marcus's rules of order (for himself)

I, Marcus, swear to abide by the following rules to the best of my ability. It is my belief the they lead to civil, intelligent discussion in which the goal is to seek truth, rather than to win points, mock, humiliate or dominate -- all of which I consider ignoble wastes of time or worse.

I invite you to call me on my own hypocrisy. If I violate any of the following rules, drop me a line saying, "You just violated rule 03!"

I also invite you to follow these rules. I believe they will pay off great dividends for you and for this the world in general.

Finally, I invite you to suggest changes and amendments to these rules.

01. I will never engage in ad hominem attacks. An ad hominem attack is an attack on the arguer as opposed to his argument.

It's pretty easy to understand that "You're an asshole!" doesn't add anything to the argument except bile, but most ad hominem attacks are subtler than that. They piggyback on legitimate points.

Examples:

"Don't be an idiot! In a democracy, everyone gets a right to vote!"

"What you obviously don't understand is that History is not a science!"

"For the fifteenth time, not all forms of punishment are equally bad!" (It's a little hard to spot the personal attack in this example. "For the fifteenth time" implies "You are so stupid that you can't understand something, even if I say it over and over again!")

These combo statements are bad because they send a mixed message. Refuting someone's point with logic says "I want to have a rational discussion with you." Adding in some form of "You idiot" says "I want to humiliate you." And the stealth (slipping the insult in with the valid point) makes the play for dominance all the more horrible. If the person on the other end only responds to the logic, he's letting himself be insulted; if he only responds to the insult, he's ignoring the logic. If he tries to do both, he waters down the discussion.

02. I will never give as good as I get.

This is the hardest rule for most people to follow, and many people disagree that it even should be a rule. But if I care about promoting real discussion and ridding the world (as much as possible) of chest-beating shouting matches, I'll swallow my pride and take the high road. If someone calls me an asshole, they are violating rule 01. Sorry, but if I call them an asshole back, I am also violating rule 01. As Mom said, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

I have two honorable options: (1) ignore the insult and just respond to the debate points -- if there are any debate points. Or (2) opt to leave the debate. If I make this choice, I may explain why, without insulting the insulter. I can say, "I am sorry, but I have a personal policy against participating in debates that include personal attacks. So I'm going to leave now."

After I leave, the insulter will almost always claim victory. I need to live with that. He's claiming victory because he believes that's the whole point of the debate -- for someone to win and for someone else to lose. I need to remember that my point was to seek truth. He and I are not playing the same game. Let him win his game. It's not my game. Whatever I do, I should never play his game. If I do, he wins by default.

Bonus points: give one warning but don't leave. It's fine if I leave after the first insult. But sometimes it's worth staying long enough to say that I will only stick around if there are no more insults. People are imperfect; they get defensive despite their best intentions not to. (It happesn to me!) Sometimes an insult will slip out. If I feel I am up to it, I should give people a chance to apologize and I should accept their apology with grace.

If, after that, they insult me a second time, I should opt out.

03. I will never say, "You can take anything to extremes," because that's never a meaningful answer.

If someone says, "If we take your logic to extremes, we wind up with Nazi Germany," there are three meaningful responses:

1) "You're wrong. If you take my logic to extremes, you actually wind up with X," X being something other than Nazi Germany. You then need to explain why you wind up with X instead of Nazi Germany.

2) "You're right. You've made me realize that I need to qualify my claim. I don't dismiss it. It's still a valid claim under many circumstances, but I can see how it's problematic when..."

3) "You're right. I never fully considered the ramifications."

04. If I concede a point, I must always fully and opening concede it. And I am never allowed to mix conceding a point with changing the subject:

Example of the wrong way to do it:

Me: The problem with our educational system, is that it forces kids to do things they don't want, and forcing people is wrong.

You: So you think it's wrong to stop kids from playing in traffic?

Me: Okay, not that, but my point is...

WHOA! "But the point is" is changing the subject. What I should have said is...

Me: You know, you're right. I said you should never force kids to do anything, but now that you bring up the dangers of playing in traffic, I realize that I don't really think things through. You're right about that. (Pause.) Okay, let me try to rephrase what I believe. I do think you have a point, but I don't think MY point was completely wrong. I just need to refine it. You see...

05. I will either stay in the discussion or bow out gracefully. It's never someone else's fault that I'm leaving. I will never leave by saying something like, "Since you can't discuss this rationally, I'm outahere!"

It's okay to say, "I have a personal policy against taking part in flame wars, but it's also hard for me to resist insulting you the way you're insulting me. So rather than violating my principals, I'm going to leave." It's also perfectly fine to say, "You know. I'm tired, and I just don't feel like discussing any more." I will separate my leave-taking remark from my argumentation. It's never okay to use a good-bye to get "one last dig in."

06. I will never assume intent or mindset.

I will never say, "You obviously think you're always right" unless someone has said "I am always right." I will never begins a sentence with "people like you always say..." It's fine, acceptable and good to ask questions about mindset. "You say you're a Republican? The Republicans I know want low taxes. Do you want low taxes?"

07. I will never use sarcasm as a weapon.

"You're quite right. NO ONE should EVER have to go to SCHOOL! If no one went to SCHOOL, we'd be living in a PARADISE!"

If my message is "you're really stupid," then I'm engaging in an ad hominem attack. (See point 01.) If my point is "School is a good thing," then I need to make that point and explain why.

08. I am not allowed to fall back on bad behavior when all else has failed.

"You know what? I tried reasoning with you. I explained things to you really clearly. In fact, I explain things FOUR TIMES. You never listen. You know what? At this point ... fuck you!" I need to either stay in the discussion and keep trying or opt out gracefully. (See point 05.)

09. I will never say, "You're missing my point," "You're still not hearing me," or any variation of those phrases.

No matter how clear I think I'm being, if the other person isn't responding as if he heard me, there are two possibilities: either he's not thinking clearly or I'm not speaking clearly.

I am not the one to judge whether I'm speaking clearly or not. No one is objective enough to do that. Which is why writers need editors. In any case, "you're missing the point" is gratuitous information. If I'm debating Creationism, debate THAT. I shouldn't waste time discussing whether or not someone is missing my point.

If I feel that someone is missing my point, I should explain it again, switch to a different point, ask questions to see if I can figure out the cause of the confusion or opt out. (See point 05.)

Bonus points if, in stead of saying, "You're missing my point," I say, "Maybe I wasn't being clear. How about we look at it this way..." A little humility goes a long way.

10. If I feel frustrated and need to vent, I will either leave the discussion and vent elsewhere or I will stay and discuss my feelings without blaming anyone else for them.

If I blame someone else (even if it is "their fault") my goal has changed from truth-seeking to something else -- maybe to righting a wrong or criticizing. Sometimes that's inevitable. But at least I should be fair to the people I'm talking to by making the new game clear: "You know, I need to stop for a minute. I can't go on discussing the Middle East situation right now, because I'm hurt by what you said..."

It's also okay to say, "I am really frustrated right now." What's not okay is to engage in any of the bad behavior (ad hominem attacks, sarcasm...) outlined in these points.

11. I will never nitpick at minor points that have nothing to do with the main thrust of someone's argument.

If someone says, "You think that technology is perfect? That's what people said about the Titanic in the 1920s," it adds nothing to the discussion to retort with, "The Titanic sank in 1912!" The person was making a point about the hubris of claiming a technology is perfect. My goal should be to agree with him about THAT or to disagree and explain my reasoning -- not to win points.

(It's okay, at a time when it won't derail the conversation, to say, "Oh. Just a note. The Titanic sank in 1912." Conversational ninjas can even say this immediately, as long as they phrase it like this, "Well, the Titanic sank in 1912, but I take your point that...")

12. When (not if) I violate any of these rules, I will apologize.

It's hard to argue fairly. Even if I start with the honest goal of seeking the truth, people will push my buttons (and I'll push my own buttons), and sometimes without even knowing it, I'll bark at people. Unwittingly, my goal will switch from truth-seeking to winning. This is natural. It happens to everyone. I must have the humility to accept the fact that it will happen to me. The honorable thing is to admit it and fix the problem.

If I find you can't do this -- if apologizing is deeply painful or irritating, so much so that I can't bring myself to do it -- then I should at least note I've you've completely quit seeking the truth. My argument is now totally about ego. Again, that's not a horrible sin. It means I'm human. Sometimes humans have to withdraw and lick their wounds. It's honorable to take a break, even a permanent one if I must.

If I choose to continue, I should say "You know, I just realized I made a personal attack" (or whatever you did.) "I'm sorry. That was wrong of me." I should pause after doing that, making sure to never combine an apology with a change of subject, or it will sound like I'm fleeing from the apology. I should never say, "I'm sorry I attacked you, but my point is..." Instead, I should take a deep breath, find some humility, look the other person in the eye and say, "I was wrong." Full Stop. Then let him speak. After my mistake has been dealt with, I am free to continue making my argument.

the unopenable door

Thought experiment: you move into a house and discover there's a locked door in the basement. It's a super-strong, steel reenforced door -- like a bank vault. You try everything you can to open it but nothing works. You call in an engineer, and he tells you that the door must remain closed. If you try to bash it open somehow, you'll bring down the whole house on top of you. (I realize this is silly. There's ALWAYS a way to get a door open. But please accept this unopenenable door -- as magic if you must.) Question: once you realize you can't open the door, how would be feel about continuing to live in the house?

I ask this, because some people seem to be much better equipped to deal with mystery than others. This is far from the only thing that leads some people to become mystics and others to become skeptics/scientific thinkers/atheists, but I believe it's one key ingredient.

(There's a great TED talk by J.J. Abrams, the TV producer, in which he talks about how his grandfather gave him a box from a magic shop. It has big question marks painted on it. He's kept the box for decades without ever opening it. He feels it's vital that he has this mystery in his life. I told this story to my wife and she just about blew a gasket. She wants to kill J.J. for not opening that box. She wants to kill him even more for adding that mystery to her life without giving her any tools to solve it.)

I'm betting some people read my unopenable-door experiment and thought, "I could live with it." Others thought, "It would drive me BATSHIT INSANE! I would HAVE to move." Still others thought, "I'm sorry, but even in a story, I can't accept the idea of an unopenable door. So in spite of your request that I take that as a given, I simply can't. There IS a way to open it, and I will keep trying!" Others thought, "I'm going to assume that what's behind the door is _____," and you can fill in the blank with God or some other fantasy. (For a fun evening with friends, pose the door story to them and see how they react. You will learn a lot!)

Despite the name, mysticism tends to deny (or solve) mystery. Why does it rain? Because the rain God wants it to. Etc.

It's always fascinating to me when a theist asks me, "Well, if God didn't do it, how do you explain X?" Embedded in that question is the idea that "I don't know" is not tolerable. That it's better to make up an explanation (or accept one someone else made up) than live with mystery.

We tend to categorize people as theists and atheists, but I think this relationship to mystery transcends those categories. I've noticed that there are scientists who are very uncomfortable with mystery. They may have BECOME scientists because, though they can't just trust bullshit like so many theists do, they cling to the idea that, given time and work, all will be known. A mystery, to them, is just a question that doesn't YET have an answer.

But if you really confront the truth, we simply don't know if all questions can be answered or not. And it's a certainty that all questions (even most questions) won't get answered in your lifetime. You will die with mysteries. How does that make you feel? I think that's a KEY question. How do unsolved and UNSOLVABLE mysteries make you feel?

(Many animals are compelled to explore their environments. Presumably this helps them make sure there are not lurking dangers. An unexplored nook or cranny might contain a tiger. When we ask people to give up mysticism and theism, we need to understand the ramifications of our request: learn to live with some possible tigers that you'll never be sure about.)

I've also noticed that many scientists (and scientific types) are troubled by axioms. To me, the most challenging thing that theists say to us is "You take things on faith just like we do." The answers I hear most often are "Yes, but we do that as little as possible" and "Yes, but we're always willing to revise those axioms."

I agree with both those statements, but I also note how quickly scientists (many of them) tend to change the subject when their faith-based beliefs are even brought up. I suspect, again, this is because the existence of axioms implies mystery. Yes, we may one day understand the human brain and the nature of black holes. But will we understand what causation is? Maybe, but it it seems distinctly less likely. (Unless you're one of those people who cling to the "religious" belief that, given time, we'll understand everything. Now THAT is an article of faith!)

If I'm right about this, it all leads to a big question that, alas, I can't answer: why do different people have different tolerance levels for mystery? Is it a genetically encoded personality trait? Is it learned? I have no idea. I would love to see this tested in the lab. I would love to see if we can detect differing tolerances for mystery in infants and other primates.

school is abuse

Someone online posted about a school that gives students DAILY assessment tests. I remarked that this sounds like hell to me. A few people countered that it's much better than leaving kids to do homework and only occasionally checking in on how they're doing.

I had to admit I'd been glib, and so I broadened my remark by saying, "Homework sucks, too. A school has failed when it has our kids captive for EIGHT HOURS A DAY, for TWELVE YEARS, and that's not enough time to teach -- when it needs to force kids to do even MORE work at night, when they finally get to go home. Good LORD! What is happening during those eight hours?"

To which I got this...

It's school. It's not something you necessarily need to like. If I had my way I never would have gone and played Nintendo all day instead.

"We will probably never agree about this," I said, "but learning should be fun." Learning IS fun when we're small children. When we're babies, learning is FASCINATING. Then something kills this fascination for many people. I would argue that "something" is school -- traditional school (with homework, tests and requirements) as it exists in America and many other countries.

I would also argue that school needn't kill the joy of learning (and that the fact that it does so, for so many people, is extremely damaging to mental development). It sickens me when people treat school as a Force of Nature: "Whatcha gonna do. That's just the way it is."

I understand (and sympathize) with this feeling, because it's how most of us experience school. It's certainly IS something that "just happens" to us. Everyone we know goes through it; Our parents went through it; our children went through it. It seems like a natural part of life, like teething and going through puberty. But it's worth remembering that this is an illusion. Whether you agree with me or not that school sucks, it's not natural -- it's a human construction.

When a ritual becomes this embedded in culture, it stops being open to debate for most people. Not because they're close minded. But because ... who debates whether or not trees should have leaves? Good or bad, school becomes a rite of passage. It may be crap, but it's that crap we all have in common.

And questioning school is dangerous. If there's something fucked up in our upbringing -- in years and years and years of it -- that means, on some level, our parents abused us (generally unwittingly), and who wants to think of their parents that way? It means we're abusing our kids. And who wants to think of ourselves that way? I probably damage my own point by even suggesting that or by using the word "abuse." The knees are GOING to jerk.

But fuck it. Stunting someone's mental development; making them spend twelve years of their life in a crappy environment ... I don't know what else to call it.

Well, I could call it "just school" or "that's how it is" or "I went through it and I turned out okay." All the platitudes that usually tumble out...

When something is embedded in our culture, it also tends to make us very unimaginative -- at least when it comes to that thing. You can't change a rock or a tree. They are the way they are. Same with school, right? Institutions are institutions because they are institutions. The Post Office may be fucked up -- but it's the Post Office!

Please argue with me and tell me what school is fine (or the best we can expect it to be) and that it does little damage to people. Or that it's great and it helps people. But BEFORE you do that, please read everything you can about education (including the hundred-years-worth of literature on alternatives to what we do now), as I've tried to do over the last 30 years. And please spend 20 years in the classroom as an active thinker, as I have done. During that 20 years, make sure you question the institutional defaults EVERY DAY. Don't (necessarily) reject them; QUESTION them. Isn't that what you're teaching your students to do -- to question?

Read Vivian Paley's books; read "How Children Fail." Read about Summerhill in England. Read reports of adults who went through non-traditional schools and see how they fared in life and how they look back on their school experiences. Do all that, and then, using logic, reject those books and experiences. I'll be waiting and I'm open to be convinced.

to BE or NOT to BE that IS the QUEST ion

I don't think that reading Shakespeare in strict iambic stress patterns is really the best way to communicate his language. -- post on a web forum.

Sorry to harp on this, but it's sticking in my craw. Which is because I'm a Shakespeare geek. Here's what I think is true: lecturing people (e.g. in a class) about iambic pentameter is not (generally) the best way to make people (especially newbies) like Shakespeare. By God, there's so much more accessible stuff! Sex, violence, amazing characters, exciting plots, beautiful words and phrases...

But I utterly reject this idea that if you speak the verse using the rhythmic plans Elizabethan poets used and intended, it sounds stilted an unnatural. I claim the exact opposite. So this may be a technical point, only worthwhile for actors and orators to think about, but it's true nonetheless. If you've heard stilted performances (who hasn't?), that's not because the actors were being too metrical. It's because they were doing something else wrong.

Sticking to the meter doesn't mean POUNDING it. We all stress certain syllables when we speak and leave others relatively unstressed. But that DOESn't MEAN we SPEAK like THIS. We don't say everything like Alec Baldwin in "Glen Gary Glenn Ross" when he says "PUT the COFFee cup DOWN." But we still stress some syllables more than others.

I just scanned the famous "to be or not to be" speech. I did it by the book. You'll see my attempt below. (Note: in that attempted, i DID use CAPS like THIS, which SEEMS like GOing OVerBOARD. But that's just because I have to somehow indicate stress here using typed characters alone. What I'm trying to convey is SLIGHT differences -- not pounded, shouted ones. For instance, if you say "always" using a standard American accent, you say ALways and never allWAYS.)

Here's what's interesting. After scanning the text for stressed and unstressed syllables, I watched David Tennant perform it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYZHb2xo0OI

I hope you agree with me that, whether or not you like his performance, that he doesn't sound stilted. If you're not looking for it, or if you're not trained in it, you probably can't even tell he's speaking metered verse. He sounds very natural -- just like he's talking using whatever rhythm he wants.

He's not. He's being ABSOLUTELY technically accurate. I was surprised and pleased to find that his interpretation matched mine EXACTLY! But I shouldn't have been surprised, because that IS the natural way to speak the verse.

Again, I would suggest he sounds natural and unstilted BECAUSE he's sticking to the blank-verse rhythm. If he tried to play against it, he would sound really odd. This isn't always the case. There are lines here and there you can play with without anyone (except a scholar) noticing. But if you stray too far from the rhythm, I promise you it will sound odd. It will sound like singing notes off key. When you don't notice it, that means it's working.

Here are a few notes for people who are new to blank-verse (a.k.a. iambic pentameter).

Standard blank verse is made up of five pairs of two syllable words, e.g.

In sooth I know not why I am so sad. (Opening line of "Merchant of Venice.")

1. In sooth
2. I know
3. not why
4. I am
5. so sad

in sooth | i know | not why | i am | so sad

Each two-syllable pair is called a "foot," so a standard line has five feet.

Standard feet stress the second syllable more than the first:

in SOOTH | i KNOWN | not WHY | i AM | so SAD

Don't try to force it. Just say the line naturally, and, if you're like most people, you'll find that without trying, you naturally stress it that way (remember, my caps are just meant to illustrate SLIGHT differences in stress -- not that you should shout or pound every other syllable.)

That's the basic rhythm, and it's sometimes called tee-TUM, tee-TUM, tee-TUM, tee-TUM, tee-TUM.

A main part of the fun is that Shakespeare and his contemporaries set up that rhythm and then vary from it. They stray away from it and then circle back to it, like jazz musicians flirting and improvising around a melody. And they generally don't stray from it any old way. They stray from it in very specific, formalized ways.

The most common stray is the "feminine ending," which adds and extra (unstressed) syllable onto the end of the line. E.g.

1. In sooth
2. I know
3. not why
4. I am
5. so sad
6. now

in SOOTH | i KNOWN | not WHY | i AM | so SAD | now

In fact, the opening line of the "Hamlet" speech -- and many of the subsequent lines in that speech -- have feminine endings:

1. to be
2. or not
3. to be
4. that is
5. the quest
6. ion

Actors often interpret feminine endings as less confident or more ruminative than masculine ones (sorry, sounds sexist -- don't shoot the messenger). This certainly makes sense in a speech like this, in which Hamlet is trying to work out something really complicated and painful. It's not an easy, confident speech for him.

Other recognized variations are "trochees" and "pyrrhic feet." A trochee is the exact opposite of a normal iambic foot. Instead of tee-TUM, it's TEE-tum. Instead of unstressed-STRESSED, it's STRESSED-unstressed. You most often find trochees, when you find them, as the first foot of a line:

Now is the winter of our discontent. (Opening line of "Richard |||")

It's more natural to start with "NOW is" than "now IS," right? Try saying it (the whole line) a few times and see if you agree.

Pyrrhic feet are feet where both syllables are unstressed:

My father is a man who loves to cook. (I made that one up. Like it?)

my FA | ther is | a MAN | who LOVES | to COOK.

Probably, most speakers won't stress either word more than the other in that second foot ("ther is").

Let me be really clear and say that there isn't a RIGHT way to scan a line. There are ways that most people (who have experience scanning) will feel are more right than others. Pretty much no one is going to accept "IN sooth *I* know NOT why *I* am SO sad." I find that hard to even say.

Other lines are open to debate -- and different actors will stress different syllables without breaking the meter. But it's a matter of degree. Those actors (if they are skilled and if they sound natural) are not totally dispensing of the meter, and they are not straying far from it. And they UNDERSTAND the meter, so when they choose to stray from it, they are making an informed, bold, conscious choice.

Finally, I'll mention that a trained classical actor scans all his lines, makes sure he understands the meter, talks over any difficult rhythms with his director or fellow actors, makes decisions about how to scan ambiguous lines... and then lets it go.

No one (if they want to sound natural) counts out the syllables as he's speaking them on stage. That's stuff for homework -- for early in rehearsal. By the time the play opens, the rhythm is in the actor's gut (hopefully), and he can just think about the juicy character/emotional stuff and feel totally confident that his preparation will make the rhythm take care of itself -- and that they rhythm, WHILE it takes care of itself, will HELP him sound natural and help him find the emotional power of the verse.

(And, by the way, almost every actor I've ever met has said that scanning greatly helps him learn his lines, and that verse plays are much easier to memorize than prose ones.)

Here's my scan. Try reading it once by yourself and then reading it while listening to Tennant.

to BE | or NOT | to BE | that IS | the QUEST | ion: [feminine ending]
WHETH er [trochee]| 'tis NOB | ler in [pyrrhic ]| the MIND | to SUF | fer [fem end]
the SLINGS | and ARR | ows of [pyrrhic] | out RAGE | 'ous FOR | tune, [fem end]
or to [pyrrhic] | take ARMS agAINST | a SEA | of TROUB | les [fem end]
and, by [pyrrhic] | op POS | ing, END | them. [beat] | to DIE | to SLEEP
no MORE | and by [pyrrhic] | a SLEEP | to SAY | we END
the HEART | ache and [pyrrhic] | the THOUS | and NAT| [chral] ["natural" pronounced as two syllables.] SHOCKS
that FLESH | is HEIR | to – ‘TIS | a CON | sum MAT | ion [fem ending]
de VOUT | ly to [pyrrhic] | be WISHED. | to DIE, | to SLEEP
to SLEEP,| per CHANCE | to DREAM. | ay, THERE'S | the RUB,
for in [pyrrhic]| that SLEEP | of DEATH | what DREAMS | may COME,
when WE | have SHUFF | led OFF this MOR | tal COIL,
must GIVE | us PAUSE. | [ beat] [beat] | THERE'S the [trochee] | re SPECT [difficult like -- just a guess/metrical interpretation]
that MAKES | ca LAM | i TY | of SO | long LIFE.

the artist vs. his art

My response to this (from an message board): "I often struggle with this issue because to purchase a book is to support the artist, the author. And yet finding out that an author might be homophobic or ultra-conservative will inevitably change how I perceive the text. It shouldn't, but it somehow does."

These are two questions here, both of which fascinate me and have for many years:

1) Should we support artists who are immoral in their lifestyles?

2) Is it wrong to associate they artist's lifestyle and political/social views with his works?

I am not going to take a definitive stance on either of these issues (because I don't think there is one), but I will speak to how I maneuver through them.

First of all, I DO think I am potentially culpable if I knowingly give money to someone who uses that money for evil. In some cases, this is pretty obvious. If I give you money so that you can buy a gun, knowing that you intend to shoot someone with it, I am partly responsible for the subsequent murder. But the further removed my payment is from clear-and-present danger, the more (I believe) I'm morally absolved.

For instance, let's say you're a non-prejudiced writer who has a son that is a KKK member. I know that you disapprove of your son's views, but I also know that you love him and maintain a relationship with him. I feel okay about buying your book, even knowing there's a possibility that you MIGHT give some of that money to your son, and that he MIGHT give some of that money to the KKK. Someone else might not think my decision is okay, and I can't really justify it, except to say that when there are more and more "mights," I feel less and less responsible. My decision to give you money didn't directly contribute to the KKK. Two other people had to make decisions in order for some of my money to reach the bad guys. (And then the KKK would have to spend that money on something evil -- not just on getting sandwiches for lunch -- in order for my money to fund anything evil.)

I also have a deeply held belief in freedom of expression. Which means that though I don't support Nazi actions (KKK actions, homophobic actions, etc.), I do support someone's right to have Nazi thoughts and even to speak out about them. More generally, I want to live in a world in which any and all ideas get expressed, and in a world in which we make a distinction between ideas and actions. I want ideas to be expressed -- even heinous ones -- because, once they are on the table, we can discuss them (and in some cases denounce them). If they are secret, we can't engage them in any way.

So I'll go further than my above writer-and-son ethic and say that I totally support your right to express homophobic ideas. If you're beating up gay people, I don't support that. But if you're saying "Homosexuality is a sin," I do. I don't believe it's a sin. In fact, I find that idea loathsome. But I want you to express it if it is your idea. I want that idea on the table if it exists. Let's confront it rather than hide from it. So I'm fine with buying Mr. Homophobe's book -- as long as I have no evidence that he's directly contributing to gay bashing or denying gay people jobs.

I'm not naive. I realize that ideas can lead to actions. But I think it's VERY important, in a culture that values free expression, to not let that fact lead us towards censorship. I know that not-buying-a-book is not the same as censorship, but I think it's generally important to take a stance of all-ideas-are-allowed-though-some-actions-aren't. That's my value. You don't have to share it. But it does allow me to buy books by, say, a misogynist without feeling guilty, without feeling that I've betrayed my Feminist values.

After all, how am I going to really understand the mindset of a misogynist if I don't listen to him? And if I don't understand him, I am ill-equipped to fight him.

Okay, second question: Is it wrong to associate they artist's lifestyle with his works?

No, it's not wrong. It's natural. We evolved to think of stories as tales told to us by people we know. Tales around a campfire, etc. Most of us grew up first hearing stories from our parents, our teachers and our friends. It's a somewhat strange experience to "hear" a story from someone you've never met and will never meet. So your brain creates a storyteller. Your brain naturally wants to view as story as a piece of communication -- something told from a specific person to you. And, naturally, if you learn biographical details about the author, it's likely you'll imagine the person connected with those details is the person telling you the story.

So how would you feel if someone beat up your best friend and then told you a story? Would you be able to just listen to that story in a neutral way? I doubt it. A similar (though perhaps muted) effect happens when you learn that say, Roman Polanski raped a young girl. The guy at the campfire who telling you a story is a RAPIST!

That said, I think it's possible to learn to avoid (or at least dampen) this kind of thinking. And I think it's worth doing. Why? For reasons I went into above. Because it's useful to confront ideas that come from all different sources. Ideas ARE neutral, even if the people telling them to you aren't. I am devoted to creating a world in which all ideas (regardless of their sources) have free play -- even if that world is just in my own head. Again, I'm just reporting my values -- I'm not expecting you to share them.

How do you learn to disregard the artist when viewing his art? I'm not completely sure, even though I've done it. If you tell me the author of the book I just read (and loved) hates Asians, I will just shrug -- which doesn't mean that I am a fan of bigotry. I just don't care whether the author likes or dislikes anyone. I'm not interested in him. I'm interested in his book.

I think I got that way from decades of reading "The Classics." Shakespeare wrote some bigoted stuff. So did most classic authors in most eras. If you read tons and tons of stuff by the dead white males, you get pretty used to admiring the art while not admiring (sometimes loathing) the artist.

It also helps to not deify artists. I've devoted years of my life to studying Shakespeare's works. But I'm sure the guy farted and picked his nose like the rest of us. And maybe he beat his wife. Maybe he supported slavery.

This doesn't shock me, maybe because I'm a cynic. I don't expect people to be on their best behavior until proven otherwise. And I don't expect artists to be special people. They are normal people who happen to write books, paint paintings or make movies. They are, in my mind, as "evolved" as auto-mechanics and sewer workers. They just have different job descriptions. Most people in all walks of life has some good points and some really ugly bad points. I don't expect artists to be different. If you do, that's fine, but I think you're living in a fantasy world.

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.