Michael R Jackson goes after #weseeyou, Griffin Matthews on Twitter

Posted on @thelivingMJ: 

https://twitter.com/TheLivingMJ/status/1271890087018672132?s=20

“And just so there’s no confusion, I think this letter is ****ing STUPID, INANE, RECKLESS, DISGRACEFUL, DISGUSTING, EMBARRASSING, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, CHILDISH, DISINGENUOUS, MCCARTHYIST, TRAUMA PORNOGRAPHIC, BREXITish, TRUMP-Like, AMY COOPERISH, and every other negative, degrading ****-eating adjective you can think of. I ****ing hate and loathe it more than Madonna loathes hydrangeas. Theatre is supposed to bring people together and this horrible, horrible letter does nothing but tear people apart. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

 

Followed up with this:

 https://twitter.com/TheLivingMJ/status/1271920557848698880?s=20

”I also want to say that while I don’t apologize for my post, it was written from a place of deep anger, frustration and pain. Writing to the “American White Theatre” is by proxy writing to me. I worked very hard to put my show up after years and years of struggle and uncertainty in collaboration with people (many of whom were white but not all) who did everything to make sure my black, queer story got out there and that I had full agency while putting it up. 

I’m not interested in being more divisive and if I have been, then I have failed and I am sorry. But there has been no public debate about “we see you” and the seeming total consensus around it’s and Griffin’s video (when for example, Griffin himself acted like a complete and total “Amy Cooper-like” asshole to me at a talkback for A Strange Loop when he made insulting insinuations about me, my show, my artistic and professional choices in the same tone as the white male reporter who essentially threatened to call me a c**n in a major publication yesterday) and many of these online testimonies is deeply frightening to me. It has been suggested to me that this is all “kitchen table talk” but how do you have a kitchen table talk when the house is on fire? Anyway I said what I said. I’m not exhausted from letting my rage go free and I guess I’ll see what the Drama Desks have to say tonight. Thanks for listening.”

Updated On: 6/14/20 at 04:44 PM

Can you paste a link? Or did he delete this? I went to his twitter and FB and didn't see either post.

Thanks! I was searching for his username + "Griffin" and hadn't realized the posts were images.

A Director said: "When the BIPOC community says, writes or posts something that upsets white people, they run and find a someone from the community who disagrees with the original comment. They do this because they don't what to hear it.
"

Or, you know, BIPOC is not a community of 100% homogeneity as is evidenced by Jeremy Harris's perceived threat of Young Jean Lee and his attempt to frame it as "anti-blackness" without zero evidence to prove the connection between his experience and the term him haphazardly purported to be the case. 

I have the same feeling about the "gay community" as well. I'm not denying it has made marvelous progress in advancing rights of LGBTQ+ persons, but as a "community" it is building itself into a bubble that shuts out any dissenting voice and keeps out people who don't pass their "purity test." 

As a person who's supposed to belong in both communities, I find it taxing and sometimes incredibly dehumanizing to try to fit myself in.

Well said, LarryD2. I hope it has been clear that some of us who have asked for a little specificity in charges of racism are not doubting that racism exists in the theater. (On the contrary, I don't believe anyone in American culture who claims to have never had a prejudiced thought.)

I for one have just been saying that supporting one's self in the theater is an arduous journey for almost everyone; the mere existence of obstacles is not in itself proof that those particular obstacles stem from racism.