
posted by y2karl at 6:03 PM on May 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel awful for this director that has been stuck with this impossible turd of a rural white festival, but reading the comments of the long time theatergoers, it sure seems like it needs to die. Also, "grinding the woke axe" is... wow. I miss cortex.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 6:10 PM on May 13, 2023 [14 favorites]

No white directors and one male director, no male or white living playwrights, and whites maybe 10% of the casts and less than that of the leads.

None of this seems problematic to me in any way, especially given the lengthy history of white men being dominant as playwrights, directors, etc. I love Ibsen, Strindberg, Brecht, Miller, Beckett, Kushner, Shakespeare, etc. I saw Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in London. But there’s no reason not to have diverse casts, directors, playwrights, etc. Men are about half the world, but vastly over represented for centuries. White people are a minority on the planet. Let’s let new voices in.
posted by snofoam at 6:16 PM on May 13, 2023 [31 favorites]

So I think that there are kind of…hmm.

Look, I’m a woman of color who loves Shakespeare and loves Shakespeare reimagined. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to be like “hey look, I like my Shakespeare reimagined sometimes, but also I want more traditional formats”. But the correct *volume* of that take should be very low. Like not just “don’t do death threats” but “maybe don’t make angry op eds” low.

It isn’t racist to like traditionally performed Shakespeare, but it is racist to somehow use Someone is Doing Shakespeare Wrong as an excuse to let out all your vitriol when there’s suddenly a non white person in charge.
posted by corb at 6:17 PM on May 13, 2023 [72 favorites]

I got to go to the OSF regularly from 2005-2015? And maybe I was just lucky, but I remember multiracial casting in the Shakespeare plays. There was a _Coriolanus_ they didn’t call despite torrential rain that was possibly the best theater I’ve ever seen; Coriolanus and his mother and his wife? were all played by Black actors.

So if donors are _remembering_ it as being a white company when it was successful, that is a tragic cognitive flaw itself.
posted by clew at 6:20 PM on May 13, 2023 [18 favorites]

As a racist, I think I could handle some of those shows but capping it off with Rent? They're just playing with me at that point.
posted by kingdead at 6:20 PM on May 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

As a frequent OSF attendee and former professional theater critic, I’m pretty gobsmacked by the people complaining on Metafilter, of all places, about Shakespeare productions being too political. Have any of you seen a production of The Merchant of Venice in the past hundred years? The source text is undeniably antisemitic, and it has been staged instead as a critique of antisemitism. Every generation projects it’s concerns onto Shakespeare, and OSF has been participating in that projection at least since Libby Appel took over in 1990-something.

Nataki Garrett worked harder than most people have ever worked to save a failing institution and a major employer in Ashland and was met with racist terrorism. It’s despicable, if not terribly surprising. Jackson County was a Klan stronghold, and the rich white Oregonians and Californians who make up OSF’s audience aren’t a particularly progressive bunch, whatever they may think of themselves.

The treatment of Garrett is unacceptable. Ashland seems determined to prove that they do not deserve to host a major arts institution. They’re currently begging for a second bailout from the state legislature, and I’m not sure they deserve it.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 6:20 PM on May 13, 2023 [83 favorites]

I am trying to imagine an American production of Othello where Othello is white, but the rest of the cast is POC. But, and I guess this is my personal bias showing, I feel like Iago kinda has to be white.
posted by snofoam at 6:30 PM on May 13, 2023

I was prepared to write a detailed review of the two OSF shows I saw last season in this thread, but upon reflection I think that's not what's needed here. I'm just going to say, I echo everything in the comment above from Just the one swan, actually.

Also, I have tickets for OSF's production of Rent in two weeks and I really need them to hang on as an institution until then.
posted by Tesseractive at 6:39 PM on May 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

As You Like It is about a community of people exiled by an unjust establishment who survive through mutual aid, discover and embrace their essential selves, and ultimately bring down the power structure that tried to exclude them.

When I played Amiens in AYLI, the exiled court was all women. I think it was a subtle thing, but it was still A Thing.

And all this talk of Shakespeare in the rain is bringing back memories of the time I played the third witch in the Scottish play in weather that had us with mud up to our knees. It was very atmospheric. One night our Mac got the the line "...and sleep in spite of thunder!" when a huge clap of the real thing boomed over our site. It was too awesome. (Come to think of it, we did kind of a feminist take on the witches, too, but I don't think that's unusual these days.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:46 PM on May 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

Imagine describing the concept of a white-majority "Oregon" to Shakespeare.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 6:54 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Snofoam - 1997 Washington DC Othello production featuring Patrick Stewart in the title role

---

I have directed over half of Shakespeare's plays. Every one of my productions has been focused on bringing forward a relevant political or social point present in the play. I practice color conscious casting and have never once had an all-white (or honestly even a majority white) cast. I've been called heavy handed, been accused of butchering Shakespeare and had the occasional audience member walk or in disgust. But also the local theatre community gave me a lifetime achievement award.

Know what I've never had? A death threat.

(Also my covid-era zoom production of AYLI was totally influenced by Trump presidency era fascism - also no death threats or even accusations of being woke. Of course, I'm a white dude so I'm allowed to have an opinion)
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:54 PM on May 13, 2023 [64 favorites]

The post mentions "People have also complained about having more diverse casting in a majority-white location" -- I have read the links and I haven't found this complaint, at least not explicitly. Could someone help me find it?

Rothschild's argument is with the proportion of contemporary plays at OSF, and when I read the various Letters to the Editor on the Ashland News website, that's the argument I see over and over again from people who oppose the recent trends in programming. Example:

I have learned infinitely more from seeing Black, female Horatio than I ever learned from a new play.

Shakespeare can and should be played by people of color. Give me an all-Black Macbeth! I’ll see it six times over, as I saw the one in 2019. I cannot imagine seeing a new play six times.....

(I, personally, can imagine seeing a new play six times.)

Some other letters: "We condemn the abhorrent racist death threats suffered by Nataki Garrett"; "Preserving the Real (Where’s the real OSF, the long-term actors, the great playwrights?)"; "Percentage of Shakespeare plays produced hasn’t gone down (The only significant reduction of the percentage of Shakespeare in the festival’s seasons happened 53 years ago)"; on the previous management team's speckled financial legacy.

Rothschild mentions that he isn't against racially and gender-diverse casting, but that he thinks it's not inherently more engaging or noteworthy as a directorial choice. I probably disagree in a way that rhymes with Ann Leckie's analogy about a world where marginalized people get arbitrarily punched in the face when we go to restaurants: "Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won’t punch you in the face. Not even once, not even a little bit."
posted by brainwane at 7:24 PM on May 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

Forbidden Planet at least had Robby the Robot. Who was designed by Robert Kinoshina, the same guy designed the mostly nameless Danger, Will Robinson! robot of Space Family Same Surname fame. I used to think that one was an execrable re-mod of Robby but no-o-o, TIL otherwise. It was its own autonomon. Robby even guest starred in a Battle of the Robots episode. Talk about Tempest-tuous.
posted by y2karl at 7:44 PM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

When I was at university, our choir performed Mendelssohn's oratorio St. Paul, with paid soloists in the main roles. We toured it around to a few big churches around the city. Our Paul was an amazing Black tenor. At one of the churches, as we were waiting to start I saw some Black kids in the front row, who didn't look too excited to be dragged out to an evening of classical music. But when the tenor soloist got up to sing, I heard one of the kids whisper loudly to another, "Look! St. Paul's a brother!" And, at least when he was singing, they paid attention. Never since then have I questioned the importance of diversity in the performing arts.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:04 PM on May 13, 2023 [15 favorites]

Twelfth Night in an African American blues milieu.

You mean like Julius Caesar set in Africa with an all-black cast? What a wacky idea, what kinda amateurs would come up with that?
posted by praemunire at 8:56 PM on May 13, 2023 [10 favorites]

Such a bummer.

Ms. Windo grew up in Ashland, her folks have lived there since the late 60's, I lived there for a year and a half. My SIL was in one of the Shakespeare plays as a child. As a child of the midwest, it always felt like a very left-wing hippie town.

But everyone from the Bay Area wanted a second home, bought and drove the market crazy (late 90s-early 2000s?). I think that drove a lot of the working class out of town. And the town doesn't have a lot going for it other than tourism, and OSF was a big driver of their tourism.

The constant wildfires drove my in-laws out mostly, as MIL has some weird lung issues. And I think many of OSFs core crowd my have issues with unhealthy air quality.

And POC too. As others have mentioned, there is the whole "State of Jefferson" people who are ripe for the sov cit bingo card.

Garrett drew a bad hand. Hard to see what she could have done given the fires and COVID. But easier to blame a woman POC and her "agenda" than the actual financial realities. But, death threats? wtf
posted by Windopaene at 9:00 PM on May 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm old, white, cis, straight but I am woke af. I absolutely endorse diversity and inclusion in cast, crew, and subject matter. But it is possible to overdo DEI and OSF has done so to the point of absurdity (YMMV, don't @ me).

Hey neuron. I’ve been sitting on this thread all day, and white oregon cis guy to white oregon cis guy, I gotta tell you that this comment is racist.
posted by Jeff_Larson at 12:31 AM on May 14, 2023 [19 favorites]

As for those on this thread who are criticizing a choice to bring politics or new meaning into Shakespeare. Uh, I think you need to get out more. For movies, there is:
West Side Story
My Own Private Idaho
10 Things I Hate About You
The Cutting Edge
Forbidden Planet
Strange Brew
The Lion King
Romeo Must Die
There are just too many to list.

It is notable that they all sell themselves as new works. I can imagine being disappointed if you'd gone to see something called Romeo and Juliet and got The Lion King, for example.

Not that I think that is what is happening here, mind.
posted by Dysk at 1:36 AM on May 14, 2023

(To make it extremely clear - I do not think the issue here is anyone being 'too woke' or in a ham-fisted way. They may or may not be hamfisted with their political messaging, I don't know. It doesn't matter. It clearly isn't what this is actually about.)
posted by Dysk at 1:39 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

ITT white people desperately try to come up with other excuses rather than racism and point out how far "wokeism" has gotten.


Fucking Christ, look at yourselves.
posted by anansi at 2:42 AM on May 14, 2023 [29 favorites]

I can imagine being disappointed if you'd gone to see something called Romeo and Juliet and got The Lion King, for example.

...even more disappointed than you would be if you'd gone to see Hamlet. D'oh!
posted by Dysk at 4:08 AM on May 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

Brainwane, it is in the article linked in the post with the text you quoted. He is criticizing their decisions because he believes the only/most important audience, local and tourist, is white and won’t come to see more diverse plays:

Let me advance this discussion now by returning to the issue of demographics. While, in general, Shakespeare’s audience is not confined to old white folks, old white folks probably represent the largest single component of OSF’s audience, and a large majority of those who travel from other places to see the plays. I suggest that this is because of the cost. It’s one thing to pack a picnic basket and attend a performance of Shakespeare in the city park. It’s another to come up to Ashland from the Bay area to attend several performances and pay for lodging and meals out.

How shall we respond to such a reality? Shall we view it through the lens of our current culture wars, resent white “dominance,” and gamble that a different OSF will attract audiences of equivalent size but different demographics? It’s unlikely that such a strategy will succeed for OSF, because there is so little racial and ethnic diversity locally. And even if that strategy fills the seats in OSF’s three theaters, it won’t fill the hotels, restaurants and shops that depend heavily on visitors.
posted by snofoam at 4:13 AM on May 14, 2023

snofoam, I have read that passage and I read it differently than you do. I see him arguing about the audience for Shakespeare versus contemporary plays, not about the casting of the plays.
posted by brainwane at 4:36 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

His argument (as I understand it) is based on the premise that the contemporary plays that OSF is staging are by racially diverse playwrights and on social justice topics, and are meant to attract racially diverse audiences. There may be a dogwhistle in there about diverse casting, but an explicitly stated complaint about diverse casting of Shakespeare plays is not in there, as I read it.
posted by brainwane at 4:45 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Brainwane, I agree that on some level he is purportedly arguing against contemporary and non-Shakespeare plays. But he also argues that white people won't like a "different OSF" that is trying to attract "different [from just white people] demographics." He is clearly also talking about diversity, not just white people hate Mamet or something. (I interpret it as using non-Shakespeare as a cover to make his racism less explicit.)
posted by snofoam at 4:53 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, if the issue was purely Shakespeare versus newer plays, it would surely be easier to just say older audiences prefer Shakespeare and other classic plays and not bring up race at all.
posted by snofoam at 5:02 AM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Theatre is analogous to food, for me. Story and character archetypes are the ingredients that belong to/comprise all of humanity, and we see the fundamental recipes of established plays remixed endlessly. Grain is grain, fundamentally. Fat is fat. Sometimes adapted recipes eschew the literal grain or fat entirely and yet the identity of the dish announces itself anyhow.
Theatre reminds me that the ingredients of life have endless combinations and contexts, but there is a recognizable identity to these archetypes that is one of the things that makes Shakespeare, for example, so rich and timeless. His plays are full of humans and 400 years later, we too are surrounded by humans. The archetypes in his plays present themselves differently in our time (bread made in a convection oven will be different than bread made in a medieval kiln, in its way, but hey, BREAD) and that process connects us to what it is to be human NOW.
Minorities (a non-literal euphemism) are also having human experiences. If you go to a play and get so distracted that a character or story's surface features are different than the original recipe that you cannot access the humanity that is being portrayed, scrutinize why.
posted by droomoord at 5:11 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Note that this issue is not limited to Shakespeare, although Shakespeare's status as the Bard of Anglosphere makes his work a prime target for the self-defined Keepers of the Culture. In some ways, though, it's worse for the plays written by mere mortals.

I have season tickets to a local rep theatre, which to its credit has done a solid job with its programming. The majority of the regular cast are people of color, and every season they do a mix of new and classic plays, often with a social message. But still, when the lights come on at the end of the show, and I look around, the audience is 95% Old White People. It's not necessarily a cost issue -- each performance has most seats going for $20-40. It's that theatre is so heavily coded as A Thing For White People.

Also, once I got lottery tickets to a touring production of Oklahoma! at the fancier/more expensive theatre in town. Not my favorite musical, but hey they were like $25 orchestra seats and I had a free evening, so why not? It turned out to be a great production, with a trans woman playing Ado Annie who absolutely stole the show, and staging that leaned into the darkness of the story -- Curly trying to push Judd to suicide, the theft of Native land, the creepy erotic kaleidoscope thing. I was digging it in a way that I never have the movie musical. And all through the first act, these Old White People were literally walking out of the theatre. In the middle of musical numbers! Like, if you decide something's not your cup of tea (*cough*CATS*cough*) leave during intermission, fine. But it takes an astounding rudeness to walk out during a performance. I guess after seeing the response at OSF I should be glad they didn't (to my knowledge) send death threats.

Old White People, man.
posted by basalganglia at 6:01 AM on May 14, 2023 [30 favorites]

The conversation about whether or not a standing work should be revised is a difficult conversation but you've turned it into a lecture.

That conversation has not happened here. Vague comments about diverse theater being "too woke" is not a conversation.

Per Wikipedia: Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination."

There's no need to let someone else claim the word and change its meaning. Given who created the original meaning, erasing that - and insisting that other also do - might be considered...well you know.

It's already been co-opted by people who use it as a pejorative for anything that isn't white, straight, and patriarchal. And it's pretty well-established that white people using AAVE is often racist, even where the original meaning hasn't been twisted.

For example, let's say for the sake of argument that people are using the original AAVE definition. Saying that the "[alert to racial prejudice and discrimination] axe was getting ground" still sounds awfully racist to me. How about "it's about taking something already established and changing it to contain content that is [alert to racial prejudice and discrimination]."

People using woke to criticize diverse casting by a Black woman who's received death threats and explicitly racist criticism might have been unaware of the word's current usage or the implications of using it as criticism, but now they are. Hopefully they'll take a step back and think about this instead of getting defensive and doubling down.
posted by Mavri at 7:41 AM on May 14, 2023 [34 favorites]

It's funny that "As You Like It" is being brought up here, because we saw a production of As You Like it at OSF in 2019 and absolutely hated the shit out of it. And we walked in REALLY excited to see a diversely cast version that might bring new perspectives to the play. There were a bunch of visual cues that referenced The Handmaid's Tale (for example, having people march around the stage in red robes in formation), but it didn't tie into anything else in the play. It seemed to just be there for the aesthetic. One of the actors was clearly forgetting lines. It was very mannered, clunky and it felt like we'd walked into an early dress rehearsal rather than a performance of something that had been running for a couple of weeks. We were left with the impression that OSF had once been great but was coasting on its reputation.

But considering what else was on offer that year, which was under Bill Rauch and not Garrett, it's very clear that any complaints that Garrett made it "woke" are a fucking joke. Other plays of the 2019 season included: Cambodian Rock Band, which is a play about living under the Khmer Rouge; Between Two Knees, a comedy about Native American life between the Battle of Wounded Knee and the 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee; Mother Road, inspired by the Grapes of Wrath and about Mexican-American farmers; and an adaptation of The Comedy of Errors that was in both Spanish and English. Macbeth and All's Well that Ends Well both had diverse casts. It's terrible how Garret has been treated when she clearly was not making radical changes.
posted by rednikki at 9:10 AM on May 14, 2023 [18 favorites]

So, there's one line in the article about needing $2.5 mil to save the season that says "the organization’s leaders said they need to correct more than 15,000 incorrect entries in its financial ledger" and that these errors go back YEARS (i.e. before Garrett). It sounds like they are in need of a thorough audit. I wonder if that information would even have come out if the pandemic had not hit them hard. And I REALLY wonder why people aren't writing more about these accounting issues, because that seems pretty major.
posted by rednikki at 9:22 AM on May 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

Actually, no. Per Wikipedia: Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination."

per literally the same Wikipedia article like barely two paragraphs later:

"By 2020, however, members of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as overzealous, performative, or insincere. In turn, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race."

and then a bit later

"Linguist and social critic John McWhorter argues that the history of woke is similar to that of politically correct, another term once used self-descriptively by the left which was appropriated by the right as an insult, in a process similar to the euphemism treadmill.[45] Romano compares woke to canceled as a term for "'political correctness' gone awry" among the American right wing.[4] Attacking the idea of wokeness, along with other ideas such as cancel culture and critical race theory,[46] became a large part of Republican Party electoral strategy. "

there is, of course, the usage of 'woke' to ironically describe corporate DEI shit where they dedicate 0.000001% of their budget/time to DEI things internally while their marketing is makes it seem like they're immensely committed to the project but in this specific instance, I'd like to think that the DEI component of having a Black woman as a director who ran a production about Fannie Lou Hammer that this isn't particularly applicable

also of note - saying that they were being too... blatant (perhaps a better, easier term to have used here) with applying social commentary for a director who's only had a year's oversight seems at the very least mean-spirited and overly critical. I think the question here is would the same criticism be leveraged at a white woman? would she get a pass for 'at last trying'? and is the idea that they shouldn't ever try to add on social commentary if it's not perfect and elegant in the first go-around, like we live in a world where art is just super duper easy peasy and you gain mastery within months?

you could also say that you want them to go further, more leftist - in the context of receiving death threats at your home, the idea of pressuring a Black family to be more outspoken seems tactless, no? perhaps there was a lot of space for generosity here that, for some reason, wasn't given. it might be worthwhile to think about why or how that generosity wasn't provided here and if there could, perhaps, be certain unexamined feelings that might be related to race politics
posted by paimapi at 9:33 AM on May 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

I think people only blame “woke” elements because it’s the only thing they remember about a terrible show. If you take those parts out, all that’s left is a bad performance. Racists exploit your memory of the show to try to convince you that woke is bad.
posted by interogative mood at 9:35 AM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's funny that "As You Like It" is being brought up here, because we saw a production of As You Like it at OSF in 2019 and absolutely hated the shit out of it.

I'll repeat something that I said in an earlier comment: "Previously, it seemed that directors were actually praised for being daring and creative in their interpretations, even if their reach far exceeded their grasp." Of course, I wasn't the one who had to pay whatever the ticket cost, travel time and expense, babysitter, etc.

So, there's one line in the article about needing $2.5 mil to save the season that says "the organization’s leaders said they need to correct more than 15,000 incorrect entries in its financial ledger" and that these errors go back YEARS (i.e. before Garrett). It sounds like they are in need of a thorough audit. I wonder if that information would even have come out if the pandemic had not hit them hard. And I REALLY wonder why people aren't writing more about these accounting issues, because that seems pretty major.

Oh, indeed. One of the things about the glass cliff is that everyone points at whoever was behind the wheel when the car went off the cliff, not who originally steered the car toward the edge.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:07 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Old White People, man.

The one demographic it's always safe to bash at MetaFilter. Well, old people period. No one's going to their account closed for displaying ageism here. Not ever. Racism, homophobia, transphobia mmhmm but olds? Never
posted by y2karl at 1:53 PM on May 14, 2023

Just bringing this back around to death threats against a woman of color for making similar artistic decisions as the previous white male artistic director (who did not get any death threats that we know of).
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:11 PM on May 14, 2023 [22 favorites]

I do bean counting work for a regional theater, so maybe that skews my read of this situation, but I think the financial solvency question is central to this issue. I suppose maybe it's possible that OSF made a bunch of creative choices for political reasons that offended the sensibilities of a generally conservative patron base, I don't know their community, but nothing I've read here sounds like it was something your typical theater crowd isn't prepared to navigate and enjoy. It sounds a lot like a conservative just-so story.

What I've observed in my own company with a demographically similar patron base to the one described is that the tenor of the "political" push-back we get to our shows has much less to do with challenging subject matter and casting than - candidly - how good the show is. If the script was weak, or if we couldn't get the cast we were hoping for, or the production design didn't come together, suddenly we're "forcing something down their throat," in a way that somehow wouldn't have been the case if we could have afforded a full orchestra rather than a 5-piece or whatever.

I would bet money* that the problem here is OSF's finances are falling through because some dodgy account juggling buckled hard under the ongoing pandemic pressure, and they're having to make compromises in production budgets. Patrons are seeing that and reacting poorly but maybe don't have the critical eye to pinpoint where the shows are actually weakening, so they really latch on to the casting, which is what's obviously "different" to them about this particular take on the show. I don't intend to equivocate about the racism in that, it's extremely tiresome to navigate in my own company and OSF is getting it with both barrels here in a way that is frankly frightening. I'm just saying I don't believe a single problem would be fixed for them if they got a bunch of white folks in to do Macbeth or something. Money just isn't there for the arts in any market, grants and public funds are drying up on every level, it's questionable whether subscription models will ever be able to keep theater above water again, and OSF built a prestige one that involves patrons traveling for their shows. It may not be in the cards for them to work on that kind of national scale anymore.

*I would but i don't have any. I work in theater.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:25 PM on May 14, 2023 [18 favorites]

...
Forbidden Planet
Strange Brew
The Lion King
Romeo Must Die
There are just too many to list.

> It is notable that they all sell themselves as new works

... I'm not a theater person and would have a harder time compiling a list of all the specific productions of Shakespeare plays qua Shakespeare plays that have used the text to address a variety of social issues, but my guess would be that they make up a sizable percentage of annual productions across the globe. (People have described a number of them here, too.)
posted by trig at 2:38 PM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Damn, I'm impressed. I didn't think this thread could get any worse but here we are. Yes, that's right, old white people are the real victims here. Never mind that a woman of color was driven from her job by death threats; the real crime is that someone said that old white people can sometimes be just a little racist.
posted by octothorpe at 3:18 PM on May 14, 2023 [30 favorites]

Mod note: Things are getting way off track here folks, the derail about ageism needs to stop, now. Leaving comments up for clarity.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 4:07 PM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's astonishing how many of y'all are missing the point this hard. This is not about someone trying to "politicize" theatre. Yes, sometimes theatre companies swing-and-miss with that stuff; sometimes theatre companies are heavy-handed; sometimes their messages are shallow or on-the-nose; sometimes their writing or direction are performances are bad. That has been true of all theatre everywhere, forever. Like, that's one of the extremely basic Theatre 101 things that you pick up on within 2 months of seeing your first show anywhere. It's one of the side effects of going to see theatre, an art form that is predominantly explored by theatre people, who have been this certain kind of way since sometime around Aeschylus.

Do you know what doesn't happen in most of those cases? Death threats, targeted harassment campaigns, and attempts to paint one person within a larger organization as essentially engaged in a conspiracy to make theatre suck in "political" ways.

Do you know where those things have happened, quite famously, in the recent past? #GamerGate, The 1619 Project, and various other culture wars where minor grievances were so whipped up into a frenzy that eventually a lot of people were willing to publicly wish death upon their enemies.

Do you think it's a coincidence that this is happening to a Black woman, in America, in 2023? Do y'all really think that this is about ethics in games journalism heavy-handed theatre messaging? Do you look at the organized hate mob here and go, "Aw, gee, at least this time it's targeting the right person"?

I am the crankiest crank when it comes to theatre. I have totally left shows at the halfway point before. I am all for griping, in private, with friends, about mediocre theatre or facile politicking or whatever. I love theatre people; I hate theatre people. (Which is another way of saying, I'm not not a theatre person.) But if you can't recognize the systemic, coordinated hate campaign here, in the year twenty twenty-three, then you are absolutely blinded by privilege to the point that it qualifies as bigotry.

This is not "interesting, complex, discourse." This is racism in a bright flashing neon sign with an oversized platter of misogyny to boot, and if you're JAQing off to this, then almost certainly you are more culpable of performative political allydom or standing up for diversity when it's "trendy" than the people involved in this story. Because this is truly 101-level shit, and it's astonishing that MetaFilter, a community whose commitment to 101-level explainers of bigotry and systemic oppression, still has regulars who not only don't grasp this, but are failing to grasp this this hard.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:33 PM on May 14, 2023 [91 favorites]

The director was receiving letters from people who referred to themselves as the “old white guard” and the op-ed guy himself was referring to “old white folks” in his piece. When I was growing up in the 80s, people at least felt enough shame about their racism to use euphemisms like American values or Protestant work ethic. Now it would seem like people are fine with just flat out saying we are white people who are not okay with diversity in our theater.
posted by snofoam at 5:47 PM on May 14, 2023 [17 favorites]

... I'm not a theater person and would have a harder time compiling a list of all the specific productions of Shakespeare plays qua Shakespeare plays that have used the text to address a variety of social issues, but my guess would be that they make up a sizable percentage of annual productions across the globe. (People have described a number of them here, too.)

Yeah, I'm not saying that you can't use Shakespeare to address modern day issues. I just think that if you're going to change something as fundamentally as, say 10 Things I Hate About You does, it no longer makes sense to bill or title it as The Taming of the Shrew.

I also don't think that's what's going on here at all, I just think those specific examples, being more like total conversions than minor mods, illuminate as much as they obscure.
posted by Dysk at 6:14 PM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Illuminate less than they obscure. It's late, and I guess I'm not very with it.)
posted by Dysk at 6:28 PM on May 14, 2023

Thanks, Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted, your comment is "Fantastic" (flagged as fantastic).
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 6:49 PM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

"This reads super racist." Nothing about OSF's treatment of race has bothered me, but I can see how the context of the OP led to reading it that way, but was not what I was trying to make my words say. The things that have bothered me personally with OSF productions have had to do with gender or sexuality.

Here's an example from 2022 that actually kept me up the night of the play trying to figure out how to unpack it. Another commenter mentioned loving Revenge Song, which we also saw. It had the fantastic cast of performers we were familiar with, and a high-energy musical excitement that OSF is really great at. The cast gave it their all, and I love them. I don't mind anyone who saw it loving it. OSF's description: "Buckle up for a musical story about Julie d’Aubigny—a queer 17th-century rule-breaking, sword fighting, opera-singing transgressor of boundaries. It’ll be loud, it’ll be rowdy, and it’ll be hilarious! Nguyen ... sets this irreverent take on French history somewhere between the realms of superheroes and comic books and asks what it means to bust through your prescribed roles into who you truly are."

But here's the thing. It is the story of Julie D'Aubigny. The production said, directly, repeatedly, and literally: 1. The story we are telling is true, and 2. Julie D'Aubigny was a lesbian so traumatized by any actual or expected sex with men that she did things like revenge killing and burning down a convent (hence the title).

My problem is that Julie D'Aubigny's actual historical story was far more amazing than they showed. She's fascinating - her wikipedia page has a summary, check her out. Many noteworthy aspects her life were deliberately left out because they didn't support the thesis. What I learned about her later supports an individual with real human ambiguity and complexity any viewer could relate to - but they killed that real Julie and replaced her with a cartoon. Pretending that bisexuality (but insert any category here) doesn't even exist, to the extent of extensive historical revisionism of real people, is not inclusive. It's still binary thinking, from a different angle, but not okay with me. I did not feel asked "what it means to bust through your prescribed roles into who you truly are."

A play the same season was Unseen: "Mia, an American conflict photographer, wakes up at the site of a massacre in Syria, not sure how she got there. With her Turkish girlfriend Derya and her Californian mother Jane, Mia must slowly piece together the details of her past to find out what happened. Mansour’s beautifully human and surprisingly humorous play asks what it would mean for our souls—personally and as a nation—if we were to truly see the impact of our actions." I was moved to tears by this production. It did feature a lesbian relationship, but had much more to say, and the writing was seamless. We were shown humans facing human tragedy and grief and relationship complexity. This very strong play was, in comparison, brought in from outside.

August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned was my second favorite of the 2022 season.

I expect others to feel differently having seen the same plays. These were, nevertheless, my experiences.
posted by untaut at 11:32 PM on May 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Very little in the article, or in this thread, about what OSF can do reconnect with its donors and audience. Financial restructuring of arts non-profits is difficult, and "more of the same but hope for better" is never the answer. I really do wonder if there are people who want OSF to liquidate rather than change, and what message they think that sends.
posted by MattD at 4:15 AM on May 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Demonstrating to me that christofascists et al have co-opted something from Black culture is not the defense against my point that we needn't let christofascists co-opt things that you seem to think it is.
posted by stevil at 7:53 AM on May 15, 2023

Do you think that everyone took a vote on what "woke" means and that the fascists won the election and it's our fault for not doing enough GOTV? I am fairly certain that "how hard the woke axe was getting ground" was not meant to mean "the writers and performers were leaning too hard on being 'alert to racial prejudice and discrimination'"? We're not "letting" fascists co-opt the word. We're telling them that they're being fascist-adjacent by trying to co-opt it themselves, and your attempt to literally Actually... people doing that is not making you the hero here.
posted by Etrigan at 8:01 AM on May 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Julie D'Aubigny was a lesbian so traumatized by any actual or expected sex with men that she did things like revenge killing and burning down a convent (hence the title).

....yeah, as a nitpicking nerd who's read up on Julie, I would also quibble with that interpretation and the bi erasure.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:50 AM on May 15, 2023

It sounds more like Catalina de Erauso, maybe.
posted by clew at 9:04 AM on May 15, 2023

I really don’t understand the thread drilling down into whether the productions were good or not, whether they were tampered with too much or not — they got *death threats* over it.

At this point, death threats seem par for the course, sadly. I have no love for JK Rowling, but she probably did receive death threats. Doesn't really change anything. Investigation and prosecution would be the ideal result, and public dismissal the next best thing (privately, security measures may be necessary). To do otherwise is to give too much power to kooks.
posted by alexei at 10:15 AM on May 15, 2023

As far as the play about Julie D'Aubigny goes, any artistic piece about a historical figure that isn't a documentary is going to have some degree or other of artistic license. I mean, as far as I know, Eva Perón didn't go around belting catchy ballads from balconies.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:03 PM on May 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

And Shakespeare's history plays can easily be seen as Tudor propaganda.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:07 PM on May 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, the later plays are Stuart propaganda. :)
posted by cheshyre at 4:25 PM on May 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Being female at all gets you death threats these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:15 PM on May 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

You know what's really cool? When people who have actually seen OSF production share their experiences rather than questioning or promulgating everything in an article about OSF while being mostly, if not wholly, ignorant of the productions that are supposedly at issue. The latter tendency makes clear to this OSF attendee what the real problem is.
posted by fncll at 5:45 PM on May 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oregon officially outlawed slavery in the 2022 election. That’s progress, people!
posted by bendy at 5:52 PM on May 15, 2023

if not wholly, ignorant of the productions that are supposedly at issue. The latter tendency makes clear to this OSF attendee what the real problem is.

I don't know, I think that her getting death threats for making art is the real problem.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:55 PM on May 15, 2023 [13 favorites]

Note: I'm a white Portlander, and recently moved here from NY, but from what I've seen, the racism in Portland is of a particular variety of "we're certified liberal so certainly we can't be racist and we never have to examine that ever"

I relocated to Portland from San Francisco in 2015 and my first impression of the city was, “everyone here is so fucking white.”

I think Portlanders can claim that they aren’t racist because they never have to interact with people of color. They just aren’t here so there’s no reason to acknowledge or belittle them. It’s eerie how absent they are.

I grew up in the midwestern US, England and Massachusetts and it wasn’t until I arrived in San Francisco in 2001 that I saw, worked with, befriended, interacted with people of color more than rarely. The near-absence of them here is disarming and disappointing.

When I’ve spoken to Latinos, Russians, Africans, or Asians in Portland they’ve mostly been Lyft drivers or restaurant owners or homeless. They’ve told me that their communities tend to be insular and stick together and that they don’t interact much with outsiders. I don’t know if this is a cause or an effect of Portland’s whiteness but I’m always reminded of its divisiveness.

The headline about Garrett being forced out of OSF with her photo above the fold was on the front page of the Post app for days because they leave stuff there until you click on it. I never needed to click on it though because when I saw it I thought, “yep, that makes sense.”
posted by bendy at 6:24 PM on May 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

It sounds like the bigger issue for OSF is that like every performing arts institution they took a huge hit during Covid and on top of that their previous artistic director expanded the company to an unsustainable level even if we hadn’t had the pandemic. The combination of these factors made the a poisoned chalice for whoever took it. The racism, abuse and hostility from racist donors and a board member make the job sound like a total nightmare.
posted by interogative mood at 1:04 PM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

As a white person of a certain age (57), I only want to say to other white people that every time I have reacted to a racially or otherwise politically challenging piece of art with "oh, I'm a good liberal, but you've gone TOO FAR and wrecked the art with *this* 'message'" ... I have later realized I wrong. I was just uncomfortable on account of my learned white supremacy.

What the artists say needs to be said, and needs to be heard. You maybe don't have to agree with it, but if your disagreement is based on "this has just gone too far in the 'woke' direction", you should probably just hold onto that for a while and keep learning.

White supremacy is a hell of a drug. And comparing the death threats against Garrett to those that "probably" were directed toward JKR? That's got me shaking with rage. Rowling is, objectively, doing harm to people. She has so much protection in terms of wealth and privilege, and her stance is anything but liberating.

Meanwhile, Black people die nearly daily in this country for being Black.

Not comparable.
posted by allthinky at 6:01 AM on May 17, 2023 [22 favorites]

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Announces Tyler Hokama as Interim Executive Director
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:47 PM on June 2, 2023