Re: RAT The Sassies!!!!

[NOMADMONAD@aol.com]

A people mute and brave are better than a people cultured and abject. 
     - Maria Arias (Maria Pistolas) at Madero's grave, August 1914 

I'm thinking of making a movie about all this. 
- Oliver Stone

At 04:31 PM 1/13/00 EST, DgSWEET@aol.com wrote:
>
>I think SIX DEGREES opened in 1990, and I think that's the most impressive 
>American play I've seen this decade.

I was never interested in the play itself but was always attentive to the 
reality encompassing it.  

The inherent exploitative nature of art has continually preoccupied me when 
looking at my own work and others.  

Following is a letter Thieves Theatre sent to William Kunstler in September 
1992. 

***************
Dear Mr. Kunstler:

The recent reemergence in the news of the David Hampton/John Guare legal 
battle has also rekindled our long-standing preoccupation with the ethical 
implications of this case.  We would like to present to your client and you 
an idea that would function as a sort of creative underscoring to your legal 
rebuttal.

The idea is to develop with Mr. Hampton an altered version of Guare's script, 
perhaps more aptly called "Zero Degrees of Separation" to reflect the true 
polemics of this case, which extend beyond both theatre and court room walls. 
We feel it is important to challenge the exploitative arrogance not only on 
the part of Mr. Guare, but also his elite audience and peers that bestow on 
him a stature and authority higher than those of his "subject."  Doing, or 
threatening to do, a deconstruction of Mr. Guare's script without rights and 
starring Mr. Hampton, would manifest the legal level of the debate by 
concretely posing the moral challenge:  when pitting John Guare's 
intellectual property against the sovereignty, privacy and dignity of an 
individual, which has the stronger "copyright"?

Thieves Theatre has explored these kind of questions in the past, most 
recently in the context of homelessness.  On Thanksgiving 1990, we erected a 
tipi made of mailbags at the shantytown at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.  
 In one of the projects there we called "Counting Coup," shanty residents, 
armed with disposable cameras, stalked and shot photos of unsuspecting, 
camera-wielding "touristas" who were hoping to sneak shots of the shantytown 
without coming in contact with the residents.  Those photos were then mounted 
and prominently displayed on a scalp pole outside the tipi.   In one 
instance, however, a "stolen" photo turned up on sale for $400 in a gallery.  
As a response, one of the residents and Nick went to the gallery and replaced 
the exhibited photo with one depicting the site before any of the shanties 
had been built there (a blow-up of a print that had literally blown up to our 
feet several months earlier).  This switch went unnoticed by the gallery and 
the exhibiting tourista artist through the entire run of the exhibit.

Similarly, our aesthetic in this case:  The ol' switcharoo.  The bastard's 
inheritance.  Who is the true Con Artist?  Hampton or Guare.  We'll hold 
court.

We have enclosed a brief overview of Thieves Theatre's work.  Perhaps, after 
considering these ideas with your client, we could set up a meeting to 
further discuss both our work and this proposal.



The project we suggested was never fully realized.  But the case had some 
airplay on Court TV, and in his summation Ron Kuby used some of our ideas and 
language.  

The most satisfying part of the trial for David Hampton was Kunstler's 
probing examination of Guare as to the credibility of his charge that his 
wife felt threatened by Hampton's phone calls.  He asked Guare to explain the 
layout of his large partitioned apartment that separates his wife's area into 
a complete and separate apartment.  Further asking how much of the year 
Guare's wife lives in Italy, Kunstler then queried as to the nature of the 
living arrangement Guare had with a male house guest who had a somewhat 
permanent residence with him.  By the end of the examination it was very 
apparent that Guare had something in the closet that he did not want the 
world to see.  

Guare's demeanor became more and more distressed as Kunstler forced him to 
expose the lie of his life.  He kept looking to the prosecutor and the judge 
to stop the examination, but Kunstler (the German word 'kunstler' means 
artist) was well within legal guidelines.  John Guare's privacy and his 
dignity as an individual were obviously being violated but there was nothing 
he or the court of justice could do about it.  The copyright belonged to 
Court TV and its audience. 

"I love it when a plan comes together."
--George Peppard, The A-Team

--nick