#51
Posted: 9/2/11 at 12:25pm
"This whole controversy sparked outrage and outcry without anyone ever seeing a moment of the show on stage."
Diane Paulus reaps what she sows. Her entire sales pitch is based on something she presumes the public thinks of as "stuffy," that with her tinkering she'll make more understandable, more relevant, more now. I imagine in her pep talks to the cast she fed them all the lines she uses about making something more accessible because theater needs to be a partner in a dialogue with "the community." I'm sure the pep talks are seductive, just look at her eyes in the photo I linked. I bet when they're in action they're like that hypnotic snake's in the Jungle Book.
I bet she talks about how the cognescenti know and love Porgy & Bess and now, with their efforts, "real people" will too. (In many ways, she IS the Sarah Palin of contemporary theater, a person with little native talent who finds herself thrust upon a platform much bigger than she deserves, filled with insecurities she tries to manage by lashing out at "the elites.")
But regardless of my fantasies of how her POV came to be repeated by her cast in that (what has turned out to be) "unhelpful" pre-publicity, what we wound up with was super-talented people like McDonald and Boykin going on about how this production was going to be better and clearer and more understandable. I find this particularly interesting coming from Boykin, since he has played Crown previously. Did Paulus convince him that with the changes he wouldn't see the same old faces in the audience? Or did he come to be the victim of Stockholm Syndrome in the rehearsal process?
More likely, I bet Paulus told them what the sales angle was going to be, and without imagining a Sondheimian backlash, they went with it because Diane is nothing if not convincing.
The fault is not with Sondheim, he reacted to what Paulus carefully chose to put before the public in advance of performances.
As for how (or why?) the non-profit ART has been planning a Broadway production from the beginning, that's an equally intriguing question with artistic and financial implications that will be worth exploring as time marches on.
Diane Paulus reaps what she sows. Her entire sales pitch is based on something she presumes the public thinks of as "stuffy," that with her tinkering she'll make more understandable, more relevant, more now. I imagine in her pep talks to the cast she fed them all the lines she uses about making something more accessible because theater needs to be a partner in a dialogue with "the community." I'm sure the pep talks are seductive, just look at her eyes in the photo I linked. I bet when they're in action they're like that hypnotic snake's in the Jungle Book.
I bet she talks about how the cognescenti know and love Porgy & Bess and now, with their efforts, "real people" will too. (In many ways, she IS the Sarah Palin of contemporary theater, a person with little native talent who finds herself thrust upon a platform much bigger than she deserves, filled with insecurities she tries to manage by lashing out at "the elites.")
But regardless of my fantasies of how her POV came to be repeated by her cast in that (what has turned out to be) "unhelpful" pre-publicity, what we wound up with was super-talented people like McDonald and Boykin going on about how this production was going to be better and clearer and more understandable. I find this particularly interesting coming from Boykin, since he has played Crown previously. Did Paulus convince him that with the changes he wouldn't see the same old faces in the audience? Or did he come to be the victim of Stockholm Syndrome in the rehearsal process?
More likely, I bet Paulus told them what the sales angle was going to be, and without imagining a Sondheimian backlash, they went with it because Diane is nothing if not convincing.
The fault is not with Sondheim, he reacted to what Paulus carefully chose to put before the public in advance of performances.
As for how (or why?) the non-profit ART has been planning a Broadway production from the beginning, that's an equally intriguing question with artistic and financial implications that will be worth exploring as time marches on.
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