power dynamics in the classroom

In an online forum, a young teacher asked for advice. She was upset because some of her (adult) students were surfing the web instead of listening to her. My response:

I've been teaching for almost 25 years. I've taught all ages, from two-year-olds through people in the nineties. It took me a few years, but I found that the best way to teach is to rid the classroom of power dynamics. By "the best way," I mean two things: least stressful and most conducive to learning.

There really is a recommendation at the end of this. Sorry that what follows is so long, but I think the issues involved are more complex than they might seem on the surface.

I'll explain why I think power-dynamics have no place in the classroom, but before I do, I'll go over the four reasons why it's hard to get rid of them:

1) Because sometimes you need them for safety and/or stopping chaos. Safety is really only a problem when you're teaching children, so I'll say no more about it here. Chaos stops people from learning. So I would never allow anyone to play a computer game in my classroom, if that game involved keyboard pounding and sounds, because the "chaos" from that would hinder other students from learning and distract me from teaching.

So I DO allow power-dynamics in this case and this case only. I forbid people from disturbing others. I am 100% up-front (with myself and my students) about my dictatorial stance on this matter. I explain why I'm doing it and I do it. But I understand it's the exception to the rule.

2) Because my ego doesn't want to let go. If I drop all power dynamics, I am no longer special. That's hard to give up.

3) Because students expect it. Most students are young. They grew up with mommy and daddy in charge; then their school teachers were in charge; and they transfer that expectation to me.

Even older students do this, because they've been taught that when you go to school, the teacher is the boss. I've had students who are twenty years older than me ask my permission to go to the bathroom. It's embarrassing as hell. I don't ever want anyone to ask my permission to pee. But such is the power of life-long conditioning.

4) It's just the way school traditionally works. Traditionally, teachers are in charge and students are subordinate to them. Almost no one questions this overtly (there's plenty of passive-aggressive questioning of it. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1WC6hNTONg , which is one of the most sane things I've ever seen about teaching and parenting). It needs to be questioned, because the traditional mode, especially when combined with 21st-Century values about personal freedom and independence, leads to tension and students not learning. But it's hard to fight traditions -- even bad ones.

A sub-issue to tradition is the Should Syndrome. It occurs when teachers say things like, "yes, well, students SHOULD pay attention" or "students SHOULD show respect." I'm not going to argue with those statements, but shoulds are meaningless. Some students DON'T pay attention, and some students DON'T respect the teacher. It's so easy to get indignant about what people SHOULD do rather than trying to solve the problem.

Here's why power dynamics are bad:

1) They distract the class away from the subject, which is whatever the class is about. The class, instead, becomes about a teacher trying to enforce rules and students trying to follow them, thwart them or get around them. Of course, that's not always the case. Sometimes you get lucky and the students have no problem with the rules. Then you can move forward as if the rules didn't even exist. But you can't count on this.

(Note: there's a "positive" version of a rule-breaker. It's a rule-follower. When a classroom is about rules, some students thrive by being "little angels." They learn less about the subject than they do about pleasing-the-teacher, and they get positive reinforcements for doing so.)

2) You, as a teacher, have constant stress (as made apparent by your question) about enforcing the rules.

3) Students have constant stress about rules they don't like or about classmates who are breaking the rules.

4) Have you ever read any Transactional Analysis (TA). It's a dated, flawed form of psychotherapy that contains some interesting, useful ideas. At it's core, it posits that humans have three core states or personas: parent, adult and child. A parent is a boss (maybe a benign one; maybe not); an adult is a individual human being who isn't in charge of anyone else or under anyone else's sway; a child is a subordinate who may or may not chafe against his boss.

In TA, a single person can take on all these roles at different times, depending on the situation.

Many relationships fail, because people relate to each other in an imbalanced way. This sort of relationship is doomed to be pathological:

YOU             STUDENT
Parent-\        Parent
Adult   \       Adult
Child    \----- Child

By setting yourself up as a boss with rules, you are saying "I am the parent and you are the child. And, as the child, you will get in trouble if you break the rules." Once you cast people as children, they will act like children. They will resent being bossed around and act-out. If you think "they should be more mature" or "they should respect authority," see The Should Syndrome, above.

This also doesn't work:

YOU             STUDENT
Parent-\        Parent
Adult   \------ Adult
Child           Child

In fact, it's worse. It's a sort of "we're all grown ups here" lie, in which one of the grown ups is more powerful than the others. It's unstable and the students either switch to parent mode (unlikely), which means that two parents (student and teacher) will overtly duke it out for authority, or (more likely) they fall back into child mode, and act out passive-aggressively.

Here's the goal you should shoot for:

YOU             STUDENT
Parent          Parent
Adult --------- Adult
Child           Child

Only then can REAL learning happen. When an adult talks to another adult, it's a real conversation. Time is not wasted on power dynamics, ego, stress and resentment.

Left to their own devices, most students will not opt for this sort of relationship (see above, when I mention 60-year-olds who ask permission to pee). They don't come to class expecting to be treated like adults, because none of their teachers in the past treated them that way. So even if you're an adult teacher, they come in primed for you to be a parent and immediately go into child mode.

As a teacher, it's your job to be an adult and treat your students as adults (whether they act like adults or not). It's your job, because adult-to-adult communication is what leads to learning. Other modes lead to rule-following and rule-breaking.

I refused to give my elderly student permission to go the bathroom. That's not my permission to give. Adults get to go to the bathroom when they want to. Using non-condescending language, I told him that.

Note that you will encounter a few students who think of themselves as adults. As far as they are concerned, they paid to take your class. They have the right to listen to what they want to listen to and ignore what they want to ignore. It's fine if you don't share that value, but acknowledge that it is a real value some people have, even if you think it's wrong. You can't prove to them it's wrong. You can accept that they have it or you can fight with them.

And it's not so odd -- even if it's not traditional in a school setting. Most people feel that way when they go to a restaurant. When I pay for a dinner, I'm going to eat what I want to eat and leave other food on my plate, even if that offends the chef. If I read a book, I may skip a chapter than bores me, even if that pisses off the author. Some people approach school that way. Maybe (to you) they shouldn't. (See The Should Syndrome, above.)

"But if they don't listen, they won't learn!" Okay, but if they are adults, they have the right to choose whether or not they learn.

Understand that you are just one of a long line of teachers these students have had by the time they got to your class. They are used to having boss after boss after boss. They expect you to be a boss. Some of their bosses have treated them unfairly in the past. They naturally resent that. They will take that resentment out on you if you let them. They way to stop them from doing so is to not be a boss. Don't try to be a "cool boss." They will see through that. There's no difference between a cool boss and a boss. Both are bosses. The cool boss is a boss that is also needy for attention. (See "The Office.")

Having said all that, I'm not going to tell you to just let them surf the web, even though, were it my class, that's what I'd do. (I've done it in plenty of classes. I've even suggested it to students. Sometimes I say, "I can't promise to be interesting all the time. If I veer into a topic that isn't important to you or that you already know, feel free to surf the web and rejoin the class when it is meaningful to you." I often check in with students about this. "Hey, if you've tuned out, you might want to tune back in now, because I'm going to change the subject...")

If it really bothers you, be an adult about it and treat the students like adults. How does one adult ask another adult to refrain from some sort of behavior? By asking. You ask, you explain your reasons, and -- because you're talking to an adult -- you accept the fact that they are autonomous and may, after hearing your desire, fail to do what you want. If they fail to do it, you can express your disappointment and reassert your desire. Also, it REALLY helps to not treat them like perverts -- as if their desire to surf the wen is obscene. Surely, there's part of you that can relate. (Have you ever been bored in class? Maybe you have, but you didn't act on it the way they do, but at least you can relate to the feeling.)

When a parent asks a child to stop doing something, the explanation is "because it's wrong" or "because it's disrespectful." When an adult asks another adult to stop doing something, it's because "what you're doing is causing this specific real-world problem" or because "it really bothers me." It's fine if you want them to stop because what they're doing just bothers you. Just be honest about that. That's YOUR issue, and you're asking them a favor -- to help you with your issue. Don't make them feel like they are bad. (Don't do this even if you think they are bad. It will backfire on you. When you tell people they are bad, they get defensive and act out, usually passive-aggressively. And they certainly don't learn.)

One of the best teachers I've ever had hated it when people came late to class. He had the respect for us to express his needs to us in an adult-to-adult manner:

"Hey, I know it's hard to always be on time. Believe me, even though I hate lateness, sometimes something comes up in my life, and I'm late to important things. But I think it's really disruptive when people walk in late. It distracts everyone else as the latecomer makes noise, finds a seat, etc. It definitely distracts me, and I have a hard time teaching when I'm distracted.

"So I'm going to ask you not to come to class late. Clocks aren't exact, so five-minutes-late is okay, but please don't come later than that. If you find you're running later than that, just don't come. I promise I will not get mad at you. If it happens over and over, I might have to lower your grade, but I won't get mad. Things happen. But don't come late, okay? Thanks."

It was amazing! There was never a problem with lateness. Whereas in most of my other classes, people walked in late all the time and the teachers would just get pissed off and chastise the latecomers. The chastisements didn't work. People still came late. But simply by treating his students like adults, that great teacher got what he wanted.

art isn't easy

I got into an email discussion with someone about some lyrics from Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park With George." In the song, an artist is desperately trying to raise funds for his art. He sings:

Art isn't easy
Overnight you're a trend
You're the right combination
Then the trend's at an end
You're suddenly last year's sensation!
All they ever want is repetition
All they really like is what they know
Gotta keep a link with your tradition
Gotta learn to trust your intuition
While you re-establish your position
So that you can be on exhibit...
So that your work can be on exhibition!

Our discussion centered around the last two lines. My friend asked me why the artist started to sing about putting himself on exhibition and then changed it to putting his WORK on exhibition. This is my attempt at an answer:

Why do people make art? I'm sure there are many reasons, but most of them can be thrown into two categories: to show off or to study. "Study" is not exactly the right word. What I mean is that someone might paint the Brooklyn Bridge because he's fascinated with its form: its lines, angles and colors. Someone might direct "Hamlet" because he's in love with Shakespeare's language and wants to get up close and personal with it. Etc. There's a social element, too, of course. He wants to share his love, fascination, insight and obsession with others.

The other motive -- the show-off one -- comes in a variety of flavors. A LOT of artists create art to get laid. This is a form of "peacocking." A bird shows off his bright feathers; a painter shows off his brush strokes. Think of groupies and rockstars, etc. Other artists just want to be seen as special or creative or smart.

(It's important to note that these drives needn't necessarily be conscious. A peacock doesn't think "I want some nice peahen ass!" when he fans out his tail. It's instinctual. I am married and not looking for groupies, but that doesn't mean I'm not partly driven by peacocking instincts. It's not a rational-based drive. The same might be true for studiers. It's not necessarily the case that they say, "I want to study the Brooklyn Bridge." They might just feel oddly attracted to it for reasons they don't understand. This drive is probably based in an instinct as primal as the sex drive -- the need for an animal to explore its environment.)

How do you tell if a specific artist is a peacock or a scholar? The acid test is this:

God: What's your favorite subject?

Artist: Desert landscapes.

God: Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you enough money so that you don't have to work. You can just paint your landscapes full time, for as long as you want.

Artist: AWESOME!

God: There's one catch: if anyone besides you ever looks at your paintings, they'll disappear. So you'll have to make them just for yourself. No one else will ever be impressed by them. No one else will care about them. No one else will even see them.

How will the artist react? Well, it depends on the artist. Most artists will be disappointed, because whether they are show-offs or not, they are usually communicators. But one kind of artist will totally lose interest. The ONLY reason -- or the main reason -- he is into art is for peacocking. Another type may be sad about it. He may even consider it a deal breaker. But at the very least, he'll be tempted by God's offer. He's SO into landscapes that even though no one will ever get to see his work, he's very tempted by the idea of getting to spend unlimited amounts of time doing that work.

(When you ask this kind of artist why he does what he does -- why he dances, writes, paints, acts -- he often says "because I have to." I can tell you from personal experience that this feels very true. Of course, I won't die if I stop directing plays. But it FEELS very primal. And not always pleasurable. Often, I don't enjoy what I do. I don't necessarily hate it, either. It doesn't seem to have much to do with enjoyment. It's "who I am." If you took my audience away, I would be upset. I might quit for a while. But I'm pretty sure that eventually I'd find myself creating again. Even if it was just telling myself stories in a dark room.)

The question is whether or not these two goals -- the self and the work -- can coexist happily. Obviously they sometimes can. We all know of brilliant artists who are also very popular and seem to love the spotlight. The problem is that (in my view) that's just good luck. While the two goals won't necessarily clash, they are likely to clash. (And notice how while some movie stars seem to bask in the spotlight, others flee from it. Just the fact that someone is a star doesn't mean he wants to be one. He may love acting but hate losing his private life. But he can't necessarily control the fact that fans adore him.)

As an audience member (viewer, listener, reader, etc.), I care more about the art than the artist. I don't want my experience to suffer because an artist didn't carry through on his work because he thought it would make him look bad. I don't want to have to watch some gratuitous special effect thrown in because the artist wanted me to be impressed with his showmanship. What I want is to fall in love with his story's characters; be excited by its plot; be enthralled by the colors in a still life; the melody of a song; etc.

The HARDEST part of making art is avoiding sidetracks. You have a vision. But it's SO easy for that vision to get derailed. Lack of money can derail it; lack of energy can derail it; lack of time can derail it... wanting to get laid can derail it. To create something worthwhile, you have to focus, focus, focus. You have to keep your eyes on the prize. This is why self-promotion and "study" are (usually) at odds. The former tends to detail the latter.

(Less often, the latter can derail the former. An rock star can get into the business to meet girls, but then get totally seduced by the art and science of harmonics, rhythm, melody, etc. He might find himself passing up a date because he wants to finish writing a song!)

Most normal humans have both of these urges. We want to be loved (liked, fucked, though of as special...) and we want to study (to immerse ourselves, to experience, to work through problems...). So my categorizations of the show-off and the scholar are extremes. I am probably more of a scholar than a show off, but I definitely have an ego. I get exhibitionist urges. What helps me is to just note that these two drives exist and to be as conscious as I can about which is driving me at the moment. And to think as clearly as I can about what my goal is and whether or not my current state is moving me closer to or farther away from that goal.

What does it feel like to make a choice?

I'm not asking a free-will-vs-determanism question. Whether or not free will exists, we feel like we make choices. So, real or illusory, what does making-a-choice feel like?

Dumb question? Maybe, but I shocked myself today by realizing that I have no idea what choosing feels like. I don't think I've ever felt it. And I'm wondering if that is unique to me or if, in fact, no one feels the act of choosing.

I need to be really clear, or you'll think I'm saying that I don't feel I've ever made choices, which is wrong. Here's what I feel: I feel the NEED to make a choice. Someone is holding out two ice-cream cones, chocolate and vanilla, and saying that I can only have one. I am keenly aware of a need to choose.

If the guy with the cones says, "You have five seconds or you get noting!" the need increases. And as he counts ... "five, four, three, two, one" ... I feel myself getting closer and closer to the point where I am GOING to make a choice. And then I feel the MOMENT arriving.

I may even go through some internal debate: "Well, I like both flavors, but if I pick vanilla, will people think I'm boring? On the other hand, I just had a chocolate cone yesterday. I don't want to fall into a rut..."

THEN SOMETHING HAPPENS. Something that maybe I experience in the moment (or maybe not), but that I have no memory of afterwards.

I say, "Vanilla!"

Afterwards, I remember the need to make a choice, and, since I'm eating a vanilla cone, I know that I made one. I even remember my reasoning. So it seems totally obvious to say, "I just made a choice." I know why; I know when; I know the result. But I don't remember THE MOMENT.

It's like walking up to a light switch with the intention of flipping it on and then, a moment later, being in a lighted room and being SURE you are the cause of the room being lit -- without actually remembering the moment of flipping the switch.

derren brown: i call bullshit!

This is a complicated story about how I was duped by a clever con man, Derren Brown. He didn't take my money or enlist me in a cult. But he took a bite out of my pride. I have a grudging respect for him, although I would have respected him more had he refrained from some over-the-top showmanship that eventually led me to say, "Oh, come ON!" He really had me going for a while. Now I call "bullshit!" Bullshit, Derren Brown!

But Brown is not as bad as those who support him: I'm talking about the high-profile skeptics and atheists -- people like Richard Dawkins, James Randi and Penn and Teller. If I'm onto Brown's tricks, with my minimal knowledge about illusionists and science, then surely those folks know exactly what Brown is doing. But they don't denounce him, because Brown is spreading their gospel. Shame on them! Skeptics and atheists should be above such base, political tactics. They should be knights of truth.

Derren Brown is a magician from the U.K. He does two sorts of tricks: mind-reading and mind-control. He styles himself as an enemy of charlatans and fully admits that he uses trickery. His basic message is "I'm doing the same thing that the 'psychics' and 'faith-healers' do, and I'm admitting to you that I'm shamming. In fact, I'm even going to tell you how I'm doing my tricks. Now that you know it's all fake when I do it, why would you believe someone who claims to be doing the same thing via supernatural powers?"

As an atheist who doesn't believe in ESP, etc., I like that message. For a few months, Brown was my hero. But as I started listening to Brown's "scientific" explanations about how he did his tricks, I started to feel... funny. I suppressed the feeling, because it was so cool that he was promoting my views -- and in an entertaining way. But as there's only so long I can kid myself, and with each TV special, Brown piled the shit on thicker and thicker, until the whole shit tower came tumbling down on my head.

Brown claims he uses a variety of techniques, but the main one he (supposedly) uses to read minds is "cold reading." Cold reading is an age-old technique used by "psychics." You can see a parody of it in "The Wizard of Oz," when Dorothy visits Professor Marvel. The cold reader will throw something out there like, "I'm seeing a G... or maybe a J... someone's name. Is there someone here who knows a G or a J...?" And, of course, a few people say that they do. "It's someone who once gave something precious to you... Or maybe you gave something precious to them..." The cold reader keeps sending out vague feelers that sound like they're coming from a supernatural source. By reading nods and tears and surprised looks, he gradually narrows in on what seems like a miraculous reading.

But Brown guesses really specific things, like a stranger's social-security number and then claims he's using cold reading to do it. Impossible. There are two ways to guess someone's social-security number. (1) spy on it somehow (steal someone's wallet or do research, which you can do in advance, assuming you know the person is coming to your show); (2) plant a stooge in the audience who pretends to be surprised when you guess his social-security number. There is no sort of "tell" or clue a person can inadvertently let slip that will help you guess a unique nine-digit number that only he knows. If you can make guesses like this, you are either genuinely psychic (which Brown denies), you cheated by spying or research (which Brown denies) or the "stranger" is a stooge (which Brown vehemently denies). There are no other possibilities. Whenever you see a magician doing a "psychic" reading, one of these possibilities is true. (Like Brown, I deny the possibility that the magician is genuinely psychic.) Cold reading for very specific, complex details (license plate numbers, back balances, etc.) is not possible.

But we skeptics like hearing things like "cold reading," because we know that most fake psychics (who don't need to guess anything as specific as an SSN in order to impress their clients) DO use such techniques, and we're so happy that Brown is exposing these shams to the public at large.

Brown's most impressive tricks are his mind-control ones. He walks up to "strangers," asks them for directions, and then, while the strangers are talking, he quickly and quietly mumbles, "give me your money and your watch." And the strangers, as if in a trance, do just that. He convinces honest people to steal. He makes artists draw specific pictures without explicitly telling them what to draw. He makes people forget their names. The techniques he "uses" to do these things -- so he claims -- are subliminal messages and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), both of which are tools that are loosely based on scientific principles but riddled with pseudo-scientific nonsense. Subliminal messages and NLP are great explanations for Brown to use, because most people -- even some scientists -- who haven't studied them deeply assume (based on pop-culture references) that they are rigorous fields of study and research. They're not.

Most people have heard of movie theatres flashing "Buy Popcorn" during the previews. That story has been around for so long, people think such practices are tried, true and continually in use. In fact, "scientific research ... has been unable to replicate most of these marketing claims beyond a mere placebo effect." (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli) Subliminal messages have been shown to exert small amounts of influence in certain cases, but there's no evidence that you can, say, drive past an artist in a red van and have three guys walk by him wearing red t-shirts and then successfully predict that he will use a lot of red in his painting. It's absurd to say, "that's what I'm doing, and, as you can see, I'm not claiming I use pseudo-scientific, unproven techniques like the psychics claim they use." But the average skeptic, who has not looked deeply into subliminal messages, thinks psychic powers are bunk and subliminal messages are "science."

NLP is, roughly, the study of body language and how it reveals the inner workings of the mind. NLP practitioners not only believe that they can read minds using the techniques of NLP -- they also believe that they can influence minds via the techniques. For instance, Brown claims certain kinds of handshakes can cause people do do things they wouldn't normally do. Or "mirroring" people (leaning the same way they lean, tilting your head the same way they tilt their heads, etc) can actually (and predictably) alter the way people behave.

But in the sciences, "NLP has been largely ignored ... because of issues of professional credibility ... and insufficient empirical evidence to substantiate its models and claimed effectiveness." (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming) As with subliminal messages, there are are probably speckles of truth mixed in with all the NLP bullshit, but to claim that you can make someone steal (or agree to hand over his wallet and watch to a stranger) via the way you shake his hand or the way you tilt your head is ... I don't know what to say. Let me know if you believe it and I'll show you a shiny new bridge that I can get you for a really low price!

I can excuse non-experts for believing a lot of Brown's lies. I've always been interested in con games and pseudo-science, so I've made a study of these things. But I don't expect everyone else to have done so, and if you haven't, a lot of this stuff will seem plausible, which is, of course, why Brown uses it as his explanations. Smart.

But I just watched a show called "Messiah," in which Brown claims to be taking down false profits. He travels around America, debunking psychics and faith healers. He does this by doing the same things they do, assuring us -- as usual -- that he's using trickery. If we know he's faking it (by his own admission), then we're stupid if we believe Jean Dixon or Billy Graham. James Randi has been doing the same thing for decades. The difference is that Randi shows you how he does his tricks. Brown doesn't. He just says, "It's a trick" without explaining the mechanism. Or he goes into his usual spiel about cold readings, NLP and subliminal messages.

In "Messiah," he states that he doesn't use actors or stooges. In his book, "Tricks of the Mind," Brown insists that magicians who do so are "artistically repugnant" and that the use of stooges is "simply unnecessary." Yet, in "Messiah," to prove that faith-healers (who pretend to cure people by touching them) are con artists, Brown converts atheists to believers by touching them. I am not exaggerating. He fills a room with atheists, asks them to state their beliefs ("I don't believe in God"), touches them on the head and then asks them their beliefs in God again. ("I believe!")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0h4K24UgIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPch8Ab6Vow&NR=1

COME ON!

He is "up front" in stating that this is "just a trick," but he also loudly claims that he doesn't use actors or stooges. So that means that h must be using scientifically verifiable principles (that have never been verified) which are extremely powerful and would, I'm guessing, be of great interest to the military, advertisers and politicians. We'd better home Brown never decides to use his powers for evil!

Shame on him. But more shame on people like Randi, Dawkins and Penn and Teller for not exposing him. Brown is not "just an entertainer." He and his producers bill his shows as "science shows," and at the same time he helps topple nonsense beliefs in things like psychic powers and faith healing, he buttresses beliefs in equally quackish notions such as NLP and subliminal messages. Randi and company must know he is doing this. Presumably, they don't say anything, because Brown is helping them fight their enemies. That is no excuse. That's the worst kind of excuse.

colonialists, magicians, christians and fathers

As part of my pre-production prep, I listened to a lecture about "The Tempest" last night. It was from this TTC course: http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=273
(which is on sale!) The lecturer suggested four ways of looking at the play:

1. As a story about Colonialism.

This has become the most common way of reading and producing the play. Modern productions frequently turn Caliban into a native American or an African slave.

The TTC lecturer had some problems with this reading, as do I. He pointed out that Prospero isn't an imperialist, at least not by design. He didn't come to the Island intent on conquering it; he was shipwrecked there. His goals were to survive and to escape the island.

Which is not to say he doesn't use and enslave some of its inhabitants. But you do have to fit the play's square peg into a theoretical round hole to turn it into an analogy for Colonialism.

2. As a story about a career: that of Magician.

Shakespeare is very interested in trades. You can read many of his histories (and some of his tragedies) as plays about the trade of King: about what kings do right; about what kings do wrong.

Shakespeare sometimes uses a character's job as window dressing (e.g. Snug the Weaver is never seen Weaving), but more often the character's jobs are deeply explored. Shakespeare shows lawyers lawyering, politicians politicking, slaves toiling, soldiers fighting, actors acting, fools jesting, etc.

To the Elizabethans, "Magician" was a real occupation. It was related to modern occupations such as Scientist and Scholar.

3. As a story about Christian forgiveness and redemption. For many, the emotional crux of the play comes when Prospero chooses to forgive his brother and the other aristocrats who stole his dukedom and marooned him on the Island. Prospero has the power to murder or torture them. But he chooses to forgive instead.

I don't think he wrecks his foes on the island, planning to forgive them. I'm not sure he plans to kill them, either. He doesn't announce his plans. Perhaps he doesn't know what he's going to do. But if we decide that he doesn't initially have a plan (or that his initial plan differs from his eventual course), then this moment between him and Ariel comes one of the key moments of the play:

PROS.
...Say, my spirit,
How fares the King and ’s followers?

ARI. Confin’d together ... all prisoners, sir,
...Your charm so strongly works ’em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

PROS. Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARI. Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROS. And mine shall.

There are many other ways of looking at the play, but I'm surprised that the TTC lecturer left out a very specific one, because it's a common and powerful reading:

4. It's a play about one of Shakespeare's main concerns: FAMILY.

This is the easiest and most natural way for me to approach the play, and I'm sure it will lead to the majority of my decisions.

"The Tempest" is a play about a father (Prospero) with three children (Miranda, Ariel and Caliban). As in "King Lear," Shakespeare's other great play about a father and three children, the parent/child relationships are complicated. The father is at times loving and at times tyrannical; the children are at times obedient and at times rebellious.

One of the reasons I dislike the seeing the play as a mediation on Colonialism is that, to my 20th-Century sensibilities, Colonialists are bad guys. So if I see Prospero as a Colonialist, I must also see him as a bad father. I would be just as uneasy seeing a production that portrayed him as a kindly, good father. To me, the play is only interesting if he's a REAL father -- one with good sides and bad sides.

My favorite moment in the play is this speech about Caliban, spoken by Prospero when he's alone, upon learning that Caliban has plotted to murder him:

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;
And as with age his body uglier grows,
So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,
Even to roaring.

This is a speech of a man who has tried -- maybe in all the wrong ways, but in the only ways he knows -- to raise a son. And who has failed.

all, all lost, quite lost;

against redundancy

An Obvious Example

"Once upon a time, there lived a young princess who had a wicked stepmother. Once upon a time, there lived a young princess who had a wicked stepmother. The princess cried herself to sleep each night."

I need to cut one of those "once upon a time" sentences, don't you agree? Unless the goal is to write something experimental, something in the style of Gertrude Stein, redundancy seldom helps and often hurts.

What if I keep both sentences but rephrase the second, so it's not an exact copy of the first?

"Once upon a time, there lived a young princess who had a wicked stepmother. There was once a princess with an evil stepmother. The princess cried herself to sleep each night."

Who is going to argue with me and claim that this isn't a mistake? Maybe someone will. Most of you won't.

Yet many of my friends, people who would agree that these examples are redundant and bad, accept redundancy if the repeated information is coming from two different sources. For instance, they have no problem with a music video in which the lyrics mention a white horse while the image presents ... a white horse.

The Debate

Friends often greet my tirades against redundancy with one of the following two objections: (1) it's not a problem in this case; or (2) it may be a minor problem, but it's not worth making a big deal about.

Since I'll waste most of the words that follow on point one, let me quickly address point two: say I write a poem in which I describe a rabbit as "a cuddly rodent." That's an error. A rabbit is a not a rodent. (Many rabbits aren't cuddly, either.)

So the rabbit bit is wrong, but does it matter? No: not if your main goal when reading is "to get the point." Okay, a rabbit isn't a rodent -- but it's rodent-like. The point is that it's a small, cuddly creature.

Such a reader also doesn't care if Hamlet says "To be or not to be..." or "To live or not to live..." Same point.

(I am not berating such readers. Rather, I am warning them to stop reading this essay. What follows will seem petty. And that's fine. I am not a gourmet chef, and I have an immature palate. People tell me that Dominos pizza sucks, yet I love it. When they go on and on about "real New York pizza," they seem petty to me. If this essay was by one of them, and it was about gourmet pizza, I would stop reading. It's just not important to me.)

When I read, I DO want to get the point. But I also demand elegance. When a work is inelegant, it itches at me like a smudge on a windowpane. The smudge doesn't ruin the whole window, but it's annoying. And if it can be wiped away, why leave it there? The view will be better without it.

I don't want to just get the point that there are mountains outside the window. I want to see the mountains in all their glory -- without smudges.

Why Redundancy Is Bad

I balk at redundancy because it's inelegant. It's inelegant in the same way that a shirt with both a zipper and buttons in inelegant. It evokes an artistic mind that hasn't thought things through, as if what we're seeing is an early draft in which the artist was trying out various approaches and hadn't yet decided on the right one.

Redundancy also condescends. It suggests an artist who doesn't trust me to follow him the first time he says whatever he is saying.

My railing against redundancy is itself becoming redundant, so I'll stop trying to convince you that it's aesthetically wrong. You either agree with me or you don't. Let me conclude this point by reminding you of what many artists believe:

- if an aspect of the work doesn't move the work forward -- if the aspect does not provide new information or recast old information in an interesting light -- that aspect must be cut.

- "Kill all your darlings."

An Example

Last night, as I was watching a production of "Macbeth" on DVD. The witches entered, and the actors playing them were dressed in rags and wearing masks that made them look more like demons than humans. Still, they looked vaguely female -- except they had beards.

Then Banquo said the following:

What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

When I chastised the redundancy (the way the witches looked and Banquo's description of them), I was surprised at how many of my friends disagreed with me. I had a hard time teasing out the locus of their disagreement: was it point one or two, above? Did they feel that the moment was not redundant or did they agree that it was, but didn't think, in this case, the redundancy was a problem?

Don't Blame the Director!

One exasperated friend said, "Well, what's a director supposed to do? You have to show the witches. Are you going to make them look like beautiful women or something?"

That's a good point, but it's also beside the point. A problem is a problem whether or not it has a solution. Cancer is a problem. If it turns out that there's no possible cure for the disease, it will still be a problem. We'd still be living in a better world if there was no cancer.

(Often in these arguments, placing blame gets muddled up with aesthetics. I often make artistic blunders. When they do, they are blunders. They might be excusable. For instance, I might under-rehearse a play because halfway through the rehearsal period get catch pneumonia and and have to take a couple of weeks off. No one can blame be for that. Still, the play is under-rehearsed.)


But It's True!

Another friend suggested that this moment isn't a mistake, because Banquo is only saying what someone would really say in his situation. In other words, his words are psychologically true. If you see King Kong, you may well say, "Look! A giant gorilla!" even though everyone can clearly see that for themselves.

That's true. But it's still redundant. It's still inelegant. My friend could argue that it's necessary redundancy -- that omitting it would breach psychological truth, which would be the worse of two evils -- but I don't see how he can claim that the redundancy isn't a problem because it solves another problem. The horrible side effects of chemotherapy are problems, even though chemotherapy may solve a bigger problem.

(Truthful psychology is the solution to many problems in the theatre. If you get intentions, actions and reactions right, the play usually succeeds. Many young directors and actors learned this useful tool in drama school. And then, unfortunately, it became dogma for them. Dogma is the enemy of art. But it's always tempting to fall prey to it; it simplifies decision making. "It's psychologically true, so it can't be a problem. Let's move on."

There are usually multiple psychological truths to pick from, because not everyone acts the same way in the same situation. One must strive to make choices that are both psychologically true AND elegant!)

We don't live in a world in which it's possible to solve all problems. Life is often about tradeoffs. Still, I don't see how it helps to pretend that the problems we accept are not problems. Surely, if one is an artist, one must be on guard against problems at all times, purging them whenever possible, accepting them only after weighing all other options. Anything else would be inelegant and lazy.

A Tree is a Tree!

"You're being ridiculous!" cried a third friend. "If someone in the play describes an apple tree, and the play requires the tree to be onstage, are you saying that the director needs to make it a carrot patch to avoid redundancy?"

Good question. No, that's not what I'm saying. The director's first job is to ensure that all aspects of the story are consistent. Lack of consistency is another form of inelegance. This is well-known in Hollywood, where they pay full-time continuity checkers to make sure that the cigarette in the close-up is burned down just as much as it is in the medium shot.

If an audience member hears an actor say "apple tree" while pointing to a carrot patch, he'll be confused and jarred out of the dreamlike state that, hopefully, the play has lulled him into.

It's hard to weigh one sort of inelegance against another, but my guess is that, in general, inconsistency is more jarring than redundancy. So if I must choose between the two, I'll (sadly) accept redundancy.

Still, that doesn't allow me to relax my guard. I can't just blithely let all redundancy pass by security without checking its ID. I must carefully examine each redundant item, making absolutely sure that it's needed.

Maybe, in a specific instance, there's a way to serve consistency without adding redundancy. There's no general rule. The only way I'll be able to maximize elegance is to examine each moment, case-by-case.

In Favor of Redundancy

Redundancy has it's uses. Let me repeat that: Redundancy has its uses! It can "underline" a point, as Lear does when he says, "Never, never, never, never, never." Who would want him to just utter a single "never"? Not me.

When presenting something complex and foreign to the modern ear, such as a Shakespeare play, redundancy can help the audience understand key plot and character points that they may miss if those points are only made once.

But I caution directors against that second use. There are almost always better ways -- more elegant ways -- of making the story clear than by simply repeating information. I will expand on these techniques in another essay, but, briefly, one can use word emphasis and non-redundant movement to help the audience understand what's going on. (Don't allow actors to make that jacking-off gesture when describing sex. That's redundant -- and cliched. Gestures should never just illustrate words in the text!)

Remember: for every audience member who is thanking you for making things clear, there's another who is cursing you for talking down to him. "I get it!" he thinks. "You don't have to hit me over the head with it!"

Back to Macbeth

So what about the witches? Here are some possibilities: if you want to show them off, maybe because you think the audience will be more affected by the scary costumes than by Shakespeare's words, then cut the text. You could cut it to...

"What are these? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me."

If you don't want to cut the text, then obscure the witches. Keep their backs to the audience or make them completely invisible, only "seen" by Macbeth and Banquo. You could pipe in their voices through speakers. There are many solutions that will allow you to tell this part of the story without redundancy, some much more creative than mine.

Redundancy is like the dandelion, which is a beautiful flower. It's also useful for making dandelion wine. But we must always remember something else about the dandelion: it's a weed.

my approach to design

My Approach to Design
I miss designers. I love collaborating with them, but for the past few years, I've directed exclusively for a theatre company that performs on a bare stage without sets, props or lighting changes; costumes are street clothes, and there are no costume changes. Paradoxically, this approach has suggested to me new and better ways of working with designers.

The Old Way
In drama school, I was taught to dream up a "spine" for whatever play I was directing. Spines are pithy metaphors for a specific director's take on a specific play. One director's spine for "Othello" might be A Deadly Chess Match; another director's spine for "Hamlet" might be A Heavy Weight Crushing Down On A Tiny, Fragile Flower. You may not agree with those spines, and that's fine. They are personal to the director who came up with them.

Spines are useful because they can be re-interpreted by designers. Designers of the above "Othello" might make all the costumes black and white or put a grid pattern on the stage floor. For the "crushed" Hamlet, designers might choose intimidating, high-vaulted ceilings and heavy, cumbersome clothes. Spines are a check, to make sure all aspects of production are telling the same story.

I reject none of this. To me, spines are extremely useful tools. They just shouldn't be the only tools on one's belt.

Against Redundancy
At my "minimalist" theatre company, we have two main rules: "tell the story clearly" and "avoid redundancy." Since our shows aren't designed, I mostly have to worry about actor redundancy. Actors have a tendency to over explain. They usually do this by riddling their performances with unnecessary gestures. The one I see most often is the "jacking off" hand pump, used whenever a line makes a sexual innuendo.

My stance has always been that if the script is clearly saying something, it's wasteful and inelegant for the actor to illustrate it. It's in the words already, and the actor simply speak those words and credit his audience for being intelligent enough to listen and understand.

Just like actors (and directors), designers can be easily hoodwinked by redundancy, especially when designing from a spine. Yes, the spine is what the play is "about," but do all design elements need to be constant reminders of this theme? Were I in that audience seeing back and white costumes and checker squares on the floor, I'd be jumping up and down on my seat, screaming, "Okay! Okay! I get it already!"

Rule: each element of the production should only convey information if that information isn't already conveyed by some other part.

Taken literally, this means that if costumes already say that the characters are rich, the sets shouldn't also say that. We "get it" from the costumes. We don't need the sets to hit us over the head with it.

Admission: I don't always take that rule literally. One exception might be when the production team consciously chooses to reinforce a point: "These people are rich! Do you hear me? Rich!" They key here is "consciously chooses." In general, eschew redundancy and illustration. Use redundancy as a power tool that you pull out on special occasions. If you're almost never redundant, the audience will prick up their ears those few times that you are: "My word! He's telling me something twice in two different ways. It must be very important!"

Divide and Conquer
Make a list of everything you want to communicate to the audience. Start with the key plot points, because those are the easiest to list. Add any character information ("Katherine is strong-willed"), mood information ("it's a dark and stormy night"), thematic information ("power corrupts") and key factual information that the audience must understand in order to follow and appreciate the story ("Richard is a king of England during the middle ages").

Check off all items on the list that are explicitly stated (or easily inferred) from dialogue. These check marks are your first line of defense against redundancy. I am not telling you to keep all checked items out of the designs. Rather, I'm suggesting that you keep aware that the more of them that are conveyed by the designs, the more redundancy there will be your production. At best, illustrating a stated point puts that point in the stage equivalent of italics; at worst, it says to the audience, "You're too dumb to get it from the text." Do what you will, but act consciously.

Any items that aren't checked – and the checked ones that you want to "put in italics" – are fair game for design. In collaboration with your team, pick which designer should take the lead for each item. The play takes place at night? Is that the province of sets, costumes, sound or lights? The characters are rich? Which designer is going to take the lead in telling that part of the story?

"The lead" is an important concept, as I'll discuss at length, below. If costumes take the lead in stating that the characters are rich. That may or may not mean that other design elements augment the work done by the clothes.

Design conferences should be lively, improvisational playgrounds. Once you've decided to let the costumes lead the "rich" part of the story, throw that idea away (you can always retrieve it from the trash later) and ask what if? What if we told that part of the story with the sets? The lights? the music? with nothing? What then? What would be best?

Don't Work Against Yourself
Okay, the costumes are already screaming "these people are filthy rich"; you don't want to be redundant, but what are you supposed to do with the set? Make it a hovel? No, of course not. These rich characters live in an expensive house. So what set there is should be opulent.

Ask yourself this? If I cut your budget to the point where you could afford costumes but not sets, would the costumes alone be enough to tell the story of wealth? If not, then what contribution do you need from the sets?

(Keep in mind that "telling a story" is usually more of an emotional and sensual form of communication than an intellectual one. Yes, with the costumes alone, the audience might understand that they characters are rich, but will they feel the wealth? Will they revel in it? Will they be intimidated by it? In the theatre, you should strive beyond helping audience just "get the point.")

If the costumes are enough to convey wealth, then consider minimizing the set (unless there are other parts of the story that the set can tell best, in which case, let the set tell lose parts and let the costumes focus on "rich."). What are the bare essentials that the set must contain so that the story makes sense and so that they actors can do their jobs? Maybe some furniture and a flight of stairs. Okay, then limit the set to those items.

Fair enough, but there's no such thing as a platonic chair. You must put some actual chair on the stage. So what chair to you put there to avoid redundancy? Answer: the simplest chair you can find that doesn't contradict the story.

Rich people own expensive chairs. But there are lots of expensive chairs. If the costumes are taking care of "rich" part, find a boring rich chair. Find one that the audience will notice and then dispense with, choosing instead to focus on the costumes.

Rule: items that must be redundant should be boring.

As a director, you'll have to be very careful and politic about that rule. Designers understandably don't want their work to be boring. But just as you don't want Romeo pulling focus during Juliet's speech, you don't want the lights to distract from the sets when it's their turn to tell the story.

I find it useful to go back the basics from time to time: why are we all here? What story are we telling? How can each of us best contribute to that story? When should each of us (the director included) keep out of its way?

Remember the Spine?
Once all the design roles are cast, bring the spine back into play. The costumes are saying "rich," the sets are saying, "complicated, maze-like environment," the lights are saying "mid-winter evening"... but what ties this collage together so that it's harmonious rather than muddled?

Well, what holds the human body together?

Go back down the list items and ask how each element relates to the spine. Not all items need to push the spine's agenda (in fact, they shouldn't, as this would be redundant). But items should never work against the spine – with the one exception being when you purposefully and consciously want to create a feeling of dissonance.

Often, the spine can be key in helping the team choose colors, textures and tones. What colors does A Doomed World suggest? What sounds do you hear when you think of A Carnival of Eroticism?

In fact, the best spines are sometimes expressed sensually rather than as pithy statements. Consider playing a piece of music for your design team – "Puttin' on the Ritz" or "Paint it Black" – and telling them that this is the spine of the play. Or you can show them a painting, cover them with a velvet sheet or feed them slices of expensive wedding cake.

When they're deeply ensconced in the nuts and bolts of design, check with them to make sure that you and they agree that the work is still tasty, disgusting, tuneful, discordant or whatever agrees with your sensual spine.

The More Thing Change...
What about scene changes? What about costume changes? What about new lighting cues and sound effects? Most of these questions can be answered with ground we've already covered: what part of the Act III story do the costumes need to tell? When should costumes stay out of the way? Etc.

Just as each designer tends to feel, by default, that she should tell every physical aspect of the story, designers also tend to feel that they must tell every temporal aspect. For instance, a costume designer may feel that throughout the course of "The Winter's Tale," Leontes changes from a tyrant to a gentle and wise ruler. Should his costume change to reflect his inner change? Maybe so, maybe not.

Is the costume designer leading the story of that change or is that change better told by some other aspect of the production, e.g. acting or text? Sometimes it's fascinating to see a bad guy become a good guy while keeping his bad-guy garb. It changes the way we, the audience, relate to those sorts of clothes: "Wow! A good guy can wear a black hat!" And it keeps us in mind of where the journey started and how wide the gulf is between then (the clothes) and now (the behavior).

This implies that temporal changes should be included on the original story-point list, and indeed they should! A staged narrative is four-dimensional: it has length, breadth, depth and duration. Which design element or elements should lead each dimension?

My Journey Through Time
I needed to escape design in order to return to it. Now, having lived as a minimalist monk, I feel ready to jump back into the world of muslin, plywood, shadows and music. From minimalism, I learned -- really learned in my gut, not just in my mind -- the importance of every last item placed on the stage. I learned to respect the audience. I learned to read scripts with care. I learned elegance, which means that "everything must matter." It means "having fun at the party but not overstaying your welcome." It means "a place for everything and everything in its place."

letter to a young director

A friend of mine cut lines from a bunch of different Shakespeare plays and pasted them together to form a new play. After seeing it, I wrote her this email:

I really liked your play, and I have some advice about it. I waffled about writing this, because I hate giving unsolicited advice. I think it's rude, and I don't like it when people do it to me.

But I feel strongly about what I'm about to say, and I suspect it's different from what other people will tell you. Selfishly, I want my voice to be heard. Please know that this email comes from a someone who loves your work and wants it to be the best that it can be.

I am surprised that I liked your script, because, to be honest, when you told me about the project, it didn't interest me. I thought, "Why do it?" Why make a new Shakespeare play when there are already so many good ones. I wanted to see you, as a director, grapple with "Merchant of Venice" or "Romeo and Juliet" -- not some hybrid script. But your play won me over. I still don't know "why," but I no longer care. The script was smart and seemed more than just an exercise -- more than just a clever parlor trick. It was a real play. A real story. And stories don't need a justification. If they are compelling and beautiful on their own terms, that's a good enough reason for them to exist.

Here's my unsolicited advice: PLEASE remove the tongue-in-cheek, campy anachronistic jokes. (Example: one of your actresses put on a disguise, which was just a pair of glasses. She then broke out of Elizabethan language and period, looked at the audience and said, "Hey, it worked for Superman.")

I suspect I will be the lone voice telling you to stop doing this. The audience LOVED those jokes. They loved them more than anything else in the play, and, as a director, writer and performer, that's extremely seductive. We all want to be liked, and when we get a laugh, our social brain says, "That thing I was doing -- that thing that made people laugh -- I need to do more of that!" That's a natural way of thinking, and I fall pray to it all the time. I suspect I always will, no matter how many years I spend directing. Because I'm human.

When I direct Shakespeare, I am continually on guard against that impulse. If I give into it, I wind up with a play in which the audience enjoys the super-accessible jokes more than they enjoy the tougher-to-understand Shakespeare verse and prose. As seductive as that enjoyment is, I have to continually remind myself why I'm doing this to begin with -- why I'm directing Shakespeare. If I just want people to have an easy laugh, I can always direct "Barefoot in the Park." I am directing Shakespeare because I want to communicate HIS world and mind to the audience. If I inject campy stuff that's easy to laugh at, I dilute his words, his world, his beauty.

The audience will love you for diluting it. Many of them are scared of Shakespeare, and your campy jokes takes the fear away. People are able to go home afterwards and feel smart -- feel like they "got" Shakespeare. But they DIDN'T get Shakespeare. They got Shakespeare lite; Shakespeare with a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down. If your goal is to make an audience feel at ease and smart, the campy stuff is on the right track. If your goal is to share your love of Shakespeare with them, you need to cut that stuff out.

The MAIN thing I remember about your show -- the line that sticks in my mind the most -- is "It worked for Superman." That's frightening, since I sat through two hours of some of the best English poetry ever written!

(Also, why did you use modern songs? Shakespeare's plays are full of lovely songs. I don't understand why you didn't use them.)

I am making this sound way more dire than it is. If you see a smudge on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, that doesn't mean you hate the painting. You love the painting and you want it to be the best it can be, so you wipe away the smudge. I am trying to wipe away a smudge.

I am laboring this because I know you'll get praised for the campy stuff. I don't expect you to follow my advice when everyone else is saying the opposite. But on the off-chance that you will, I want to make my argument as strong as possible. Ultimately, of course, you have to put YOUR vision on the stage. Not my vision. And bless you for doing that. If you wind up reading this and thinking, "No. That's wrong. I totally disagree!" then that's good. You're cementing your world view, which is something writers and directors need to do.

My last word on the subject is to ask you that whatever you do, you do it with CONFIDENCE. (Or, if you can't, fake it until you make it.) I don't know why YOU added the camp, but I'VE been tempted to do that sort of thing because, if I'm honest, I'm worried the audience won't sit through my play otherwise. I think, "They don't REALLY like Shakespeare, so I have to throw them a bone now and then to thank them for tolerating it (really for tolerating me and my silly obsessions)." Many directors do that. They don't all use camp. They cut the plays or throw in huge song-and-dance numbers, not because they think those cuts make the story clearer or the musical numbers move the plot forward, but because they are worried that the audience will get bored otherwise.

(Cutting and song-and-dance numbers aren't intrinsically bad, but if you're going to use these tools, use them because they help make the story clearer, more sensual or more exciting. Don't tack them onto the production just to keep asses in seats.)

Don't ever do this. Say, "I love Shakespeare, AND HERE'S WHY..." And put your reason (and your love for it) on the stage, naked and unadorned. Be brave enough to do that, and let the audience confront the naked, screaming baby as they will. They may get bored. Or they may pick up the baby and cuddle it. Your job is just to present them with the baby and trust that they are grownups, capable of forming their own relationships with it.

Another way of saying this is "the play is not about you -- it's about Hamlet." This is the fucking hardest part of being a director (or any kind of artist). Removing ego (or ignoring it as best you can). Why do we care if the audience is bored? Because we don't want them to blame us for boring them. That's natural, but any decision we make based on that natural impulse is a decision about us -- not about the story we're supposed to be telling.

"Gotta keep a link with your tradition;
Gotta learn to trust your intuition,
While you re-establish your position
So that you can be on exhib--
So that your WORK can be on exhibition!" - Sondheim lyric from "Sunday In the Park With George"

I have at least one crisis per Shakespeare play (which I keep from the actors). No matter how long I do this sort of work, at least once, I panic and think, "The audience is going to have no idea what's going on. They're going to be bored. They're going to hate me." At those points, I try to act like a Christian who has temporarily lost his faith. I throw myself into the work as passionately as I can. I say, "Shakespeare, I TRUST you." And I spend an extra ten minutes working with Benedict or Juliet or Lear to make sure that he or she is saying Shakespeare's lines clearly and with a strong intention.

To my surprise, this approach has payed off over and over.

"Whether you’re familiar with the poetic language of Shakespeare’s plays or not, the actors make sure the action is impossible to not follow." -- Talkin' Broadway review on Folding Chair's production of "The Winter's Tale."

Still, no matter how many times God proves His existence to me, I lose my faith when I start work on the next play. Grappling with ego and fear -- and the profound desire to be loved -- is, alas, a war that I'll never win. But I CAN win individual battles. And I'll fight until I die.

Please keep up the great work. It's thrilling to watch you grow as an artist.

melodrama and its opposite

I participated in an online discussion about Tiger Woods, an athlete who recently got caught with his pants down -- literally. He's been exposed as a serial adulterer, which is too bad, because before his "sins" came out, he was a role model to many people.

Fans are angry. But each fan, being a unique human being, deals with this anger in his own way. Some see Tiger as a sick man in need of help; others see him as a monster.

The following is part of a discussion about Mike Wise, a sports writer who writes for "The Washington Post." In an article entitled "I Am Tiger Woods," Wise admits to his own past affairs and implies that men who cheat are sex addicts, suffering from voids in their lives. His stance angered many, who saw it as excusing bad behavior.

Wise's essay: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501440.html

Here's my response:

There are two great, ongoing human projects which help us deal with "sin." One of them is called melodrama and the other, unfortunately, doesn't have a name (to the best of my knowledge). For the sake of shorthand, I'll call it psychological drama. (Though I'm unhappy with that name. It implies that melodrama doesn't deal with psychology, and I don't think that's true. It just presents a simplified, cartoon-like psychology, which is much less nuanced than the psychology in what I'm calling "psychological drama.")

When someone hurts us (e.g. cheats on us or assaults us), we can either see the "bad guy" as a force of nature or a fully-endowed human. Psychological drama, which delves deeply into background and motivation, encourages the former; Melodrama, in which bad guys are simply evil assholes, encourages the latter.

To me, it's silly to consider one of these forms superior to the other. Their longevity and co-existence implies that they are both necessary. Both exist in all cultures that tell stories (e.g. all cultures), and there are amazing literary examples of both.

What's interesting to me is that they are, in a sense, mutually exclusive. When someone needs melodrama, he (usually) must bar psychological drama; when someone needs psychological drama, he (generally) finds melodrama childishly simplistic and worthless.

In discussions like this, whenever anyone brings up the psychology, others (ones in a melodramatic frame of mind) get offended. "Why did Hitler murder all those people?" they ask. "Because he was an evil bastard. That's why!" They don't want to hear any psychological explanation, because, to one who needs melodrama, motivational thinking and humanizing are forms of EXCUSING.

Quite a few people here have accused Wise of EXCUSING Woods, even though Wise claims to not be doing this. If you need melodrama, you are probably going to read excusing into ANY attempt to psychologically probe a bad guy. (My use of the word "read," above, is not meant to imply that psychological writers aren't excusing. They might or might not be. But if you're in a melodramatic frame of mind, it doesn't matter whether they are or not. You'll necessarily interpret their prose as an excuse.)

I love both forms, but I'm more of a Chekovian than a Dickensian. I think of everyone as having reasons for what they're doing -- reasons rooted in genetics or post-natal history/biography. To me, learning about those reasons has nothing (necessarily) to do with excusing, though I am more apt to sympathize with the bad guy if I know what makes him tick than if I don't.

(For reasons I can't explain, humanizing bad guys is cathartic to me even when I'm the victim of their crimes. This will baffle anyone more attuned to melodrama, and I admit that I can't explain it myself. I even find it comforting to humanize the Nazis who killed many members of my family. Maybe it's because I'm scared of living in a world filled with monsters, and humanizing allows me to live, instead, in a world filled with -- well -- humans. In any case, I have no interest in excusing -- just in explaining.)

Reading the article, I sympathize with Wise. However, I don't excuse what he did.

I'm fond of navel gazing, and so I have theories about almost all of my own motivations. I've done plenty of bad things in my life. And I think I understand why I did them. However, I don't excuse myself for doing them. Does understanding my own psychology make me less of a shit? No. It just makes me know why I am a shit.

To me -- a guy who likes psychological drama -- Wise's essay doesn't seem like he's excusing himself. It seems like he's saying "I'm a shit and here's why." To someone who prefers (or needs) melodrama, the very act of saying "why" is necessarily making an excuse. It's claiming that the bad guy is not fully responsible for his actions. How could he help being a shit when his mother was so cold to him as a child?

A fascinating example of the tug between melodrama and psychological drama is "A Clockwork Orange." The genesis of that book is a real-life incident. Anthony Burgess and his wife were assaulted in their home by thugs. He set out to write a melodrama about it, one told from the point of view of the victims in which the assailants were evil forces. But his novelist instincts lead him to explore the psychology of the bad guys, and at some point he flipped his thinking and wrote the whole book from the villain's perspective. (I suspect, but can't prove, that something similar happened to Shakespeare when he wrote "The Merchant of Venice.")

I am afraid that we're stuck in a world in which there will always be both melodrama and psychological drama -- and I hope it's clear that I'm not just talking about fiction; I'm also talking about the way we talk and think about criminals and sinners. And we're also stuck in a world in which those two forms, or at least the mental states of the people who are consuming them, are incompatible.

If you insist that Hitler was a person (which you may need to do), know that you'll anger a large number of people who NEED to seem him as a monster; if you insist that he's monster (which you may need to do), be sure that you'll frustrate those of us who don't believe in monsters.

---

After I wrote this, someone suggested that the opposite of melodrama is tragedy.

I responded as follows:

I can't possibly prove this, but I believe that the "atomic units" of narrative are melodrama and X -- X being what I've (unfortunately) called "psychological drama."

By "atomic units" I mean three things:

1. The forms don't mix well. They are not totally atomic in this sense. I have seen a few interesting hybrids (e.g. "Merchant of Venice"), but it's pretty hard to make up a story in which the bad guy is both a pure evil force-of-nature and a nuanced, psychologically deep character at the same time.

2. They are both well-honed forms. Both have existed at least since the time of the ancient Greeks.

3. They contain all other genres, e.g. a Mystery or a Sci-fi novel is in a sub-genre of melodrama or psychological drama (or an experimental attempt to straddle in both camps).

I would also claim (without proof, alas), as I did above, that the two forms give us the two things we most need from narrative: belonging and independence: "we are all in this together" vs. "it's me against the world."

I would call tragedy a sub-category (though definitely a sub-category of psychological drama). "Midsummer Night's Dream" is, to my mind, a psychological drama (it's definitely not a melodrama), even though it's a comedy.

----

More from me on the subject (I never seem to tire of it):

The majority of people (at least the majority of people I meet) cling to melodrama when they think about folks opposite them on the political spectrum.

Conservatives tend to think of Liberals as forces of evil; Liberals tend to think of Conservatives the same way. (Or they think of each other as stupid, which is just another way of not allowing a person full person-hood.) Basically, Liberals are "baby killers" and Conservatives "want poor people to starve."

I've written on before about how I stay away from politics (and how I wrestle with the ethics of keeping my head in the sand). I've realized lately that the main reason I'm apolitical is because I don't view politics as melodrama. Worse, I can't tolerate the melodramatic view (which I'll admit is a prejudice, but I don't know how to overcome it.) I turn off as soon as I hear one side making a villain of the other. And the fact that I refuse to participate in the melodrama of either side makes me a friend of no one.

I learned the hard way that it's pointless (or worse) to try to explain (excuse!) the Conservative view point to Liberal. And the same is true the other way around. Almost no one wants to hear it. Melodrama IS the official story.

I don't mean to wax on about myself, but it's an illustration of how one way of seeing the world (melodramatically or the opposite) blocks the other way. I'm as blocked as my political friends. We're just on opposite sides of the block.

how to be a Renaissance Man

I am more of a dilettante than a Renaissance man, but I am interested in almost everything and read widely in history, science, literature, etc.

However, I can't imagine anything harder or less painful than trying to become a Renaissance Man (or even a dilettante) because that's your goal. Is suspect most learned people got that way because they just studied lots of things that interested them -- not because they wanted to be learned.

I love learning. I love the feeling of learning. I love the "journey" of learning. If I'm not actively learning something, I'm bored. When I'm looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon, I pick up a book or listen to a podcast about something I don't know.

I do not think I'm much smarter than average, but I do notice one big difference between me and many of my friends: learning has no baggage for me.

* Learning is not competitive for me. I do not feel the need to learn more than anyone else or faster than anyone else. While, in theory, a competitive nature might spur one to learn, what I see most often is that competitive learners give up when they fail. If they don't learn, say, Calculus as fast as the rest of the class, they figure they have "lost" and never try again. Don't learn something to prove that you're smart or to show off that you're smart; don't learn to "impress the girls." Learn to learn.

* Learning for me is morally neutral. I don't feel that there's anything one should or should not learn. I have read a lot of classic literature. On the other hand, if I don't feel like reading "Moby Dick" or "King Lear," I won't read them because I feel like "one should."

* I don't care about being smart or original. I don't learn a subject in order "to be smart." I learn a subject because I'm interested in the subject. If I stop being interested in it, I stop studying it.

I'm a writer and theatre director. When I create, I don't care at all about being original. I care about the subject or story I'm trying to tell.

* I am not phased by brain fog. You know that feeling that comes over you when you're studying a hard subject? It's a sort of exhaustion. The subject gets farther and farther away and you have to expend more and more energy to keep up with it. Finally, you shut down. Most people I know are really daunted by it. I'm not.

I experience it as much as anyone. And I dislike it. But I've learned not to try to push past it. Since learning for me isn't competitive or a moral urge, when I get brain fog, I just stop. Later, when I'm more alert, I return to the subject. Sometimes "later" is weeks or even years later. That's fine.

So the question is, how does one get to be the way I am? How did I get this way? I don't have all the answers, but I know one of them: by ignoring school.

Unless you went to a really good (and really atypical) school, your school approached learning in all the wrong ways: it made learning competitive and goal driven (e.g grades); it made learning a moral imperative ("You SHOULD read Shakespeare!"); it made learning stick to a time table ("You must 'learn' Algebra by the end of this semester or you fail!").

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Beyond wrong. Deeply detrimental.

Since most "smart" people endured close to two decades of traditional schooling, it's no surprise that they are indoctrinated in those bad methods of learning -- methods that make learning not fun yet make people value learning, so that in the end you wind up with people who hate to learn but feel that they SHOULD learn.

You wind up with people who to to HAVE learned but who hate the process of learning itself. They want to tick off subjects they know on a ledger, and if they could press a button and just know all the subjects without learning them, they would, because school has taught they that the journey sucks.

Luckily for me, I always hated school and never took it seriously. I put up with it when I had too, and did all my real learning on my own.

How do you get to that stage? I don't know. If you're already in school, think about what messages it's sending you about learning. Is the process itself joyous? Or is it all about the carrot (the A) and the stick (the F)? If you're past school, think about what messages it sent you and how whether you can free yourself from them.

In the end, I believe that being happy is way more valuable than learning. Learning makes me deeply happy, which is why I do it. If it doesn't make you deeply happy -- if the PROCESS -- doesn't fill you with joy, don't do it. Life is too short!

If you love learning, you don't need to ask how to be a Renaissance Man. The answer: just do what you love.

one thing

Over at Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood complains that users don't follow directions. When they post on his forum, they don't use appropriate markup, they don't look at the preview below the text-input area, and they don't press RETURN twice between paragraphs.

Here's my response:

I am a professional communicator. Specifically, I am a book author, computer programmer, teacher (20 years experience) and theatre director.

Here's what I've learned: you can rely on people to take in ONE piece of information per message.

By "message," I mean a single piece of communication: an email, a memo, a sign, a window.

If you send out an email saying, "The party is tomorrow at four. It's BYOB. Also, please bring five dollars to tip the band," you will get people who show up at four but forget to bring booze or money, people who bring money but no booze and show up an hour too early, and people who bring booze only and show up on the wrong day.

I am not saying that you can never include multiple pieces of information in a communication, and I realize that sometimes it's impossible to limit yourself to just one. I'm saying that each additional piece of info introduces risk.

Advertisers learned this rule decades ago. UI designers don't ever seem to learn it.

A good UI developer should take one look at the cluttered interface above (too many buttons, too many screen regions competing for attention, too many ways the user has to interact -- tags, button clicks, typing...) and shudder.

When you learn the one-piece-of-info rule, let yourself get mad. Spend an hour railing at users. Call them idiots; bemoan the dumbing down of culture and the lack of attention span.

Then get over it and accept the clay you have to sculpt with. Rail all your want at a mountain for being tall. After you're throat hurts from screaming, you still have to climb the mountain.

After designing a UI, ask yourself, "What can I cut?" To paraphrase Orwell, "The destruction of controls is a beautiful thing." Does your UI contain any nice-to-have (but not mandatory) features? If so, cut them. You can always make an alternate UI for power users.

Your goal should be ONE UI element. You will probably be unable to reach that goal, but give yourself the challenge anyway.

Let's say that the closest you can get is four. Okay, you know you've introduced risk. What can you do to minimize that risk as much as possible? Can you make each of the four elements a different color so that they'll stand out and call attention to themselves? Can you use graphics and formatting (bold, italic, etc.) to do the same thing?

People here championing WYSIWYG over ascii-with-tags are absolutely right, and I'm saddened that not everyone here gets that. Of COURSE they are right! WYSIWYG is WYSIWYG. If you expect users to look back and forth between a preview and a text-input field, you will be disappointed a lot of the time.

By the way, I've participated in forums for years. I am a pretty smart guy. Yet I've made the mistake of ignoring previews. Let me explain how a smart person might do this: you have something to say and it's important to you. So you work hard trying to express yourself clearly and passionately. When you're done, you do the natural thing: you press the POST button. You forget to check preview because it's not natural. You don't do it when you speak, you don't do it when you IM or type an email, etc. You're too caught up in the content of what you're saying to remember to check the format.

If you MUST use the ascii-plus-preview method, put them on two separate screens: the first screen should be a text-input field and a SUBMIT button. After clicking SUBMIT, you should then see a preview which you can post or edit.

Wizards are much better for beginners than cluttered screens, as long as each wizard step does not become a cluttered screen itself. Power users rightly hate wizards, so give them an alternate screen with all controls in the same place.

I'm surprised anyone would ask whether or not the UI should allow single carriage returns between paragraphs. Of COURSE it should. It doesn't matter how many people compose paragraphs this way. The point is that you should never veer from a UI standard unless you have no choice.

My word processor accepts every carriage return as a line feed; so does my email client; so does my code editor; so does my text editor. As I user, I assume that when I press return, the UI will understand that my goal is to move the cursor to the next line. I've been trained to think that way by thousands of UIs that conform to that rule. Ignore that at your peril. If you do, you should expect your users to screw up.

Should we blame the users? Should be blame the designers? STOP BLAMING PEOPLE. It's counter productive. Instead, deal with reality and build systems that integrate well with human nature.

colorblind

This is in response to John Heilpern's article, "Should a Fuss Be Made Over Colorblind Casting" in the June 9, 2009 issue of the "New York Observer."

"Are plays about what makes sense? Or are they acts of the imagination between the actor and audience in a serious game of pretend?"

Dear Mr. Heilpern:

Hi. I'm a theatre director.

In the quotation, above, you ask if plays are "about" what makes sense. Taken literally, that doesn't make sense, because there are not such things as "plays." There is "Hamlet" and "Charlie's Aunt" and "Death of a Salesman." Your question is similar to "Are plays funny or serious?"

In most productions, there aspects that most audience members take at face value. They are not perverse to do so. They are reacting with standard, human psychology. For instance, in a play with a "naturalistic" set, most people will assume that telephones can ring, stairs can be climbed and food can be eaten.

If one of the actors asks, "Can somebody get me a glass of water?" and then another actor passes him a hat and says, "Here you go," an audience member would be behaving normally if he was confused (unless it was an absurdist play). I would call such a moment "an error," unless the play was absurdist or the the character with the hat joking.

Plays can be set in worlds that are different from ours -- often radically different. But the director and actors enter a contract with the audience -- whether they want to or not -- that is something roughly like this: unless the production makes it clear that the pay's item A differs from the real world item's A, and unless that difference is made clear early on, the production is in error, because audience members will, by default, assume that the play's item A is just like the real-world-equivalent of item A.

For instance, it's fine for there to be cartoon characters in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", because this fantasy device is established from the get-go. On the other hand, it would be a mistake if Bugs Bunny appeared halfway through "The Godfather."

Why exactly would it be a mistake? Because what "The Godfather" (and other naturalistic plays and movies) does well is to suck you into its world. When I watch that movie -- or a play like "August:Ossage County" -- I start to believe it's real (if it's done well). As I sit in my seat, the theatre around me fades, and the world on the stage takes focus. I start feeling for the characters as if they are real people that I know.

I specifically go to the theatre to get this feeling. (Not all plays evoke this sort of identification, but the ones I like do.) Anything that detracts from that feeling is a dent in my experience.

For instance, if the guy next to me coughs, I may be rippped out of the dream. I suddenly become aware that I'm sitting in a theatre watching something "just made up." At that point, the play will affect me a little less than it did when I was "surrounded" by it. Hopefully, I will be able to sink back into belief before too long.

Many other things can shatter the dream: an actor flubbing a line, a bad bit of dialogue by the writer, a plot hole... Usually these errors are not fatal, but they do make my experience a little worse than it could be. In some cases, the errors come with such frequency or severity that I am unable to sink back into the dream, and the evening falls flat for me.

I'm aware that not all people watch plays this way. Some people enjoy theatre as artifice and like keeping the fact that it's fake somewhere in their head. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not the way I watch. I don't want to convince you that my way is superior -- because it's not. What I do claim that my way is a valid and meaningful (and enjoyable) way to experience theatre. I've been doing it for years and it gives me great pleasure. The common term for it is "escapism." You can't escape if you are constantly pulled back into the real world.

In the real world, you have no choice but to integrate weirdness into your world view. If someone says, "I'm going to drink a glass of water" and then starts gulping down invisible liquid from a hat, you have no other choice than to somehow fit that event into your model of reality. Most likely, you will make it fit by concluding that the drinker is insane or joking.

In the theatre, you have another choice. If you hear Hamlet say, "To be or ... Shit! What's the rest of the line?" your brain monetarily gets confused and tries to come up with an explanation as to why a prince in Denmark would talk that way. Then your brain accesses the fact that it's "just a play," and that plays are faked by actors who are actually modern day people. And you then realize that the actor just flubbed his line. Which means that you're thinking about the fact that the actor IS an actor. You're outside the world of the play. For a time at least, the play has lost its grip on you.

In plays, it's possible to mentally jump up to a "higher" level, in which you "see the man behind the curtain." Via my way of directing and viewing plays, that's generally a bad thing. My goal as a director is to keep the audience in a state of belief; my goal as an audience member is to believe.

In the real world, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves can not be blood brothers. When a play claims that they are, your mind will naturally break out of the dream and you'll think, "Okay, I get it, they just cast a white guy and a black guy..." WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK THAT I ENJOY PLAYS, that's an error, because if the audience is thinking "they just cast..." then they are thinking of the play as artifice instead of reality.

Having said that, I will admit that I frequently cast black actors in traditionally white roles. I do it because when you're directing a play, it's impossible to craft anything that's perfect. You just do the best you can given the clay you have to mold. Let's say that I have a choice of two actors to play "Hamlet" (in a production with a white Gertrude). One is a so-so white actor; the other is a stupendous black actor. I will cast the black actor. I will do so because, via my calculation, so-so acting will shatter the dream more easily and more often than a black actor playing a character who is supposed to be white.

But while I'll make this choice, I won't fool myself into thinking it's a perfect choice (given my aesthetics). It's not.

Luckily, for me at least, the dissonance that happens when Washington and Reeve's play brothers doesn't last long. If it's established early on, I'll be disturbed by it briefly -- then I'll get over it. (In the end, Reeve's bad acting will bother me much more). Theatre is about pretending, and I'll buy the pretense. But I won't buy it instantaneously, and for the moment or moments that I'm not buying it, it's a problem. That may seem trivial. So what if the dream is briefly shattered? It IS trivial if you don't share my aesthetic or if you don't share it strongly. All I can say is that it's not trivial for me.

I have discussed this with many people. Some agree with me. Others say, "It doesn't bother me." I'd like to speculate as to why it doesn't bother them. To start, I'm going to make the following claim: if, in real life, I introduced you to two guys, telling you that they are blood brothers (with white parents), it would be disorienting if you saw that one was white and the other was black. My guess is that you'd think I was lying or mistaken. You would be at least momentarily confused.

So why do people say that the same thing doesn't bother them if it's on stage? One reason might be because they don't view theatre the way I do. They don't strive to believe in it -- to forget that it's "just a play." Or maybe they do this somewhat, but not as much as I do. Certainly, most people who came to theatre via academia are trained to not do this. "Don't use art as escapism," the professors say. "Always keep a critical eye!" Academics are concerned about things like theme, social relevance, craftsmanship and historical context. If these are the things one is interested in, it won't bother them if Biff is black and Happy is white. Only naive viewers, like me, are bothered by things like that.

Wait. Is that true? In my experience, even the most academic audience member is bothered by anachronisms. If a play is set in 1950, most literary people will be upset if there's a poster of Bill Clinton on wall. Why? Because no one knew about Clinton in the fifties. The academic detects that the set designer made an error. So, when he sees a black actor play a white character, why does that same academic not detect an error? Why is one slippage from reality bad and another good?

My guess is that most (liberal) people are happy to see a black actor play a white character because they hate racism. In that aspect, I'm typical. I hate racism, and, when I'm not actually watching a play, I'm gladdened by the idea of a black actor getting opportunities that he wouldn't have had in the past. That is definitely a good thing. So I suspect that there are people like me -- people who go to the theatre to escape -- who none-the-less aren't bothered by colorblind casting. If you could peer inside their brain and view events in slow motion, you'd see that, in fact, they are bothered momentarily. If they go to the theatre to escape, how could they not be? But the warm feeling that a blow has been dealt to the evil of racism quickly replaces the negative feeling -- so quickly that the viewer's brain doesn't even register the negativity.

The academic viewer scorns the anachronism, because it shows that they director was sloppy. On the other hand, he cheers for the colorblind casting, because it shows that they director has good ethical values. The academic can feel both these things because he naturally thinks about the director while he watches the play. Whereas if I think about the director, there's something wrong with the play. And if my audience thinks about me, I feel like I haven't done my job.

Theatre is, of course, very different from the real world. In play rooms, there is always a wall missing; there are strange lights hanging everywhere; time moves much swifter than it does in reality; people speak more clearly... These conventions don't have to be set up. We just expect them. We do so, because we've been brought up with a theatre that has these specific conventions.

Conventions can change. To the Elizabethans, it would have been odd to see a woman on stage. We don't give it a second thought (to us, it would be odd to see a man playing Juliet.) It may be that someday, black and white actors playing blood relations will be an ingrained convention. Kids will be brought up with it from their first night in the theatre. I hope this does happen. In fact, I would willingly sacrifice my escapism for such a convention. It would be a sacrifice for the greater good. And -- good news -- I suspect that this will happen. It's the direction we seem to be going. In the future, a kid who is just as intent on escapism as I am will be able to see a black actor playing a white actor's father and truthfully not be bothered by it -- even for a second.

But I didn't grow up with such a convention, and I can't instantly suck it into my soul. Conventions don't work that way. They become natural via repetition. In the meantime, it's important that we don't assume racism on the part of a viewer or artist who is disturbed by colorblind casting. The truth may be more nuanced than that.

If you're a champion of colorblind casting, you should ask yourself how far you're willing to run with that idea. Why just colorblind? How about an actress in a wheelchair playing Juliet (in a period production)? How about a 300lb actor playing Puck? Is there any point where we say, "that casting is distracting"? I'm not talking about what we should do. Maybe we should let a disabled actress play Juliet because the benefits outweigh the costs. I'm saying that if you are able to "suspend your disbelief" when a black actor plays a white character, are there any instances where you wouldn't be able to do this? If you can suspend your disbelief under all circumstances, then it doesn't matter what we put on stage. There are no wrong choices.

Finally, I'd like to say that there's a deep hypocrisy in most discussions about colorblind casting. Have you ever noticed anything about the black actors who play white characters? They are so damned good looking! So are the white actors who play white characters. How come no one is casting Paul Giamatti in the roles that Harrison Ford gets? How come no one is casting Toni Collette as the hot chick? In real life, average-looking people are sexy and have adventures. Why do we insist on a perverse sort a falseness on stage? And why are people who are so into colorblind casting generally not bothered by the lack of beauty-bling casting?