Neil LaBute

Has it ever been revealed why MCC terminated their relationship with Neil LaBute? It was smack in the middle of the Me Too Movement, but I've never heard anything about anyone making allegations against him.

There's a lot of people who really hate his writing. I'm mixed personally - I find his characters unnecessarily mean-spirited, and his women characters are not given a fair treatment dramaturgically speaking, but he does have some very interesting ideas in his plays, from the few I've read, and I think he does have an ear for a very specific kind of working-class dialogue. Could it have been that in a time that is about listening to what women have to say about how they've been mistreated, MCC didn't want to associate with an author who has written almost exclusively about problematic people, that don't necessarily apologize for being problematic?

MCC's dismissal of LaBute was curious. The theater had a very long relationship with the writer.

Updated On: 10/4/19 at 12:15 PM

Alex Kulak2 said: "I feel like once a theatre produces a show about a relationship between a thin man and a plus-sized woman calledFat Pig, they waive their preference to ever be known as "woke"

Not sure that title was 100% sincere....

jbird5 said: "He also had his usual one act Summer Short at 59e59. I saw a post where he said the Gerffen show was cancelled because Chrissy Metz pulled out. I think MCC dropped him because they have become super woke - not for the better it seems."

Theatre companies don't abruptly and without any warning dissolve a twenty-year relationship with a writer because they're trying to be woke.

I wouldn't necessary say all of those are obvious. There very easily could have been an NDA in play.

For nearly every year for a decade, a Neil LaBute play was one of MCC's three main offerings. If it ever had much of an identity beyond the reach of its casting network, MCC was a Neil LaBute theater.