IN DEFENSE OF ARTHUR PENN’s In Defense of Friction, and the HISTORY OF US: when it’s nothing but duh.

IN DEFENSE OF ARTHUR PENN’s In Defense of Friction, and the HISTORY OF US: when it’s nothing but duh. (posted on Facebook December 4, 2012)

(inspired by Tony Nappo’s Sunday, Dec. 2, 20012 posting: http://www.twisitheatreblog.com/archives/1609)

I don’t know about you, but when an actor with a big heart and talent like Tony Nappo writes, "If you have anything at all to do with theatre in Canada, this is required reading. Two masters in conversation with the wonderful and extremely informed Amanda Campbell" you want to read. You know he wants you to read especially if you have anything at all to do with theatre in Canada. The implied importance and almost urgent appeal can’t be clearer.

When ‘required reading’ gets thrown in there, well, you feel you have an obligation to the craft and all those who practice it. Even to an audience. Those we serve. ‘Required reading’ is a big endorsement.

And so I read. The entire piece. Twice. I didn’t get it. No big deal. Like most Canadian comedy where you give it a chance you would never give a pedophile, and rewind the tape to see where and why you missed the joke. And always do. Why you didn’t laugh. And have to rely on some foreign comic, like George Carlin, to remind you what is funny (and simultaneously true) and that you’re the fucking problem when thinking that something that isn’t funny should be funny just because someone said it was funny.

I still don’t get it. The piece.

More important, I don’t know why Tony Nappo said it was ‘required reading’.

There are MPs sitting in Parliament representing ridings with less people than Nappo’s list of Facebook friends. I can’t imagine an email bulletin from the worst MP to 2400 constituents stating ‘required reading’ without offering an opinion, a morsel, a bone, something to back up WHY it’s required reading, unless of course, it’s self-evident. It wasn’t in this case.

The thing is, when people don’t offer a reason we still look for the “important” in what we’re told is “important”, even if we never locate it.

Coincidentally, Brad Fraser posted a piece by Arthur Penn (http://jamesgrissom.blogspot.ca/2012/12/arthur-penn-in-defense-of-friction.html), and endorsed it with a simple comment: “Theatre. I totally couldn't have said it better myself.”

That’s clear. That’s an opinion.

I saw a connection between Arthur Penn’s piece and the piece posted by Tony Nappo. Much of what is contained in the latter (in my view) inspired the former. That still doesn’t tell me why Nappo thought it was ‘required reading’. And so I asked him a couple of WHYs, WHATs, and HOWs.

We won’t need Canada’s greatest legal or critical minds to analyze and assess the contents of the emails Nappo and I shared on this.

Nappo’s initial answer was essentially what most parents throw at inquisitive children who ask a series of WHYs.

Because. Or it’s no big deal.

It somehow doesn’t strike many parents that children ask WHY only when they DON’T KNOW why.

I'm still a child asking WHY?

I'm still waiting to get started in this thing we call theatre, film, television and acting (on an individual and collective basis). Honestly. That’s not a put-down of WHERE I have been to date but a deep desire to get to where I HAVEN’T been yet, creatively (individually and with others). Probably in keeping with Schopenhauer’s concept of individual will, motivation and desire.

When we stop asking WHY and assume that privilege, history, status, press, and all that crap, is a credit card with no limit, a bulletproof vest, and a right to entitlement that places artists above all criticism and reproach, we’re screwed and may as well open the door to our self-inflicted, custom-made concentration camp.

Apparently making a statement with no opinion or reason as to why one made it endows the statement with a library of reasons, meanings and explanations (accessible, I imagine, through a crystal ball).

WHY is the piece Nappo posted “required reading?” I’d like to know.

HOW does it relate to the reality outside the shit-infested orifice of theatre?

Basic questions. Truly basic.

And should be expected from anyone who works in the theatre, film and television. I would think that even McIvor and Brooks would welcome those questions. It's the minimum. And doing the bare minimum does not constitute having “balls”. Nowhere close.

Not too long ago someone on Facebook unleashed a revolution in Tunisia and toppled a dictator. Some of the words people use on Facebook, especially the young, drive other young people to premature death. So this is a nasty little tool. Useful. But nasty.

But even here, I was corrected. “Tunisia, my ass. This is Toronto. The internet don’t work like that here. It's for whining and bitching, not organizing or action.”

Thank you. Mr. Nappo.

How does the piece he posted fit into that view I wonder?

Predictably, the only reason given for posting the story was “to point people towards a conversation between one of the most successful and accomplished teams in the history the Canadian Theatre which you seem to have so much disgust towards.”

Correction: I have a problem with Nappo posting the piece as ‘required reading’ and not explaining why, even when asked. I don’t think McIvor or Brooks asked him to post it. They were probably just having fun in an interview like a couple of Somerset Maughams sipping tea in some botanical garden (please read the piece and let me know).

I have problem with Nappo apparently agreeing with Arthur Penn and then building his own defensive wall around the meretriciousness of our theatre and theatre artists and highly recommending the content of a piece for no reason other than sharing with his constituents “a conversation between one of the most successful and accomplished teams in the history the Canadian Theatre.”

He has a problem with my taking issue with him, as if I’m perched on some tree waiting to ambush him. His words. (Anyone who spends any time on Facebook will notice I don’t share urine and stool samples on Facebook). When we’re swimming and drowning in that logic even a sunny day or a rainy one will seem like nature (or God) has it in for us.

That I am taking issue with his thinking and not the person didn’t register. And I’m back to the hell that inspired, provoked, the three Letters.

I have a problem with generic compliments, statements and platitudes to carpet bomb a piece, an issue or an artist. (I feel equally uncomfortable when general, no-name compliments are thrown my way. And if Nappo saw Letter Two, which he did, and heard any of it, he probably heard me say that being born Calabrian automatically installs a bullshit detector in one’s being: we naturally distrust more those who compliment than those who face reality or offer a critical view, like Arthur Penn.)

If one can’t explain or reason WHY a piece is "required reading", that, in my view, automatically invalidates the claim that it is required reading.

I’m also supposed to appreciate the bizarre logic that Arthur Penn doesn't see any good in people, actors or artists because his entire piece points out only what's bad with theatre and those in it. Nappo never said this about Penn. But he accused me of that for my criticism of theatre, film and television in the three Letters.

Do we actually think for a minute that the seminal theatre artists and thinkers in human history saw critical debate and critical thinking as putting people down?

Nothing in human history has grown out of forced, constipated harmony. Michelangelo sculpted the David specifically to take issue with the very family that had taken him under its wing and roof since he was a child and fed him and subsidized his art (the Medici). With his art he tried to bring down the Medici dictatorship (the David sculpture representing the desired Republic and Goliath the imposed Medici Dictatorship). Interestingly Penn’s piece is titled: In Defense of Friction.

If our world is actually driven by a "continually dissatisfied will" and our need to "continually seek satisfaction" (as Shopenhauer maintained) should we not ask to what end – for what purpose - and how our work relates to the real world we live in, the one outside theatre and film? That was my question to Tony Nappo about the piece he posted.

If individual motivation and basic desires are at the core of Shopenhauer’s philosophy of the “will”, and if he had problems with Hegel’s concept of the Zeitgeist, is it not worth asking what is the motivation behind every individual working in the theatre, producer writer, director, actor, on stage or off?

Nappo’s brilliant artillery of reactive insults proved once more that theatre’s worst enemies are actors, not writers or directors. (If I had taken a shot at, say, a casting director, I’d be getting a ton of emails of support from all actors, and before I’d have the chance to explain that it’s just a critical view, they’d tap into to their inner, primal nature, and roast the casting director in a second. It’s what happened in 2001. Many jumped on the bandwagon and failed to acknowledge any responsibility. I ended up defending the same casting director I initially took issue with: the acting community’s tribal reaction to my criticism was way worse than anything the casting director had done.)

Bottom line: Tony Nappo sees no point in my effort (meaning the 3 theatrical Letters). No purpose in them whatsoever. That’s fine. It’s his prerogative, as it is mine to take issue with what he posted on Facebook. Apparently the day after seeing the first two Letters he woke up and the world and industry had not changed one iota. So I let him and everyone else down because I didn’t change the world. His words. At the end of the day all I apparently did was bitch about what is wrong with it and left it as it was. His words. Wait. Apparently his coming to the Letters was out of respect. I know. It’s why he posted the piece on McIvor and Brooks. Personally I don’t need that kind of respect. It’s not even the word I’d use. I’d appreciate it if everyone spared me that generosity. I don’t trust it. I’d rather take my chances with people’s opinions. At least they’re organic.

This from a guy who apparently doesn’t give up. So the problem is not the Letters’ content (or that he sees the same problem, does nothing about it and can’t see how he contributes it), but that the Letters, that someone else, did not solve the problem for him.

Where do I start? I thought I addressed that point ad nauseam in the Letters. I can’t blame him for not getting the Letters since he’s correct when he says that it’s never the audience’s fault if it doesn’t “get” something. I wish he would apply the same logic to people telling him they don’t understand the content of the piece he posted or why he posted it.

The Letters are actually my way of saying that I don't see any purpose in his kind of logic, except slow but sure death (of the actor). Many theatre colleagues share his view, by the way, and look for others to solve the problems while they’re having a good night’s sleep and hope to find a royalty check in the mail the next morning (15% for feeling the vibe, wanting to change the world in spirit while lying in bed. BTW: changing the world has not been on my agenda to date.)

People who ask WHY, who want to seriously debate, so that a third party might see a truth emerge from the two debating sides, are constantly told they’re engaging in “bullshit”.

Throwing in the towel is the easy and cynical part, and what comes naturally to most people in the theatre. Yet they claim they’re always open, even if they don’t leave any room for debate and accuse debaters of wanting to be right. Always.

To remain silent on issues, I guess, is a sign of strength, friendship, and collective support. This is Dark Ages shit.

The characters we often play on stage, especially from the classics, truly don't have much time for bullshit or “harmony”. Neither did the writers who wrote and actors who initially played in them. Perhaps as a destination, certainly not as a point of departure.

To genuflect, in my view, for that’s how it reads, is not an act of generosity. It’s irresponsible. Generous is to dare an opinion, regardless of how others interpret or take it. And to welcome critical views.

As for my view of the piece? Other than the fact that I get nausea reading that sophomoric, vomit-infested, meaningless, self-important, up the yin-yang drivel that in my view is the supreme example and the distilled manifestations of celebrating one’s own ego and stroking one’s own private parts publicly and expecting people to applaud the spectacle or go down on the artists’ "creativity"… nothing. Absolutely nothing!

And what do I think about Tony Nappo posting the piece on his Facebook page (which is fine) without making any thoughtful or compelling remark to back his belief that it’s "required reading"?

Nothing. No comment.

It boggles the mind to make it numb.

I don't smell humanity anywhere in that piece. A deflective shield, maybe. I smell self-inducted royalty. And Tony Nappo genuflecting to get a whiff of it. And it doesn’t matter if you have a big heart and talent when you intentionally choose to play a small game. Arthur Penn took issue precisely with people who notwithstanding their heart and talent justified why they were playing a small game. And Penn, in 2006, at 78 years old, knew we’ve only got one life to live. And Penn thought he was old? Now he’s dead.