Neel Sethi on set for The Jungle Book

For those who work in the theatre, the idea of defending the term “live action” would seem an unnecessary task. But as movie marketers, abetted uncritically by the entertainment press, seem determined to diminish the concept, it appears that a brief primer is warranted.

Christopher Reeve as Superman

Live-action has, for many years, been a term reserved for that which actually occurs in real life, that is to say the activities of humans (and other animals). Whether performed on stage or captured on a camera, real people have been the central tenet of live action. In the theatre, while everything that surrounds people on a stage is by necessity a simulacrum of reality (and sometimes not even that), the presence of the actor grounds theatre in its “liveness.” The same has held true for most movies, even ones in which human action is assisted by tricks and tools (Superman flying; Jeff Goldblum transmogrifying into Brundlefly). Animated films were those which were understood to be drawn; in early years this was often quite rudimentary, and now it has become quite sophisticated, to the point that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know where reality ends and digital imagery begins.

The Jungle Book (2016)

Why the compulsion to spell this out? Because of a series of films being released and planned by Disney, in particular. Following on their newest version of The Jungle Book, in which the only human actor – excluding voice actors – was the child playing Mowgli and as the newest version of the musical Beauty and the Beast approaches, Disney has announced what was widely described as a live-action version of The Lion King. With Donald Glover and James Earl Jones touted as starring, the latter “reprising” his role, the description of the film as live-action permeated the press, including CNN, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Times and Time magazine, to name but a few. Even theatre-centric outlets like Theatremania and Playbill parroted this language.

The Lion King on stage

While I am not privy to the conceptual work in connection with new The Lion King, I am prepared to guess that we will not see James Earl Jones in a lion suit ruling over an African savannah. What we will most likely get is a reasonably photorealistic lion with Jones’s magnificent voice. Perhaps motion capture will be used to allow Jones’s and Glover’s facial expressions to be mirrored in their semi-anthropomorphized state, though at age 86, I doubt Jones will be providing the sort of full-body motion capture that we know from the work of Andy Serkis. There has been a live-action Lion King for 20 years, by the way, staged by Julie Taymor.

Disney’s Alice in the Wooly West (1926)

Live action and animation have been blended virtually since the start of film. Walt Disney’s earliest success came with a series of short “Alice” films in which a real girl undertook adventures in animated worlds, though no one would have confused what was real and what was drawn. Over the years we’ve seen animated characters in largely live action films (from Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry the Mouse, Don Knotts submerged as Mr. Limpet, and certainly Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the apotheosis of this technique). Most of the Marvel superhero films since X-Men have made extensive use of animated settings, with actors shot on greenscreen and surroundings added later – and when we see Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan, we’re not watching Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield in advanced rigging, but rather an animated figure in both filmed and simulated settings.

One need only look at the Motion Picture Academy’s science and technical awards to understand how important this sophisticated animation is to the field. There were certificates described as follows: “The Viper camera enabled frame-based logarithmic encoding, which provided uncompressed camera output suitable for importing into existing digital intermediate workflows” and “Meander’s innovative curve-rendering method faithfully captures the artist’s intent, resulting in a significant improvement in creative communication throughout the production pipeline.” There were three separate honors for facial capture systems.

None of this is meant to diminish the films that employ these techniques or devalue them as entertainment. But as we reach a point where nothing onscreen ever existed anywhere but within computers as a massive series of 0s and 1s, it’s time to fight for the preservation of “live-action” as being something that retains the human, the biological, the corporeal. This is akin to the Champagne region of France wanting to insure that only sparkling wines made there can be called champagne.

Kong: Skull Island

The Jungle Book may have looked fairly real (perhaps even a hyper-realism), but unless The Lion King will be employing a wide range of well-trained, stunningly collegial bunch of wild animals whose mouths are animated (a la Babe, the sheep pig), then it’s time the entertainment media stop playing into this live action narrative. After all, no one ever pretended that King Kong or Bruce the Shark in Jaws were real, but they were grounded in the physical world (often by the limitations of technology), whereas now Kong is a highly sophisticated piece of digital animation in the new Kong: Skull Island, and crappily rendered sharks fall from the sky every summer on SyFy.

It’s especially important for theatre that this distinction be made, because if people come to accept and even believe that what they’re seeing on screen is reality, how can theatre compete without giving itself over to holograms? Mark my words. It’s coming. But for now, let’s hold on to the idea that live action still shows us beings that draw breath, not just in body or in voice, but in complete form. The movies need to come up with their own term. Let’s fight for live action as a brand. Because that’s what theatre is all about.

Even if you’ve never read the quote, you’ve no doubt seen the meme, in all of its arts-affirming, damn the torpedoes glory. Just one small detail: it isn’t true.

I am referring to the story that goes as follows, and here I’ll quote an op-ed piece from TheHill.com, dated February 19, 2017:

At the height of WWII, Winston Churchill was challenged to defend a budget that called for an increase in arts funding.

“How can you propose this at a time of extreme national crisis?” asked one member of Parliament.

Churchill replied, “I do it, sir, to remind us what we are fighting for.”

That’s one of the longer versions of the account. You may have seen it as, “During WWII, Churchill was asked to cut funding for the arts. He replied, ‘Then what are we fighting for?’,” or, “When Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply replied, ‘Then what are we fighting for?’”

There are countless iterations.

They are all fake history, recycled endlessly by arts advocates because the story fits a narrative we want to tell, because support of the arts in the face of the horror of the Holocaust and World War II is just so perfect. So it figures that it’s too good to be true.

Many times when you see this quote, you’ll even see a source. But those sources never lead you to a piece of primary research proving that Churchill said it, or a video clip of him actually saying it. Instead, it’s one big echo chamber, in which people cite other people who shared the quote, none of whom provide a footnote as to its veracity.

That said, a bit of online searching will bring you to generally reliable sources that claim to have researched the quote and found it wanting. Now to be fair, there’s a certain circularity in the debunking as well. Snopes.com has a piece dated just weeks ago, which cites historian Richard Langworth debunking the quote in a 2009 blog post, “Safeguarding The Arts.” The recent inquiry from Snopes prompted Langworth to refashion his answer under the banner of The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College in Michigan, but save for replacing who asked the question of him, his answer is consistent.

Andrew Eaton, writing in The Scotsman in 2011, allowed that the provenance of the quote was in dispute. An article from The Conversation.com says the quote is fake, sourcing it to a piece in the Village Voice in 2008, but their source, if you follow the links, is once again Langworth.  Fortunately, Snopes also checked with the International Churchill Society, where a representative declared the statement “quite bogus.”

Using this quote in fighting to stave of arts cuts in the US is, ultimately, a disservice to the effort. Why? Because if the quote cannot be unequivocally verified, then its deployment counts as fake news. That opens up anyone who uses it to having all of their arguments, no matter how valid the others may be, dismissed out of hand. The very people who are quick to brandish the pejorative “fake facts” against things with which they simply disagree will have a field day with claims that are demonstrably false, even if veracity isn’t central to their own arguments. One anti-liberal bias site, also looking to Langworth, took this on in 2012 when Chris Matthews cited the quote, so this isn’t exactly flying under the radar.

This should not discount the idea that Churchill didn’t support the arts. Reliable sources quote him as saying, at an April 30, 1953 Royal Academy Banquet, “The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them…Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

One must wonder why the British Churchill, who died at almost 90 years old in 1965, perseveres as the go-to defender of the arts in America today. Looking closer to home, even if the remarks were the work of a speechwriter, President John F. Kennedy, whose White House regularly welcomed artists to perform, has a series of quotes about the arts emblazoned on the rear balcony of The Kennedy Center, all suitable for memeing.

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

“I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.”

“To increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillments of art — this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days.”

“There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts.”

As mentioned previously, the specious Churchill quote made perhaps its most recent appearance in an op-ed at TheHill.com. Regrettably, the authors of the piece are Earle I. Mack is chairman emeritus of the New York State Council on the Arts, Randall Bourscheidt is president emeritus of the Alliance for the Arts, and Robert L. Lynch is president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. A Google search on their version of the quote reveals only a single match, namely their article. Their use doesn’t even mirror other faulty citations.

 By all means, let’s write our own words in defense of the arts, and arts funding, and let’s cite the very best comments made by others in support of that case. But unless someone produces irrefutable proof that Churchill said what he is so often quoted as saying about “what are we fighting for,” it’s time to put it away for good. Opposing the truism advanced in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, we cannot afford to print the legend, we must stand with the objective truth.

P.S. If anyone actually can prove that the “what are we fighting for” story is verifiably true, please shout the proof out loudly.

Ivanka Trump performs in The Nutcracker (Photo: Ivanka Trump/Twitter)

Let’s start with the positive, though I’m afraid that won’t last long.

In her New York Times article, “Might Ivanka Trump Speak Up If Her Father Guts The Arts?,” Robin Pogrebin makes a series of suppositions rooted in an aspect of arts education that is rarely discussed. That element is the reality that the vast majority of students – elementary, secondary, university – who study or participate in the arts won’t probably go on to careers in the arts. However, their exposure might yield a lifelong affinity. This isn’t something that’s unique among the many subjects students are exposed to in education – many people study biology without becoming scientists or doctors. Yet whereas one who retains an interest in biology can’t necessarily spend a free evening in an operating theatre, someone who was exposed to or participated in the arts in their youth may well choose to attend the opera, the ballet, the symphony and so on for the remainder of their lives.

Under that theory, coupled with reports that Ms. Trump and her husband Jared Kushner may have intervened with her father on behalf of LGBTQ rights, Ms. Pogrebin theorizes that as a childhood student of ballet and present-day collector of fine art, Ms. Trump might emerge as an arts advocate on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s a lovely theory, and if it came to pass, it would no doubt be welcomed, but it is spun from the slightest of threads.

In fact, Ms. Pogrebin’s review of Ms. Trump’s personal arts history is formed from very little evidence. It rises only to the level of article, as opposed to editorial or op-ed, because it is padded out with a lengthy quotation from Ms. Trump’s 2009 book The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life about her dance lessons and – in an experience shared by virtually no one else on the planet – her youthful fear that attendance by her neighbor Michael Jackson at a Nutcracker performance in which she had a role would distract from the event itself. In all, in an article of 1,045 words (as calculated by Microsoft Word), Ms. Pogrebin offers us 504 words directly from Ms. Trump’s book, 48% of the total piece.

Certainly no one can call the extended quotation from The Trump Card fake news, because it is a) legitimately a quote from the book, and b) like any work of autobiography, the entirely subjective point of view of the author (and perhaps their ghostwriters, should that apply). But the thesis of Ms. Pogrebin’s piece is essentially invented. “Might” asks the headline; “could” Ms. Trump “emerge,” wonders Ms. Pogrebin. In fact, when Pogrebin requested an interview on the matter, all she got back was a prepared 67-word ballet-centric statement in support of the arts, which makes up another 6% of the article. Given the opportunity, Ms. Trump did not offer any solace to the NEA and its supporters. “Might” her failure to win a role in Les Misérables be working against the interests of the NEA?

The National Endowment for the Arts and the arts in America are certainly in need of support. At this time, the NEA may well need a savior. Could that savior be Ivanka Trump? Sure. But there’s no evidence on the table that she will be. This Times article is all supposition, not even managing to produce anonymous sources.

In covering the newest threat to the NEA, Pogrebin’s 1,000+ words would have had more value to the national conversation had they involved seeking out the arts backgrounds, writings and statements by members of the US Senate, particularly the Republicans, because the arts aren’t a strictly partisan issue. Senators may not be able to whisper in Daddy’s ear to potentially rescue pet projects, but it would only take a few Senators standing fast in support of the NEA, blocking the budget, to have an effect that doesn’t require the manipulation of family ties in order to determine the trajectory of one small program with a great impact on American life. If the public, if advocates, knew more about the stances of Senators, then the American people might know with whom they could best make their case, or how little chance there may still be.

One last note: we don’t know whether Ms. Trump spent much time taking humanities-related electives while getting her economics degree at the Wharton School, or whether she liked Sherlock, Downton or tales from Lake Wobegon. Does this mean the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are utterly out of luck? Sad.

This is a revised and updated version of a prior post from earlier today, which has been withdrawn, because it suggested, based upon news accounts, that the UW theatre department had been singularly targeted. This incorporates additional information provided by Todd London, executive director of the UW Department of Drama.

At a time in the life of America when The New York Times has been compelled to create a column called “This Week in Hate,” some localized instances of actions that are overtly oppositional to a culture that embraces all people, regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender identity or disability, can still run the risk of being seen as too small bore for widespread attention and revulsion. But if they are not called out, if the public is not made aware, then there is the ever-present risk of such actions becoming normalized, simply a part of modern life with which we must live.

Given that neo-Nazi signage was plastered on theatre doors at the University of Washington on Wednesday night, while a performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It was underway inside, it cannot be permitted to be treated as merely some ill-judged prank, but as a threat – made under the cover of anonymity. That it is not the first such incident on the campus makes it no less ugly or upsetting. In fact, as executive director of the UW Department of Drama Todd London made clear in a conversation with Arts Integrity, the postings on the doors that gave access to the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre, were seemingly “entirely random and happening all over campus that night.”

The surreptitious postering came to light through a Facebook posting by student Tamsen Glaser, who plays Jaques in As You Like it. As a public message, it began to be widely shared on social media by Thursday morning.  Glaser’s message read, in part:

In the middle of the first act of “As You Like It”, we smell spray adhesive from outside. Our stage manager looks outside, and these posters are being attached to the doors. Of our theatre. With spray adhesive. 8 of these posters, all on the doors. Residue is still there, though the posters are not thanks to our team.

The local accounts make clear that university police officers responded quickly upon report of the incident, and The Stranger reported that Todd London has asked for additional campus police presence for the rest of the run of the show. London told Arts Integrity that support is being provided. The Stranger quotes London as follows:

“We want them to feel safe so they’re not spending their deepest energies worrying when they should be focusing that on performing,” he said. “It’s pretty simple: We want them to be protected and for them to feel free.”

Speaking with Arts Integrity, London countered earlier reports which indicated that the theatre had been specifically targeted, saying, “Everything about it, everything we have learned, everything the police have learned, while terrible, hateful, was apparently random, from everything we can tell.”

All of these responses appear admirable, appropriate and necessary. However, the account from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, specifically in regard to comments by the campus police, suggests a diminishment of the incident.

“It was the latest in a string of incidents in which pro-Nazi fliers have been posted throughout the campus, UW police say,” wrote reporter Lynsi Burton. She concluded her account as follows:

UW Police Cmdr. Steve Rittereiser told seattlepi.com that posters of that kind have been displayed throughout campus, but that their appearances seem to have increased since Inauguration Day.

They’re “not all that unusual” to see, he said.

They’ve been spotted in Red Square and other areas of campus, as well as on numerous campuses across the country.

On-campus posters are supposed to be approved by a school body, but there’s no real enforcement of the rule, Rittereiser said.

He said police pay attention to posters people find objectionable and that people are welcome to report them to police, but that people are also welcome to simply remove them as they see them.

Is it merely “objectionable” that anonymous posters seek to direct those who see them to a website that proclaims, among other viciousness, “Gas the kikes”? Isn’t “not all that unusual” another way of saying typical, average or standard?

To remove posters like those that appeared on the theatre doors, and elsewhere on campus, on Wednesday night in Seattle is not censorship, it is not a denial of freedom of speech. Rather it is an appropriate response to an act of targeted vandalism, an act of intimidation, part of a seemingly ongoing campaign focused on the University of Washington, by a group that claims a national bootprint.

How do the arts respond in these situations, how can they? When the adhesive is not fixed, while the paint is still wet, the people who are part of the production can react in the moment to eradicate the hate (and god bless inventive stage crew and technicians, who can surely do so even when messages have had the time to set). But each and every incident must be called out, loudly, as a form of warning and opposition.

Even if the weapons of the arts are rubber knives, as Kate Fodor has suggested in her new monologue, they can still be wielded with purpose and effect, and need to be, on stage and off. The show, all shows, must and will, go on. The arts (which are by no means alone in this targeting) cannot allow themselves be intimidated or silenced, or actions against them normalized, on stage and off.

Beginning one week after the November presidential election, New York’s Primary Stages commissioned a collection of over 70 pieces written by a diverse array of playwrights from their artistic community. Each artist crafted a short monologue from the perspective of a character in America on the morning of November 9^th. The resulting works will be presented twice, under the collective title Morning in America, November 9, 2016 9 AM, on February 18 and 19. Kate Fodor’s Rubber Knife is but one of pieces that came out of this call to the writing community.

Kate Fodor’s plays have been produced across the US and around the world, including at Steppenwolf, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages and London’s Courtyard Theatre. She has received the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens Award, the National Theater Conference’s Barry Stavis Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting.

*    *    *

RUBBER KNIFE by Kate Fodor

A 20-year-old theater major at the University of Illinois addresses the audience.

He wears dark sweats and a plain white t-shirt. Bare feet. He holds a hunting knife.

A lot of students live in this apartment complex. A bunch of theater geeks like me and my roommates. Some pre-med girls on the fifth floor who have a mason jar full of kidney stones on top of their TV — but they’re pretty nice. And these two guys on the ground floor who are like scholars of dickishness and assholery, majoring in ignorance. Guy who harrassed my friend Kayla in the parking lot when she came over. And of course they have a big Trump bumper sticker stuck to their front door.

I’ve been looking forward for a long time to seeing those dudes’ faces this morning.

(He rubs his eyes, still holding the knife.)

We stayed up for the whole thing last night and we’re tired and not feeling all that good. And of course those fucking dudes are out there in the parking lot yelling USA, USA — which my roommate swears is them yelling JEW-S-A because the premeds upstairs are Jewish. I hope that isn’t true, but either way, I really need them to fucking stop.

(He looks down at the knife in his hand, then back at the audience.)

Don’t worry. I wouldn’t kill them. I can’t. It’s a rubber knife. We have stage combat this morning.

(He bends the tip to show them.)

The head of the theater department, Cathy Davis, is waiting for us when we get to stage combat. I guess she felt like she had to come and say something. In loco parentis. You know, just a few words to explain why it’s all right that the world has revealed itself to be full of shit and evil. We circle up.

Cathy tells us Rehearsal Room B in the Theater Arts building is exactly the right place for us to be this morning. People are crying. My friend Cha Cha takes my hand, other people are holding hands too. Cathy says the fight is on and the fight will need us. She says artists matter more than ever now. Because that’s what she has to believe.

Everybody says what they feel — I mean, I don’t, but a lot of people do.

My great-grandfather flew planes in World War II. I follow this woman on Twitter who raised money for water in Africa by rowing across the Atlantic solo — naked, actually, but that’s not why I follow her. It was because of chafing, like she had to at a certain point not have the clothes. Hillary fucking Clinton — not that I wouldn’t have preferred Bernie, because I would have — was advocating for migrant farm workers when she was my age.

The fight needs us, Cathy, really?

We take a bathroom break. A girl from the musical theater program is on the rehearsal room floor in the fetal position, crying. I get it. I want to do that, too. And I also want to kick her really hard as I go by.

My friend Ted is practicing his monologue from Henry V:

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars

And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Our stage combat teacher, Miriam, says, OK, come on. She’s maybe 5’ 2”, with dreadlocks, skinny and smiley, not someone you’d think was a blackbelt in karate. She looks tired, but she doesn’t say anything about what happened last night. She opens up her suitcases. There are swords, spears, hammers and knives, and we get to choose our weapons.

END

© 2017 Kate Fodor

Two weeks ago, the musical Ragtime came under fire at a high school in Cherry Hill, New Jersey for its deployment of racial slurs in telling a anti-racism story that is intended to evoke the evolving nature of what it means to be American, blending the stories of white, black, and Jewish characters according to the template set by E.L. Doctorow’s best-selling novel from 1975. Following efforts to censor its language, which would have resulted in the rights to the show being withdrawn due to unauthorized edits, Ragtime will go in Cherry Hill, serving not only as entertainment but education about the prejudices of the past which, sadly, remain with us today.

With a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, Ragtime was hardly the first musical to address American history, politics or identity – that had been the basis for shows ranging from The Gershwins’s Of Thee I Sing and Strike Up The Band to Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776. Was it more frank than many of the prior works? No doubt, as standards of what is considered progressive and acceptable on stage evolved, and has continued to change, right up through Hamilton.

Lynn Ahrens (Photo by Howard Sherman)

For Ahrens, the historical elements of Ragtime, which are woven through the fictional saga of slowly blending families, were not exactly new territory for musicalization. In fact, more than a decade before she gained attention as the lyricist of such shows as Lucky Stiff, Once On This Island and My Favorite Year, Ahrens was part of the core group that created the much beloved Schoolhouse Rock, seen on ABC TV during its Saturday morning cartoon block. It wasn’t just Ahrens’s lyrics that helped to make up this series of short cartoons – her music and her voice were heard as well.

For those who managed to entirely miss the 44 year legacy of Schoolhouse Rock, or came to it only in its endless reruns, compilations or stage version, Rock was a series of short, musical cartoons that sought to educate the kids glued to TV sets for such intellectually stimulating fare as Jabberjaw, Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt, Superfriends, and The Krofft Super Show. Arranged around the subjects one might find in elementary school or middle school, the original curriculum was multiplication, grammar, American history and science. Money was tackled in a new set of shorts in the mid 90s, and the environment was given the Schoolhouse Rock treatment in 2009. Rather than being part of an ABC effort to add educational programming, Schoolhouse Rock was created by an ad agency, McCaffrey and McCall, which used it as a vehicle to flog breakfast cereals for one of its clients, General Mills.

Ahrens was working as a secretary at the agency and often played her guitar on lunch breaks, leading one of the execs to invite her to try her hand at a Schoolhouse Rock song during the second round of cartoons, grammar. The original 1973 series, on multiplication, had been written solely by Bob Dorough. While some reports have that initial entry as being “The Preamble” (to the U.S. Constitution), other sources say it was “A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing,” which is more consistent with schedules of original airdates. Whatever their birthdates, Ahrens sang on both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk4N5kkifGQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp7sMqPL0g

Given the themes of Ragtime, another Ahrens composition (sung by Lori Lieberman), seems to have somewhat prefigured that show. It is as timely as it ever was, if not more so given recent executive orders, although some of its cartooned racial caricatures are rather unfortunate.

All told, Ahrens wrote three “Grammar Rock,” five “America Rock,” six of the nine “Science Rock,” one “Money Rock” (the patter song “Tax Man Max” with her theatrical songwriting partner Stephen Flaherty), and four contributions to “Earth Rock.”

Leaving aside the Ragtime link, yet another Ahrens contribution seems especially vital these days, given the degree to which the separation of powers and constitutional rights are part of the 24-hour news cycle.

While Ahrens is currently at work with her Ragtime collaborators McNally and Flaherty on Anastasia, a mixture of Russian history and conjecture,a special screening of some of her Schoolhouse Rock work might be worth setting up in Washington right now. It seems there are people in that town who could still learn a lot from Lynn, especially people with short attention spans who are given to flipping through TV channels on a whim.