Jesse Cole is a genius... or else a damn good dramaturg.
 
Either way, he took baseball—a traditional sport that has become notorious for dull action and interminable overtimes, rewrote the rules, and introduced the nation and the world to “Banana Ball.” This April, the Savannah Bananas sold out an 81,000-seat stadium in four hours. Tickets go by lottery now, because they are among the hardest tickets to get in all sports. 
 
This is going to be a blog about theatre, so bear with me. 
 
Cole started his meteoric career in the fall of 2015, when he moved to Savannah to become the general manager of a college summer team. Cole had the idea to make baseball fun and to bring back the fans... but neither of those things happened. By January 2016, just before their first game, the team’s bank account was overdrawn, and Jesse and Emily Cole had to sell their home to keep their dream afloat.  

But then, one month later, Cole announced the name of the team, and the rest is history. The Savannah Bananas have sold out every single game since their first season, playing in NFL and MLB stadiums across the country.
 
How did this happen? 
 
Like I said, natural genius or really excellent dramaturgy. (Dramaturgy is the theory and practice of dramatic composition.) It’s pretty simple, actually. Cole looked at what wasn’t working and then he looked at what would. 

What do the people want? They want to be entertained. They want to be surprised, delighted. They want to see something larger than life. Like a ballplayer on stilts. Like a backflip catch. They want suspense and momentum right up to the last second.

What don’t they want? To be bored or annoyed.  Like with a shut-out game, where everyone knows who is going to win before the game is half over. They don’t like "walking the ball,"  when the pitcher throws four balls and the batter is granted a leisurely, no-risk saunter to first base.  Oh, and bunting…  *yawn*  And,  then, of course, there is that time thing. In 1981, there was actually a professional baseball game that ran for 33-innings. Sprawling and crawling for more than eight hours, it lasted three days. Yeah, that happened. 

So, Banana Ball games have a two-hour time limit. No new innings allowed after 120 minutes. You can actually make plans for your life after the game.
 
How did Cole manage that? Well, games are won by points, instead of runs. The team that scores the most runs in an inning gets one point, except in the final inning when every run counts as one point.
 
Did you hear that?  In the final inning, every run counts as a point. That means that no matter how uneven the score, the losing team can always make a comeback in the last inning. Edge-of-your-seat stuff, built-in. Genius. Also a much-needed message for our time: It's never too late. 
 
No bunting allowed. And walking the ball has been replaced by the “ball-four sprints.”  What’s that, you ask? After ball four, the batter starts to run and they cannot be tagged out until all four infielders and all three outfielders have touched the ball. Instead of the leisurely stroll, it's super-fast action involving the entire team with even a possibility of a home run! Suspense and momentum! 

Cole has figured out that nothing energizes a crowd like breaking the fourth wall. Banana Ball allows for game-changing participation.  If a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an automatic out. And if the umpire makes an unpopular call? Well, the fans  have the opportunity, once a game, to challenge that call! Way more exciting than yelling “Throw the bum out!” Lived lessons in democracy. And fans love the “Golden Batter Rule.”  Once in every game, a team may send any hitter in the lineup to bat in any spot. So when the game is on the line, the fan favorite has a shot at saving the day. Super-hero stuff!
 
Food?  Unbelievably, the $20 ticket price includes all you can eat. With a pack of kids, it’s almost like getting in for free. Cole has done the math. There is that two-hour time limit, and what he might lose in individual sales, he more than makes up for with sell-out volumes. Families can budget both their time and their money in advance. And the free food makes for enhanced merch sales. Win-win. 
 
Everything in Banana Ball can be a game or a show.  For example... what if the the pitcher and batter play Rock-Paper-Scissors before each pitch? If the pitcher wins, the batter has to bat from the opposite side of home plate, but if the batter wins, the pitcher has to announce what kind of pitch he's going to throw. Genius.

The Savannah Banana walk-ups are legendary, often starting in the stands and involving lip-syncing and dance choreography.  The fans never know when the team is going to bust a move in the middle of the game.  And the home run celebrations are wild. 
 
But wait, wait… There’s more.  The cheerleaders! 

There are the "Savannah Banana Nanas," composed of women over sixty-five doing hip-hop dances, and the "Man-Nanas," aka “The Dad-Bod Squad,” who lead cheers with their beer bellies proudly on display. There is also a girls' junior dance team called "The Splitz."  They look like Taylor Swift fans. And the team mascot? A Banana named "Split."

Every game begins with the "Banana Baby ceremony," where a baby in a banana costume is lifted by a parent to the pitcher's mound while players and fans salute and "Circle of Life" plays. There is something for everybody in Banana Ball... except the creepers who would sexually objectify traditional cheerleaders. For the win, Cole! 

Obviously, rival Banana Ball teams are popping up all over the country, and this fall, the league formally inducted the "Indianapolis Clowns." The original Indianapolis Clowns were a popular team in the Negro Leagues, including such legends as Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige. This revival club wears a modernized form of the uniform jerseys of the old club. The revival of the Clowns name was done in partnership with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and former Major League first baseman Ryan Howard is the “Prime Time manager” for the team. Respect.
 
Cole is obviously swinging for the fences when it comes to pleasing a crowd, but he’s not swinging wildly. At one point, he took to videotaping the crowds in order to study what was happening on the field when walkouts would occur. There’s a science as well as an art to Banana Ball.
 
And, yes, this blog is about theatre. Is anybody videotaping or polling our audiences to determine why they are walking out.... or whether they wanted to walk out but didn't?  Why is live theatre becoming something of a cultural oxbow lake, cut off from the currents of mainstream popular culture, stagnating into a bog of mediocrity?

How are producers adjusting to changes in audience tastes and time-money budgets?  Let's take a look:

The majority of new play competitions are now featuring nothing but ten-minute plays. Or, as we used to call them, "skits" and "sketches."  No time for subplots, character development, or anything else but maybe one plot twist and a laugh or two. But cheap. And if you don't like what you see, there'll be another one along in ten minutes.

And fifty minutes, which used to be the length of a one-act play, is now  defined in some venues as "full-length." Very few plays—usually the vintage ones—still have two intermissions.  Many plays don't have any intermissions at all. Casts are getting smaller and smaller,  and single sets are practically de rigueur for new plays.
 
But isn’t this what Jesse Cole did.. adjust to the times?  No! He understood that two hours was a good thing.  He didn't establish a 50-minute game. He didn't arrange for an exhibition of short, but disconnected 10-minute plays. And he didn't skimp on the drama. He amped the opportunities. He keeps his eye on the ball.

What live theater is doing is actually the opposite of Jesse Cole’s strategy. It is just naked cost-cutting.  It's lazy moves to lop off the most obvious, low-hanging fruit of production expenses.  It's actually cutting off the nose to spite the face.  These moves on the part of producers decrease and eliminate the spectacle, disincentivize audience investment, and minimize suspense and momentum. Plays are getting small in every way. Actors are at risk of losing range. Stakes are lowered. As the stories are stripped down, themes are increasingly trivial and only marginally relevant. The original definition of theatre as "an arena of significant events” is becoming sadly archaic. 
 
And the more live theatre loses audiences and hemorrhages red ink, the deeper the cuts. Think of the money that could be saved by not producing at all!

I understand that live theatre is not Banana Ball.  But there is much to be learned from Cole’s experiment.  I am remembering an apocryphal anecdote about Russian actor, director, and producer Konstantin Stanislavski. When asked if there was a difference between children’s theatre and theatre for adults, he responded, “Yes! Children’s theatre is harder!”
 
Why would he say that?  Because when a play fails to engage the attention of a child, that child will let us know it. They will wander into the aisle or onto the stage. They will turn around and begin a loud conversation with their neighbor, who is probably also bored. Children will make the dramaturgical failures of the play into a serious problem for the producers, actors, and playwright... which it should be.  Modern audiences are too polite, and producers oblige them by turning out the lights, so they can nap.  Wagner was the first to do that in 1876, at the premiere of his Ring Cycle in Bayreuth.  Perhaps that was the beginning of the end. Imagine the Banana fans sitting in isolating darkness, unable to share their experience with those 8100 other fans... 

What if the true immersive experience is one where the audience is thoroughly  immersed in the experience of being part of an audience, where they can register and reflect the bad calls by the playwright and actors, where they can catch the occasional foul ball and even change the trajectory of the game? 
 
What if we stopped the piecemeal removal of the vital organs of live theatre, and began to dramaturg a play as if it were a spectator sport? Because, swear to God,  that's what it is. 

Well, this got my attention:
 
“In 1665, actors put on the first play in colonial America and were immediately arrested for public wickedness.” 
 
If we are seeking relevant antecedents for modern times, we turn to this era at our peril. It was the era of, well, colonization.  Colonization, enslavement, and genocide.
 
Still, I was intrigued.  Was this because theatre was prohibited?  In the Massachusetts colonies, we know that theatre, dancing, cockfighting, boxing, and other entertainments were banned as “forms of levity and mirth [that lead] easily to sin.”  But this incident occurred in Pungoteague, Virginia—in a tavern, no less. Unlike Massachusetts, which was colonized by Pilgrims and Puritans, the Virginia colony had been established by a joint-stock company chartered by King James I. Whether or not capitalist imperialism constitutes a form of cult is the subject for another blog, but, in any event, Pungoteague was not Puritan.
 
Yes, theatres across the Pond had been officially closed and mostly silent during two civil wars and the period of rule by Oliver Cromwell, but, by 1660, the Restoration was on and English theatres were opening up again. In fact, they were an integral part of the process of re-establishing the hereditary monarchy.

Well, then, was it an issue of petty grievances?  Were the actors locked up at the behest of a powerful neighbor who had some kind of beef with them—a boundary dispute or a wandering spouse? Certainly, up north, the courts were not above arresting local scapegoats—mostly female—accusing them of witchcraft, and then hanging them.
 
But here’s the thing…  The itinerant judge for Accomack County requested a re-enactment of the play at the hearing, which—there being no official courthouse yet—was held at Fowkes Tavern, conveniently the site of the alleged crime.  The judge, obviously a connoisseur, even specified that the defendants were to show up in “those habilments that they then acted in.”  This would indicate that the actual content of the play was at issue. In other words, the trial was to determine whether or not the performance contained material that constituted “public wickedness.”
 
Well, did it?

The records of the case are scanty, but we do know the title of the work: Ye Beare and Ye Cubb, aka The Bear and the Cub. Remember this is during the colonial era, about a century before the Revolution. What came to be known as the British Commonwealth, upon which “the sun never sets,” was just getting started. “Mother England” had colonies in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, the Carolinas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and—the original one—Virginia. 
 
Scholars have speculated that this bear-and-cub thing was a metaphor for the Virginia colony’s relationship to England. One such scholar, Joel Eis, relates the play to the tensions between an upper class still loyal to England and a rising middle-class of merchants who were angry about restrictions that the king had placed on international tobacco trade—tobacco being Virginia’s cash crop.  Further, Eis has located a number of pamphlets and speeches from the 1660’s that employ similar “parent-progeny” analogies to criticize England’s patronizing relationship to its colonies.
 
The specific charge “public wickedness” adds credence to this theory. What exactly is “public wickedness?”  Apparently, it was a colorful term for blasphemy, which, according to my dictionary app, is “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things.”  And there is rub:  Sacred things.  Like Mother England…? Like King Charles II…? 

Public wickedness is a concept that is very much still with us today. It has undergone a number of permutations across the centuries. By 1735, for example, it had become “seditious libel.”  Under English law, it was a criminal offense to publish or otherwise make statements intended to criticize or provoke dissatisfaction with the government. Ironically, truth was not a defense and, in fact, made the offense worse. English libel law spelled it out: “The greater the truth, the greater the libel.” Who knew?
 
This law was tested in the colonies in the 1735 trial of a printer named John Peter Zenger. He put out a weekly journal that routinely roasted the governor of New York… and, remember, in the colonial era, this governor would have been appointed, not elected. Not surprisingly, the governor hand-picked the two judges to evaluate the allegedly libelous material, and, also not surprisingly, they found in his favor. The jury, however, was of a different mind. At the urging of none other than Alexander Hamilton, they defied the judges and acquitted Zenger.
 
Then there were two brief decades following the Revolution when the young United States apparently let public wickedness run rampant, but by 1798, Congress passed four laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the government or its officials.
 
It was, needless to say, not a popular law, and it expired when John Adams left office in 1801. After this, public wickedness had an astounding century-plus-long run before another sedition law was instituted. This happened in 1918, to amend an espionage act that was passed the previous year.

These laws were responses to concerns raised by the Great War. The Sedition Act came hard for public wickedness, imposing “a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both” on anyone who dared “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.” It was repealed three years later, but not before legendary trade-union activist Eugene Debs had been sentenced to ten years in prison.
 
The Sedition Act of 1918 was repealed in 1920, although many parts of the original Espionage Act still remain in force. In fact, the charge leveled against controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden was a violation of two counts of the 1917 Espionage Act.
 
Anyway…  there was another world war and another sedition law. This one was called the Smith Act, and it was passed in 1940, making it a criminal offense to advocate the violent overthrow of the government or to organize or be a member of any group or society devoted to such advocacy. 

During the notorious witch-hunts of the 1950’s, the Smith Act was applied broadly to members of the Communist Party, to labor union activists, and folks rumored to be gay or lesbian. In 1957, we the people said, "Enough is enough," and the act was amended to limit its application. Now, under the Smith Act, the prosecutor bears a considerably greater burden of proof, because they must prove “beyond reasonable doubt” active participation in or verbal encouragement of specific insurrectionary acts.  In other words, no more prosecutions based on sexual orientation, membership in trade unions or civil rights organizations, and so on.

The Smith Act, even in its worst iteration, did establish an important precedent. Because it was federal law, it has been used to nullify various sedition acts passed by individual states. Some of these have been profoundly arbitrary, vague, and even draconian. Good riddance.
 
Well, we have certainly wandered far afield of Fowke’s Tavern and Pungoteague…
 
The playwrights and actors had their day on December 18, 1665. The judges failed to see the public wickedness alleged by the plaintiff, and, in fact, the plaintiff didn’t even bother to show up.  All charges were dismissed and the plaintiff was ordered to pay everyone’s court costs. And thus ends the historic record of the first English-language play performed on these shores.

But I worry about public wickedness. I do. I’m a playwright--an American playwright--and my cultural lineage absolutely traces back to Ye Beare and Ye Cubb.
 
I am not afraid of violating the Smith Act. I am afraid of violating something far hazier, far more pervasive, more pernicious, and, ironically, something that appears increasingly to be itself approaching violation of the Smith Act. 
 
I am talking about the stream of executive orders of the current regime. I’m talking about executive orders that:

No, none of these tell me what I can and can’t write. But they certainly tell me what I can expect if I promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. I can expect to be banned from production contracts, from performing, from teaching, from lecturing, and from a very broad range of funding sources.
 
So, what exactly constitutes “promoting DEI?” Writing a play that features a disabled character? A character of color? That centers women’s rights, or lack thereof?  At what point does race-specific casting fall under promoting inclusion? Or, open-casting, for that matter? I tend to write about historical themes. What if history itself promotes DEI—and what history doesn’t?  
 
I have to second-guess what this means, or else go with “better-safe-than-sorry” themes, which, by process of elimination, appear to be narratives focused solely on white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class, male heroes and their struggles.

Well... I do have another choice. I can opt for public wickedness. My heritage. My birthright. And when I ask myself what "public wickedness" means in today’s theatre, I hear the admonition of longtime civil rights activist and Georgia Representative John R. Lewis:
 
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
 
Public wickedness is good trouble, necessary trouble. And it’s also something else. It’s a duty.
 
Not to put too fine a point on it… Here are the  words of Dr. Toni Morrison, and, make no mistake, she is talking about healing:

“Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.

A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.”

Amen.

Deb Randall has just published two books: a collection of monologues by women playwrights she has produced, Frozen Women, Flowing Thoughts, and a memoir, Venus. Venus Theatre has produced more than 70 plays by women since 2000, a phenomenal track record. She has produced  readings or full productions of a dozen of my plays, and her journey has been an inspiration to me.

CG: The issue of space is interesting to me. I feel it’s the tail that wags the dog. Reading your memoir, I was struck by your struggles and the adaptations you made in finding and creating venues in DC and then in Laurel (outside Baltimore.) Your thoughts on this… and the future of little theatres in light of the insane inflation of rental costs…? 

DR: Fortunately for me, the theatre space afforded me as a High School student was state of the art. I believe it was sponsored by DuPont. So, access to proscenium spaces when I was a teenager was constant even going into Community College. So much so, that I found it boring. It was when I decided to revive the experimental theatre program with my professor that my imagination took off in terms of alternate spaces to produce theatre. I found this style much more engaging. Since my time there in the 80’s, our whole culture has left the age of analog and moved entirely into the digital age. This only affirmed my distaste for the proscenium style of theatre. Why pretend actors are inside of a picture frame when you can go to the cinema and watch realistic stories with unending production value?

CG: I appreciated how your memoir blended what was happening in your personal life with what was happening in your professional life. I sometimes think that theatre self-selects those of us who are not finding a place for ourselves and our dreams in the so-called real world—either because of trauma and/or marginalized identity issues. In my experience, this was exhilarating and visionary, but at the same time, it made for a lot of “explosions in the laboratory.” Any thoughts on this?
 
DR: The thing about “explosions in the laboratory” is they feel absolutely devastating when they happen and yet, they are the most informative and impactive truth-telling events an artist can experience. When I think of the moments I really got something wrong, I remember how inept I felt. How it made me want to shrivel up and quit. Then came the next breath though. I knew in that next breath that somehow I was still standing.
 
Every crash is really an opportunity to grow.  I think the patriarchal way of thinking is linear. Beginning, middle, end. It’s dull. It’s not my experience. There’s no greater beginning than the last terrible ending.
 

CG: You produced several of your own shows… for me, most notably the play about the rape and murder of your best friend. How was it different, doing your own work?

DR: I’ve been writing monologues and poetry forever. Way before I was cast in anything. I still write a monologue a day in my studio. Staging my own work is something that began when I was a kid with carport shows for my Grandmother. In my immediate circle, I have people who really love my writing. I couldn’t find the characters I was looking for inside of the canon so one of my mentors used to say, “If it doesn’t exist, create it.” And that’s been a mantra for me.
 
Finding the female playwright, outside of myself, made me feel less alone. That’s the big grift isn’t it? “You’re all alone in this.”  The more I produced women the more I realized how much bullshit that was. Working with women in so many social movements taught me a lot. Heather Booth, one of the founders of the Jane Movement, said “it’s always the same”. She went on to explain that whenever women gathered, and they could be seated on the floor of her carpeted living room while she fed her son sitting in a high chair, it was always the same. Each woman would arrive thinking she was alone and isolated in her experience. And as soon as one woman began to talk the rest would join in and this solidarity would arise around the survivorship of women.
 
There have been many times I’ve circled back to doing my own work. I think it’s kind of like calibrating my compass to true north. As much as I love producing other work, it’s equally important that I stay in touch with my own voice. It’s also exciting to see the growth that comes from collaborating.

Tricia loved my solo shows. She sat in the front row. She brought people with her to the backs of bars where I performed. I distinctly remember her instructing them to “spread out!”.  I developed some of my work in her living space. My set was a barstool and a small ladder. She loved giving me feedback. She would tell me I had to cut a character and I would go and write more of that character to show her how it worked. It was a big part of our relationship.

So, when I developed that solo piece I was in dialogue with her in my own soul. I would rehearse myself for the walls in the space and remember each audience seat she’d occupied. The trauma of her rape and murder was so overwhelming I’m still recovering. But, for some reason, I could still hear her laughing, can still hear.  And, it became essential that I embrace that energy. I was playing for her laughter knowing I’d never hear it again. But, still needing to play for it. That’s the best way I can describe it. I miss her. I miss our relationship. It was unique in the way we laughed our asses off at the world. And, I’m still searching for that laughter, reaching through the veil for it.
 
Afterwards, people would just nod with their faces covered in tears. One thanked me for putting words to the unspeakable. Theatre is all about connection and she was our center and we were all shattered. So that piece was a way to collectively experience her again. It was important. It was life changing for me. I’m so glad I had the skill set to do it.

CG: Poet Adrienne Rich said, “The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.” That resonated with my experience with my theatre company. It was, for me, the best of times and the worst of times. My theatre was riddled with issues of unaddressed trauma, mental illness, and addiction, as well as wildly unrealistic expectations of sisterhood. This is kind of like the earlier question about why certain people are drawn to work in theatre. Any comments?
 
DR: This is almost an insider conversation between you and me, I feel. We’ve talked about this privately so much.
 
One thing I learned in my PTSD recovery over the loss of Tricia was that I had to get mad. It’s a human emotion and suppressing it is harmful.  This terrified me because I’d been terrorized as a child by a rageful mother. So, for me, “getting mad” was the thing to avoid. Learning to get angry has been a challenge for me and I think it’s an overall issue for women. The societal expectations that we are to make everything better and also, accept blame for anything anyone else is not ready to face is so toxic.

Unaddressed trauma is a big deal. Having been out of our space for three years now, I’m able to begin to look back. I see that creating a safe space for women often meant putting myself in unsafe positions. And, that’s not good. I wouldn’t do it again.

We must be able to speak frankly to one another. And this hostage-taking situation of feeling like if you say the wrong word or think the wrong thought you might be responsible for someone's deep unhappiness, or worse their mortal demise is all too much. There’s no way to create in that environment. That’s a therapeutic environment, not an artistic one. Not to say that art cannot be therapeutic. But, to specifically point out that you need a clean channel to create. If you haven’t dealt with your issues by way of being aware you have them and cultivating a tool kit of responsibility to address them, you do not belong on anyone’s professional stage. The show needs to be about the play, not the trauma of the players. Once this is made clear and collective decision to move forward arises, it’s absolutely phenomenal.

CG: Best memory of a production?

DR:  Best? Hard to say. I think the night lightning struck and took out all of the power after our instrument check was profound for me. I was doing, “Living and Dying with Tricia McCauley” and we lost electricity just as the audience was arriving. Amy and I put our heads together. We’d produced for so long that there was no way we’d ever turn away one audience member. So, those who could not come back on a different night stayed. They mostly sat in the front row on the red couch. This was significant because it was a symbol of Tricia’s couch in her living room where she would sit and watch and give me feedback. And a mutual friend brought a painting he’d given her to give to me. That was over the couch. So, we told the audience to use their phones and we cued them into video and sound spots.  They lit me with their flashlights. I experienced that show in a completely different way. It was terrifying. It was really dark and I had to move where the audience guided me with their lights, and they were with me. I mean really WITH me.  I couldn’t leave the stage after curtain because I couldn’t see anything so for some reason I just sat down. And everyone was piled onto that red couch. We talked and talked for longer than the run of the show. There was something profound and deeply truthful about the experience. I felt held. I felt understood. I felt that we can always create no matter what.
 

CG: If you were to mentor a young producer today, what would be the thing or things you would most want her to know?
 
DR: I think my mentor is a collage of many people doing many powerful and unlikely things. That, sprinkled with people who simply bring light. I hold onto to those memories and experiences and let them shape me. And, I keep searching for the people moving forward.
 
As a mentor I would advise to stay true to your mission. Don’t confuse concessions with collaborations. I promise you there are other creatives out there who will lock into what you are seeing. There really can’t be enough women's theatre produced. I’d say lose all desperation and dive into that thing that tickles your soul and create it. Easier said than done, I know. But, it’s really a matter of discernment. Even if you are in an unpleasant set up you can learn from that and use it to shape what you are building as you move forward. The world needs diverse, unique, specific voices all rising up together. So, if one thing isn’t a match that’s okay. Let it go and move on to what pulls you and trust that impulse. “Impulse is golden”.

When the audience laughs at something on stage that is supposed to be serious, you really—as a playwright—have no choice but to roll with it or else revise the scene. You can rail all you want about their failure to embrace a lofty concept in the direction. You can accuse them of being shallow or juvenile. You can talk about the few bad apples. But long, long after all memory of the production has faded, the echo of that inappropriate laughter will continue to haunt and reverberate.

The first time I experienced this was at a community theatre production of the musical Camelot. Lancelot is a new arrival at King Arthur’s court, applying to become one of the knights of the celebrated Round Table. His reputation for purity and piety has preceded him. In a jousting tournament at the end of the first act, he defeats his three challengers, and accidentally kills the last one, Sir Lionel. In fact, if the chorus is to be believed, Lancelot has completely run him through with a spear.

In the version I saw, the entire audience broke out in uproarious laughter when Sir Lionel sat up. They could not be brought round even by Guinevere. They laughed straight through the to end of the scene, ruining the act.

In this production, the music swells as the lovers are about to board the vessel that will carry them off to their doom.  Suddenly the sails unfurl, revealing a death ship constructed of skulls and bones. The ship was so over-the-top, the audience burst into laughter that was followed up by a chorus of booing... apparently signalling displeasure at  the effort to update a classic.

And the third time was just last night, when I streamed the National Theatre Live production of Anthony and Cleopatra, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okoneda.  In Act IV, Scene 14, Anthony is told (falsely, as it happens) that Cleopatra is dead. His response to the news is to command  his manservant to kill him, but instead, the loyal servant kills himself.  Anthony then takes his knife and attempts to stab himself.  It is a clumsy attempt, and we know this, because he immediately says:

“How, not dead?/ Not dead?”

[The live audience found this hilarious, as did I. It was like, “Oh, shit, I can't even do this right!”]
 
In the next scene, he is brought, dying, to Cleopatra. She is hiding out in some kind of monument which is going to requiring the hauling up of Anthony’s body.  And she says:
 
"But come, come, Antony.--
Help me, my women!—We must draw thee up.--
Assist, good friends."
 
At which point the good friends begin lifting him. And then Anthony says:

“O, quick, or I am gone.”

[At this point, you could feel what was coming.]

And then she says:

“Here’s sport indeed. How heavy weighs my lord!”
 
And audience breaks out laughing. And, in truth, the Queen of the Nile didst inflect too much. Now I’m sure Shakespeare intended to use the mechanics of the scene to inspire a disquisition on the ponderous nature of death, on the burden upon losing a great love, and on the crushing agony of defeat in warfare… But instead this Cleopatra appears to be working off the mirth of the audience, as she proceeds:

"Our strength is all gone into heaviness;
That makes the weight. Had I great Juno’s power,
The strong-winged Mercury should fetch thee up
And set thee by Jove’s side. Yet come a little.
Wishers were ever fools. O, come, come, come!"
 
All this played like the cast of Friends frantically attempting to navigate a large sofa up the hairpin turns of their apartment building’s staircase:  “Pivot! Pivot!”  If Shakespeare failed to see the comedic potential of his own staging, Sophie Okoneda certainly did not.

These are all fond memories for me. Is there any kernal of dramaturgical wisdom to be gleaned from these failures of gravitas?  “Shit happens,” maybe? Or perhaps, “Never take yourself too seriously.” More to the point, “The closer a scene approaches the zenith of angst and pathos, the more it teeters on the brink of absurdity.” An audience who is not engrossed by the action on the stage, becomes a passive aggressive entity—and rightfully so. 

If they can laugh at you, they will. You have been warned.

Originally published as "Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Gay Icon?" On the Issues, Winter, 1996, New York.

During the trial, Wilde persisted in denying any participation in homosexual activity.  Repeatedly questioned about his frequenting of a notorious male brothel, where his "companions" were children who worked as valets, grooms, and coachmen, Wilde stated that he sought the boys out, because they were "bright and entertaining," insisting that he was oblivious to class differences: "I never inquired, nor did I care, what station they occupied."  And again, "I recognize no social distinctions of any kind... "
 
This is difficult to believe when, on one occasion, Wilde picked up a boy who sold newspapers, and took him to a hotel in Brighton for a weekend.  In order to disguise the obvious nature of the relationship, Wilde bought the boy a suit of clothing with insignia that would associate him with a prestigious private boys' school.  In court, he insisted that the choice of the school's colors had been the boy's. 
 
In fact, Wilde was very class-conscious.  In "de Profundis," he told a very different story - and one in which class difference features prominently:

"The Petitioner... was suffering from the most horrible form of erotomania, which made him forget his wife and children, his high social position..., the honour of his name and family, his very humanity itself, and left him the helpless prey of the most revolting passions, and a gang of people who for their own profit ministered to them, and drove him to his hideous ruin."
 
Hardly a gay rights manifesto. 
 
And after prison?  Wilde went to Paris, where he rendez-voused with Lord Alfred, who was being serviced sexually at the time by a fourteen-year-old boy who sold flowers on the street.  This boy claimed to be "keeping" a twelve-year-old at home, and Lord Alfred was attempting to gain sexual access to the boy.  Wilde himself, in the words of his lover, was "hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard." 
 
I cannot imagine a lesbian couple deliberately choosing a vacation spot where economic violence and/or colonization has created an underclass of girls who are coerced into selling their bodies to wealthy women tourists.  I cannot imagine this loving lesbian couple buying these little girls and exploiting their poverty for the purposes of sexual self-gratification.  And I cannot imagine two lesbians experiencing this exploitation as a pleasurable and harmless recreational activity around which they could bond. 

And yet this is the kind of vacation activity in which such gay male luminaries as Andre Gide, Tennessee Williams, and Oscar Wilde would habitually indulge.
 
Oscar Wilde was a pedophile, a woman-hater, a colonialist, a classist, a coward, and a colossal liar.  The record speaks for itself. I call upon my gay brothers to drop the euphemisms surrounding the culture of prostitution and child sexual abuse, and to come out of denial about the nature of the men who participate in that culture. 

[If you found this blog interesting, I have another about Wilde...  "Oscar Wilde:His Father's Son."]