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RE: RAT Money, value and art
I don't quite know how to respond. The bottom line--I am unimpressed with
the big, fianced theatre that I see. I think of a section of Julian Beck's
Life in the Theatre where he's talking to someone or other about some money
they have tucked away to do shows and the person says "I wish you had no
money at all" and explains that it would force him to innovate more.
On the other hand, if someone walked up and offered me $100K with no strings
whatsoever to do my theatre, pay my actors, etc. I can't see myself turning
it down. Do I embrace cheap theatre because it's what I've come to live
with--is it an adaptive stance, or because it's deeply at my core?
This comes back around to the original manifestoes calling for "voluntary
poverty". Voluntary poverty, for years, was explained to me as "solidarity"
with the poor. To a degree, it's true. Even though it's chosen vs.
imposed, it teaches you a degree of empathy as well as a different set of
skills for getting by in the world. But the other thing that voluntary
poverty does is to provide a witness to the world that you are rejecting the
notion that the focus of your life should be the pursuit of affluence. And
in this current period of time, that is a very difficult thing to make
people understand.
I also can't help but think that "living like a republican" comes with
strings that I don't want attached to me.
On a glibber level (can't help myself here . . . ) if everyone's going to
live like a Republican, we're going to need a lot more illegal aliens to
work as household help for the existing and nouveau affluentia.
------Original Message------
From: brad rothbart <scrdchao@nni.com>
To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
Sent: August 17, 2000 4:09:48 PM GMT
Subject: RAT Money, value and art
All,
On the " live like Republicans" tip, I think that this applies to
a lot of us. As beautiful as Erik's call to voluntary poverty is, I
see on this list a lot of issues around money. To me "living like a
Republican" implies a certain amount of free- floating financial
resource. Now, if one posits that money itself is value neutral-
that the issue is the temptations money provides.....
Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to have day jobs, and could
simply focus on the work?
Wo uldn't it be nice if we didn't have to sneak copies of
scripts at work, but could simply hand them off to a service bureau
and pick them up?
Wouldn't it be nice if we could do the four-color poster we think
the work deserves rather than having to reimagine it in black and
white, due to financial constraints?
Wouldn't be nice to be able to hire an Equity cast if they best
serve the work, pay SSD&C scale....
We're artists- not poseurs. We deserve to work with the best
materials out there- we shouldn't have to beg at the the table of
limited finance. Right now, money is conflated with value- and art
deserves to be valued in a way that simply doesn't exist in this
country. I'm tired of doing theatre in a permanent state of
emergency- I feel my talent deserves more respect than that.
Also, as an insurrectionist- nothing would make me happier than
taking money from conservatives and completely subverting their
agenda.
-brad
Semper ubi sub ubi
"Those poor kids. So young. So nauseous."
--Krusty the Klown Telethon for Motion Sickness
Laura Winton
fluffysingler@prodigy.net
http://pages.prodigy.net/fluffysingler