The Rocket

Originally posted by

Anonymous

We are all college students, and it is thought that adults are mature enough to handle vulgarity.
Welcome to college kid.

Something always offends someone on this campus...

Originally posted by

Dan Cummins AKA Cymbeline

Tim,

For someone who considers themselves very familiar with Shakespeare, you seem to misunderstand both his writing style and his target audiences. He wrote for the illiterate english masses, and relied heavily on both sexual humor and crass fart jokes. I very firmly believe Shakespeare rolls in his grave for every modern production of his work that attempts to present itself as "high" theatre, setting itself in elizabethan England and using foppish costumes to so far remove itself from any sort of modern context that it becomes totally irrelevant.

The point of theatre at it's core is not to simply offend, but to provide social commentary, the director's choice for setting our production of cymbeline in an amalgamation of 17th century england and the world of MTV music videos was part of what we were attempting to accomplish. I am sorry if that was lost on you. If you are looking for something less offensive might i suggest some of the canterbury tales? Particularly both the reeve's tale and the miller's tale, they should be more to your liking.

dan

Originally posted by

anonymous

dear mr. plumberg:

thank you very much for your article and your intelligent responses to every critical voice raised against you here. you have been very gracious and careful in your responses, and have resisted the temptation to respond in kind when your critics have launched several ad hominems against your person, or simply changed the words that you said in order to make your arguments easier to refute (in a sort of straw-man fashion).
in response to (some of) your critics:
1), the tone of shakespeare's plays are indeed often somewhat colorful, to put it mildly. however, the ADDITION of material not in the original shakespeare play which is potentially even more offensive is the point of contention here, NOT that shakespeare was not himself bawdy. that's a red herring fallacy, so let's dispense with that immediately.
2), just because something new was added does NOT mean the addendum required creativity. mr. plumberg is not accusing anyone of a lack of talent or creativity, but simply stating that these latent capacities were not fully or appropriately utilized in the development of the production in question. he is not attacking anyone (at least, nothing which would hold up in a court of law). rather, he is routinely attacked throughout these responses by those who would suggest he is immature for dissenting or expressing his thoughts. there are numerous ad hominem fallacies that his critics seem unable to resist, and it is for this reason that they alone are worthy of the appellation "immature."
3), VERBALLY DISCUSSING a subject or behavior in dialogue is NOT identical to VISUALLY DISPLAYING the same subject or behavior. i have had many discussions about sex, human genitalia, and forms of sexual perversion but have NEVER willingly watched people having sex, for instance. to pretend that shakespeare's writing sexually explicit dialogue (as infrequent as it may be) is in anyway akin to displaying the subject matter of this dialogue is to commit a sort of substitutionary fallacy; they are not the same thing, and are simply incomparable.
4), in spite of all i've just said, perhaps the single greatest problem here is that the show was required; mr. plumberg has every right to decide what he will allow himself to watch, and this obligation denies him that right. at the very least, he has every right to dissent, without as many shameless logical fallacies as he has received.
5), in nearly all of the responses is a sense of the absence of an objective standard for morality, beauty or creativity; i cannot attempt a refutation of this misconception in such a small space except to say that it is just that: a misconception. i truly hope that people who act as though right and wrong were merely a matter of perspective would recognize that they are their own contradictions; if they really believed that there were no objective standards for morality, beauty or creativity, then why condemn mr. plumberg with such vitriol when he offers his perspective?
IN CONCLUSION, then, thank you again, mr. plumberg, for your refreshing perspective, but more importantly, for your gentle and humble responses to those who are too narrow-minded to imagine that you might be right and they wrong.
to the rest of you who criticize and attempt to justify the morally indefensible, a proverb which has served me well in the past i relay to you now: "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." if you'd like to say anything else, please think first, instead of just spilling onto a keyboard whatever cluster of sentiments rushes to your mind first. thanks.

Originally posted by

Jen Nocera

Tim and anonymous,

Let me start by saying that I do respect both of your opinions and as a Christian on campus, I have to say that it is nice to see someone who is not afraid to stand up for what they believe is wrong. Tim, you are most definitely entitled to your opinion about this play and if it offended you, I am both sorry and not sorry. I am sorry that you were required to see something that went against your religious beliefs (since you believe that you should not have to look beyond your religion, which is an entirely valid opinion), but I am not sorry that this play made you think. You say that it offended you and that offending people should not be what the SRU theatre department is all about. And it isn't. It's about getting a reaction.

In your offense, you were required to examine your feelings about not only women and blow-up dolls, but also about the presence of blatant female sexuality and the social stigma surrounding the use of toys in sexual acts. Even if you already knew how you felt about these things, you were forced to re-examine your convictions, and this show has sparked all of this talk about it. The repression of female sexuality, especially, is something that should be talked about today, and this show has laid a platform for this discussion. (Although, sadly, it seems that we are not discussing the issue of sexuality as much as we are getting hung up on the surface image of a woman on stage in a bra.)

Furthermore, I must point out my interpretation of Iachimo getting "undressed" during her scene. You are not required to agree with me, but I just want to get this alternative interpretation out there. While you saw nothing but an attempt to be vulgar, I saw an artistic choice that made a statement about the character of Iachimo. It has already been pointed out in this thread that Iachimo's character was written for a man, but the director of this show chose to cast a woman in this role. That made this role an incredibly difficult one for a woman to play because not only does the character have to maintain all of his/her sexuality, power, and force in the production, but also his/her believability. In order to do all of this, the woman character of Iachimo had to be portrayed as incredibly sexual (because, let's face it, to make a woman's portrayed sexuality carry the same message as a man's portrayed sexuality, she has to be quite overdone). When the actress playing Iachimo was delivering her lines about seducing the chaste Imogen, the audience had to believe that Posthumus believes Iachimo's story. If Imogen is really a chaste character and her husband understands that, Iachimo has to really display that there was a reason for Imogen to give up her "honor." For a female character to achieve this, she must show both her intense sexuality and her comfort with that intense sexuality, hence the costuming (or perhaps, "decostuming") choice. Watching the play with this interpretation, I had no problem seeing how the choice was artistic, added to the plot progression, and built up the believability of a character. The great thing about theatre, however, is that not all audience members have to interpret it the same way, so once again, please don't think that I am discrediting your opinion.

As far as the blow-up doll goes, I feel that "Cymbeline Fan" gave a valid interpretation when he/she said, "Cloten was a useless prince, trying to get with his own step-sister. To have him dance like a fool with a doll dressed to resemble her attempted two goals - one to show what a generally despicable person he was and, hopefully, to make the audience laugh - which most did." I interpreted this scene in a similar way and rather than rehash the small details, I'll just leave it at that.

Also, if you were in an audience that didn't laugh, I'm just curious, did you see the show on Saturday?

Anonymous, like I said, I don't feel that your opinions mean any less than mine, they're just different, so I'd like to go through and just show the opposing side to your points/arguments.

1) Yes, Shakespeare is bawdy, I think that we all agree on that. As far as things being added, dialogue was left intact other than the spots that refer to Iachimo as a man. Those obviously had to be changed since Iachimo was played by a woman. If you're talking about the scenes already discussed, I've already addressed those, so I'll leave it at that.

2) Whether or not something "lacks creativity" is in the eyes of the beholder. I personally know that a lot of creativity went into this show, but if it did not permeate to the audience, then each person who saw the show is entitled to his or her own opinions. As far as people personally attacking Tim, I don't think that anyone's responses have been meant as personal "attacks," they are simply disagreements, which is okay. Theatre is all about multiple interpretations. The issue is that Tim's opinion was taken (and really seems) a lot more personal that I think he meant it to be. He has been very careful to say that all of the actors displayed talent, but he also said that taking off clothing shows a lack of talent and creativity, so the people involved with the show and those who enjoyed it are simply responding to mixed signals.

3) Already discussed, for the most part. All I'll say is that the department was attempting to modernize the play while retaining Shakespeare's language in order to make the play more relevant to its audience AND maintain the great language of Shakespeare. (In my opinion, they succeeded.)

4) Tim is not required to take this class. While I am sure that it fills a requirement for him, I also know that there are several other courses that also fill that requirement that do not require him to see SRU theatre productions. Intro to Theatre is designed to expose people to art AND what can be seen and is allowed in art.

5) I'm not sure if you're trying to say that there SHOULD be a standard for morality, beauty, and creativity, or that the people involved with the play feel that they shouldn't have any standards held to them but Tim should. Or maybe you're saying both? In either case, I don't think that it's possible to set a standard for morality, beauty, or creativity since the definition of each entity differs so greatly from person to person. If you are saying that the people involved in the play are attempting to hold Tim to standards when they don't want to be held to standards themselves, I can definitely see where you're coming from. Like I've already said, however, the response you are seeing here is the response to mixed signals and what could very easily be perceived as an attack on the entire cast, director, and designers (the costume designer, in particular).

Hopefully this response will help people to see the other side of this issue from someone who not only enjoyed the show, but laughed at it hysterically from beginning to end every night from first tech till last showing. After all, it is a comedy. :)

-Jen Nocera, Soundboard Operator (the one without the mohawk)

Originally posted by

anonymous

I'm writing this over a week and thirty-three comments in, so I'm guessing no one will be reading it. Oh well. Though I disagree with many of your views about the production, most of it is just my opinion. There's just one comment you made that is completely wrong. This was without a doubt a 'thought provoking' interpretation, whether you agree with it or not. What matters is that it succeed in a way that many other productions fail. Rarely do plays move people to write a letter expressing the way they felt about the play. The fact that your feelings are negative or positive isn't really important. What is important that you felt something when you watched the performance.
I really hope you continue to see future productions to broaden your views of theater, the world, and to provide good publicity.