Excuse Me, But I Think Your Bias Is Showing

I ran across two things on the internet today that seemed to resonate, and sent my train of thought on a cross-country haul. So I'll re-trace the journey here.

Thing the first: This blog entry by one James Chartrand. The funny thing about James is that he's a woman. "James" is a pen name, an identity the writer assumed when she found she wasn't getting the work she wanted as a freelance writer. In this entry, James outs herself and explains the reasoning behind her decisions.

Thing the second: This NPR broadcast which features a study by Emily Sands, in which "surprising" gender biases are revealed in the theater community. Surprising is in scare quotes there because I'm not sure how surprising it actually is.

If you live on the planet Earth, you have had to think about gender bias. If you are a woman, you have had to think about it frequently. If you are a woman trying to succeed in male-dominated industry, you would probably give your firstborn in exchange for not having to think about it. So in some ways, a story like James' is not surprising. People do have biases, and they are in some ways unavoidable. Does it suck that one has to hide their identity in order to get more money for the same work? Yes, yes it does. But I'm not really sure what to do about it.

The premise of the study by Emily Sands was to send out identical script samples to male and female artistic directors throughout the country, with some scripts having a male playwright listed as the author, and others having a female playwright. (The samples were in fact written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Lynn Nottage.) But here's the interesting part: while all artistic directors rated the script's quality equally well, the females gave it lower marks on the sections that asked about how well the script would be received by the theater community. One is made to wonder whether the female artistic directors have less faith in women playwrights, or whether they are simply being more realistic about the chances that the work has. They, having faced the monster of gender bias, know full well that the script with the female author has less of a chance to be produced. To what extent these artistic directors are creating a self-fulling feedback cycle was not addressed in the study. I'd also be curious to know what sort of theaters were asked to rate these scripts. Does the bias change when the sample set is just major regional theaters? Do small groups like the Neo-Futurists have a similar bias?

After reading both of these articles, I began thinking also about how they relate to ethnic bias. I recall vividly certain blog entries from a playwright friend of mine who has had trouble finding the elusive "stable day job." Having a foreign name, he must constantly wonder if his reusme is being sent straight to the circular file because of ethnic bias. Would he get more responses if his name were Bill, or Sam? Would he feel awful sending out resumes with a false "nickname"? Would interviewers feel tricked when he showed up with a decidedly brown face? Possibly.

I do feel that ethnic bias is perhaps a more complicated beast than gender bias. It taps into the kind of in-group/out-group thinking that was a survival necessity for our recently evolutionary ancestors. When we consider working with someone, we want to be sure we can communicate with them, joke with them, that they have a similar work ethic, cultural values, etc. These are the things that are hard to put on a resume. Perhaps in the future we'll all have video resumes so that employers can put a face to a name and get a sense of personality. But that's a minefield all its own.

In The Pines

I walk off the bus from Detroit directly into the midst of Chicago winter. It's not what I'm expecting, to tell the truth. When I left town it was still coat-and-hat weather. This temperature, on the other hand, requires the full breadth of winter accouterments. But I haven't packed those. So I shoulder up my burdens, trusting the strain of walking to keep me warm, and stride headlong into the wind whipping down Canal Street.

As I move south tiny snowflakes begin to fall and I think of whiskey and fireplaces, and my current demonstrable lack of both those things. Whiskey and fireplaces feel like home. My apartment does not feel like home, it feels familiar. Which is not at all the same. Eventually I make it to the train and there is the picking-up and putting-down of bags that always accompanies travel through public transit systems. And there is the waiting, and the avoidance of grifters and homeless and con-men and guitar players. But parking tickets are too expensive, among the many other reasons.

My key turns in the lock, click. The bags go on the brown thing. The mail goes on the desk. The clock says it is too late to be awake when you have to go to work tomorrow. Here it is, me and the cats, same old life. I sometimes cannot believe I have been here three and a half years. Other times I very much can, and it makes me want to rip things apart. But. Keep calm and carry on.

Buckle up, we're about to turn the engines on

This is going to be a mish-mash. A jumble, if you will. A list of loosely connected things. It has been a busy November and that trend looks like it will continue until mid-January at least. My thoughts are all a bit squibbly.

Firstly: My brother got married! Weird, yes. I know. He is 22 and has a house and a wife. This is unfamiliar to me. But the wedding was great and I'm sure there are embarrassing pictures of me in a nice tux floating around somewhere. And get this: they had a photo booth. An honest-to-God portable instant photo booth. Two sets of four tiny pictures! Color or B&W! Your choice! The world does not cease to amaze me.

More travel coming up. Detroit this weekend, and then Louisville again for Christmas. I don't mind it, though it is sometimes frustrating finding someone to watch the cats. I have too many cats.

I'm starting a writing group with Clift. We are getting together people from various Neo-Futurist classes and instituting a bi-weekly writing assignment which will be followed by in-person feedback and criticism. I'm hoping it goes well. I haven't done this sort of thing before, but I feel good when I'm writing, so I want to keep doing it.

In other Neo-Futurist news, the next prime-time season was picked. I don't know if I'm allowed to divulge the choices here, so I won't. Let me just say - very exciting things are coming. In order to prepare yourself, please watch this sad video about a dog. Because excitement should always be balanced by melancholy.

I ordered glasses online. Where are they, Zenni Optical? Where? And did I measure my pupilary distance correctly? Please let me know.

Lastly, a public service announcement. As we approach the seriously cold and nasty part of winter, consider your health and the health of your friends, family, and complete strangers you sit next to on the bus. Get your seasonal flu vaccine. Get the H1N1 if you can, although it's being rationed due to demand. And if you find yourself at all swayed by the McCarthy/Carrey squad, take a look here and here.

Lastly, for reals: I think I'm going to have a birthday party next month. I usually don't, but for some reason I feel compelled. I'm shooting for January 16th, which is also the 224th anniversary of the Virginia Assembly's adoption of Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, which forms the basis of our modern concept of separation of church and state. How's that for a party theme? Yes, "pretty awesome" is the correct answer. Mark your calendars.

Usher Roundup

The Neo-Futurists' production of Fear closed on Halloween, and with it ended The Fool Machine Collective's adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher. It's strange that this was just two weeks ago. It feel more like two months. Although perhaps that feeling can be explained by the insane amount of things that have been happening lately. Too Much Light gigs, benefit performances, rehearsals, classes, blogs to read, blogs to write, financial calculations, travel plans, the new Doctor Who special. (Although I haven't watched that yet. Feels wrong to watch it alone.) Activity makes life feel longer. And that's nice.

I'm not sure how many times we performed our Usher piece - assuming an average of five tours per night, the number comes out to ninety. Sometimes we did six tours, other times four. The actual number is probably a little under ninety. I don't think I have to tell you that is a lot of performances. The task of performing a piece - even a 12-minute piece - that many times was alleiviated by opportunites for spontaneity and exploration, things I consider to be essential to any worthwhile theatrical endeavor. Interacting with the audience is always a big help as well.

I felt, based on comments from friends, that it went well. Reviews were generally positive. Some were little more than summaries of the different pieces, which was disappointing and in my opinion lazy. But then, I suppose it's difficult to 'review' a haunted house in the same way you would review Tennessee Williams. Here are some choice quotes. First, the good!

"A room based on “The Fall of the House of Usher” features space-age dead people on the floor who ascend and take us by the hand to an impromptu haunted hootenanny." - Dennis Polkow

"Ingenious visual work (including a gallery of Joseph Cornell-esque illuminated boxes) and evocative performances add up to a mournful, creepy, fervently imaginative exploration of Poe's nightmares--and our own." - Kerry Reid

"And the centerpiece, Pierson’s adaptation of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a wonder. Scary, bizarre and sweet all at once, it enmeshes the audience in Roderick Usher’s gloomy world, somehow reimagined through the prism of MJ’s “Thriller” video." - John Beer

I've heard from friends that they felt Usher was the most fleshed-out piece. Their feelings seem to be echoed by these reviews, and that's good to hear, given that we spent so much time on it. These quotes pour a little bit a fuel into a gas tank that has been nearly emptied by the last seven months.
And now, the problematic:

"The puppet rendering of The Conqueror Worm is by far the most fully realized retelling. The actors are completely invested in all of the stories’ stylized renditions. But sadly, if we are expected to take the production more seriously then it has to seriously have more content. The chaos overshadows the audience’s connection to the stories and the intended impact is diminished." - Venus Zarris

It seems like Zarris was looking for Fear to be a cleaner adaptation of Poe, which is not unfair given the way we marketed the show. I personally don't mind when things are vague and chaotic, at least to a certain extent. I can see how some of the pieces in the show fall outside Zarris' expectation. I would argue that Usher was a fully-realized retelling, but it's not my job to argue with critics.

"The Neo-Futurists are storytellers at heart. Thematic and visual abstractions require a different sort of skill set, and even when the company brings in outside artists for these shows (as they have here), their efforts aren’t quite potent or focused enough to work." - Nina Metz

Metz's review was a bit frustrating. She seems to have set up sandboxes for all of Chicago theater and placed the Neo-Futurists into the 'storyteller' box. I'm not sure what goes in the 'thematic and visual abstractions' box. Redmoon, maybe? My point being that storytelling and abstraction are not mutually exclusive, and they don't necessarily require vastly different skill sets. No, we don't have a lot of money. No, we don't exclusively rely on spectacle on a regular basis. But if you watched Usher and didn't see a story being told, you weren't paying attention.

Finally, the yay-you-got-what-we-were-going-for:

"Through each visit with Poe’s work, visiting the stories of others’ darkness, one cannot help but reflect on their own disappointments, even questioning the true nature of our world today. It gets inside your head like a psychological thriller, as opposed to a shocking horror." - Joseph Erbentraut

"maybe the point isn't really to give you something specific to be afraid of, but a new reference point for all the already scary things. the possibility that you can't stop your mind from snapping one day. the possibility that someone familiar will turn on you. the unpredictability of violence. the chance that we will go to our graves never speaking again, with you thinking i wronged you, or didn't care, and that there is no making amends later, just regret and guilt." - a friend

These quotes get at the heart of what I hoped people would take away from this show. It's not about jump-scares or gore. The truly frightening things in life are the inevitable and unpredictable ones that will most likely happen to all of us at some time or another. I'm glad that came across. Now, on to the next project.

Chicago/Darwin 2009

Last weekend I attended the University of Chicago's Darwin Conference. It is an apt year for such a thing - 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. The price was right and it didn't conflict with my shows, so I thought, "Here is an advantage to living in a big city. I can decide to take a day off and attend a major biology conference." So I did.

I had to miss the Thursday night plenary session. (Side note: "plenary" is academic-talk for "fully attended". So, some irony there.) I did drag myself out of bed Saturday morning and take two Metra trains and a cab down to UC, and made it in time to get my nametag (I got my own nametag!) and sit down in the main lecture hall for the first talk of the morning. (The main lecture hall was for the biology-based talks, the upstairs hall was for history/philosophy. I stuck mainly to biology, but did wander upstairs for a few talks there as well.) My condensed notes are below the jump, so please continue on if you have no fear of science-talk.

All in all it was a good time. I got to meet PZ and Marc Hauser, and even ran into a few friends.

I'll also note that PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne also have posts up covering the conference.

Eleventh-hour Creativity

It's a good feeling to make art, and have that art be received well. It is a feeling I've not experienced often in my three and a half years living in Chicago. Which is not to say I've been making bad art. Far from it. I've been committing the more grievous sin of making very little art at all.

There were many reasons why I decided to come to Chicago. A city I was passingly familiar with, a support network, a girl. And the sheer volume of theater that happens on a daily basis. I wanted a place to explore, to figure out what theater actually means to me. I was fairly certain after graduation that I didn't want to be 'an actor'. I had no interest in headshots, memorizing monologues, or pretending to be the King of Bohemia. But did that rule out performance all together? I wasn't sure.

For most of my time here, I've been pursuing work in technical theater. Stage management and lighting design are my mainstays. These are jobs I know well. I get a certain particular satisfaction from doing them. I enjoy the charts, the lists, the mathematical precision. The power and responsibility. But the technical disciplines do lack that immediate feedback. The laughter, the silence, the gasp which escapes from the mouth of someone taken by surprise.

By coincidence I had seen the Neo-Futurists perform at Actor's Theater in Louisville the winter before I moved. This was different. This was a kind of performance I had not thought possible. I have forgotten many details about many plays I've seen, but I remember that show. I remember Jay's literal music videos, I remember Kristie's interview play about being edgy, I remember Noelle's costume/makeup change and her monologue about how difficult it is to just be yourself in front of over a hundred people. So when I moved here, I started volunteering with the Neos. This lead into a stage management gig, and then another, and now I've been on staff as a technician for two years. To paraphrase Mary, "I like it here, I love it here, I finally found a home. A home. A home away from home."

I'm currently taking the "Intro to Neo-Futurism" class. This is my second time through. And it's strange how quickly it all comes back to me; the songs which send images running through my mind, the way the words come in just the right order, the Saturday morning rewrite which puts all things in their places.

It's a good feeling to hear that your play accomplished what you wanted it to, and more. It's a good feeling to be drinking at the theater past three and have someone say, "Hey, I really liked your piece in class today." It's a good feeling to create. I need it. It calms me. I think it's here to stay.

Cannabis and Autism

While meandering about the internet today, I found this interesting pair of articles written by a woman who is mother to a young autistic child. The articles tell the story of J - the child - and his experiences with cannabis as medication for his disorder. Now, there are many places this story could have gone wrong. Mother reads internet forum, decides to grow pot in her closet. Bad. Mother spits in the face of Western medicine, buys street drugs for her child. Bad. Thankfully Mrs. Lee has gone about things in a reasonable fashion.

She was turned on the the possibilities of medical marijuana by a homeopath - proof that useful information can sometimes come from highly dubious sources. She first explored a prescription medication called Marinol, which is an FDA-approved drug containing synthetic THC. This proved effective, but J began to build resistances, which can apparently be common when dealing with synthetics. So Mrs. Lee pursued and obtained a medical marijuana license. (Rhode Island is one of thirteen states where marijuana is legal for medicinal use.) For more details, see the links at the top of this post.

I felt a bit of internal conflict when I first came across this story. If you have talked to me at all about medicine, you know I harbor intense skepticism towards what has become known as "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM. Most practicioners of CAM are huckters, frauds, or quacks, particularly in regard to treatments for autism. Autism is a complex spectrum disorder, treatment effectiveness varies between patients, and nothing works across the board for everyone. Unfortunately this opens the door for the CAMmies to hawk their supplements, vitamins, diet regimens, chelation therapies, acupuncture, etc. without having to prove efficacy. So I walk very carefully around anyone promoting "natural" medicine.

However, I don't believe I have to be so skittish around marijuana. In the places where it's legal, it's being regulated. The main thing we're lacking with marijuana is large-scale efficacy studies. Because, you know, it's mostly illegal. Which is ridiculous, because it's not dangerous. It's illegalization is mostly the result of racism and is not based on sound fact.

I'm all for health care reform. So while we are re-regulating the insurance giants, creating a public option, un-yolking insurance from employment, and making the whole system more efficient, let's go ahead and do some serious research on the medical benefits of demonzied substances. We might be missing out on some seriously helpful stuff.

No One In This World Ever Gets What They Want

A few days ago, it was the first day of Chicago autumn. Or as I prefer to call it, "fall". I like fall better for some reason. Maybe because it's an active verb. (Curse you college acting classes.)

I love this weather. It's constantly cool and breezy, even when the sun is out. It makes me think of fireplaces and campgrounds, of sitting by a lake with a bottle of wine and holding hands. Nature is more appealing to me in the fall. Everything is quieter, more relaxed. The world is having a drink before bed.

If I were to anthropomorphize the seasons (and really, who doesn't want to?), fall would be a man in his 50s. An outdoorsman. A man capable of handling things. He would like to work in his garage, and chop firewood, and take walks around his large tree-filled property. Fall is a kind of twilight-time. It signals the end of things, but it is not itself the end. I look forward to that.

There is a kind of sadness in late September, a grey mood, a slowing-down of things. One remembers what they meant to do in the past months but never got around to. One looks forward and sees cold white death. For the meantime, they live quietly in the dusk of fall.

The other seasons are fine. I like the endurance test of winter, the cautious optimism of spring, the warm summer nights. But fall is my true love. Fall and me, we're forever.

And that is beautiful.

The Origin of Stupidity

This video has been getting some play on the old FB, and more recently on MetaFilter, so I thought I'd toss together some of my thoughts about Kirk, Ray, Darwin, and the manufactured controversy of ID/creationism vs evolution.

Backstory: Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort (a goofy creationist duo) are releasing a new version of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Their version is prefaced with a 50-page introduction by Comfort, who is most famous for claiming that bananas are verifiable proof of God's existence. They've released a video to promote their anniversary edition.

The video contains a slew of the usual creationist/fundamentalist canards: Christianity in under attack, Christians everywhere are persecuted, college will make you an atheist, our kids are being brainwashed by atheistic evolution, etc. Criss responds to these with scathing wit, so I won't do so here. Instead, let's ask the question: Why should creationists feel the need to release an anniversary edition of the Origin?

After hearing Kirk give a summary of the book's new introduction, I can tell you why: they are out of ideas. Every single 'attack' made by these loons against evolutionary biology has failed utterly, so they are reduced to spending their money on producing free books with a truth-free introduction. (Said introduction is apparently being rewritten by Comfort, and is not currently available for dissection. Expect more on this later.) Here's a sampling of what will be touched on in the introduction, according to Kirk:

- a history of evolution
- a timeline of Darwin's life
- Hitler's connection to evolution
- Darwin's racism
- Darwin's misogyny
- Darwin's thoughts on God

I'm not sure how they can screw up evolutionary history or Darwin's biography, but I'm sure they'll find a way. The Hitler zombie rears its ugly head here, as was to be expected. And then we have three ad hominem attacks on the man himself. As if Darwin's personal poilitics matter when considering the validity of evolutionary theory. The introduction goes on to cover the 'hoaxes' of evolution:

- nothing created everything
- the structure of DNA
- lack of transitional forms

I'll go ahead and repeat Criss here. Evolution is not abiogenesis. The structure of DNA is a hoax... how? Everything is a transitional form. Even you, Kirk.

Criss suggests taking as many copies as you can, tearing out the toilet paper, and giving them away to friends and family. I'm going to keep one with the introduction for my own amusement. Hopefully we can take this misguided effort and turn it into something useful.

Usher Redux

This is the second time I've played Roderick Usher on stage. The first time was in college. We had a studio theater program that allowed students to write, produce, and direct their own work a few times a year. A friend of mine had chosen to lump a bunch of Poe stories together under the banner of "The Masquerade", and I was given the part of Roderick Usher. The production was ambitious to a fault. We had costumes, complicated lighting, and the Red Death who spoke entirely in sound cues. It was fun to do. We had a waltz. I still have my crushed green vest.

Now it's September of 2009, and again the House of Usher is falling. It started falling, at least for myself and the rest of the Fool Collective, about six months ago. Looking at my calendar now, I can see our first rehearsal was on April 2nd. You might think this is a lot of work to do be doing for a 17-minute show, and you might be right. But it's part of the Fool Collective process to play a long game with whatever project we're tackling. For myself, and for those interested, a brief outline of said process:

• Get together a group of phyiscal performers. For Fear this was a combination of people we'd worked with before, and people we had been in workshops/classes with. We ended up with five boys and two not-boys.
• Start with meetings/chats. We met throughout April just to talk about fear, death, depression, and whatever else seemed appropriate. Much of this is archived on the show blog.
• Generate ideas via text and physical exercise. Most of our early rehearsals fell into two camps: we would be given a writing/thinking assignment and told to either blog it or bring to rehearsal, or we would be given a physical assignment to present to the group. These things influenced each other. Chairs were tossed in the air and landed on their legs. A light bulb was swung by the cord, faster and faster as a body descended into a box.
• Collect the most interesting images and swirl them around in your head until you have an order. We were helped(?) on this step by the addition of the Poe story. Originally we were just doing a show about the fear of death. Having a specific text in which to base our physical abstractions gave us a clear direction to pursue.
• Create sounds and lighting which support the images you've created. The Fool Collective likes to use practical lights, personal lights, multiple speakers systems, and atmospheric soundscapes. We try to transform a theater into a different place entirely. There are no seats in the House of Usher.
• Rehearse it over and over until each moment has a purpose, and there is an overall clarity of focus. This does not mean, necessarily, that things will be clear to the audience. You find that out during previews. Or after.

Things will change during the performance run, of course. The different audiences will cause moments to be shorter or longer, and our cycling cast of narrators will lend their varied specialties to each run. Hopefully we have made something which will at least elicit reactions from the audience. At most, it will communicate something about the cyclical nature of life and death and perhaps reveal some novel elements of The Fall of House of Usher. I'll let you know what I think after performing it upwards of sixty times.