I get the tweets from @minnesotaplays, a source I got from Ilana that I highly recommend following. There’s always something interesting coming out of there, but this one really caught my eye. It sort of seemed to fit into that category of “how to tell a playwright, you did/didn’t like her play…” And yet, quite a different twist. Kevin T. Houle writes that he can’t come see your play (even though he loves and respects you!), because he’s so good at what he does and how well he sees and understands theater, that he has ruined himself for being entertained. He will love your acting (maybe) but will hate what the designer did, so it’s no fun for him. He will wish your director had asked for more passion (as he would have) but she didn’t, and he can see the defects. And although he still loves you, it’s best that he not be at the reception afterwards, because that would just be such a drag for him, being a drag to be around for you. I’m sure you can understand this poor man’s plight.
He offers this by way of explanation: “I can’t help myself. You may be giving the performance of a lifetime, and the director may have found the definitive interpretation of the script, but I probably won’t notice because I’m too busy checking out the roughness of the bark, and the color and shape of the leaves on each individual tree. Being such a process-oriented director serves me quite well in the rehearsal room, but it fails me during performance.”
Extreme honesty or annoying insolence? Making a joke? I don’t think so. I appreciate his forthrightness in saying something we can all relate to on some level when seeing a poor performance, but I suspect he believes he could be seeing the original 1959 cast of A Raisin in the Sun and he wouldn’t be able to handle his proclivity for peevishness. His conceit and arrogance speak for themselves. How he could err in submitting this is beyond me. That the editor saw fit to run it is even more interesting.
He wraps up by saying:
“But, thankfully, [my little issue of not wanting to see your work because I can’t get over myself] hasn’t yet deterred my love of the art form and my involvement in such a creative community. If it ever does, I’ll be sorry for the both of us.”
He’ll feel sorry for us, too. Wow. Just wow.
